Hiring Students for Summer Text Mining Project
A new, interdisciplinary research project offers a total of five positions to graduate or undergraduate students from multiple disciplines who exhibit the right combination of initiative, skills and reliability. The project investigates undergraduate teaching at UMBC, and is led by the combined expertise of the Shriver Center, Interdisciplinary Studies Program and the Honors College. The students will work as an integrated, interdisciplinary team, and may expect to expand their own knowledge, skills and experience as a result. UMBC graduate students and exceptionally qualified undergraduate students will be considered.
A group of Academic and Student Affairs Division faculty and staff are working to better track, assess, strengthen and increase, and recognize and reward applied learning experiences across the UMBC Campus. In FY15, this group’s work has focused on creating a plan for assessing the impact of applied learning experiences (broadly defined) on students’ affective development.
Each position offers partial summer support funded by a Hrabowski Fund for Innovation: Implementation and Research grant.
80 hours (may span across 4-8 weeks depending on availability-no more than 20 hrs/week)
Stipend of $1150
The five graduate students we seek will have a background in the following skills/disciplines: Information Systems; Computer Science; Human Centered Computing; Instructional Systems Design; Applied Mathematics; Statistics; Human Services Psychology; Applied Sociology; Education; Language, Literacy & Culture; and Public Policy.
The project aims to continue for a minimum of three years, expanding subject to further successful funding. Students who perform well may be invited to extend their role.
One goal is to explore, through written student feedback, how diverse courses have contributed to their perception of growth in key attributes. This first summer of the project will look at pilot data, exploratory analysis of scrappy, inconsistent, self-reported text, in order to figure out how to collect better, more uniform data in the Fall semester. One of the skill sets we wish for in the team would be a computer scientist able to mine text to seek the suggestion of themes, patterns or clues to what we would need to ask to get such patterns more clearly in the future.
All interested candidates should send a letter of interest, resume with references, and a statement with general summer weekly availability (e.g., Monday, Wednesdays & Fridays from 9am – 2pm) to Michele Wolff at by Wednesday, June 24. Exceptionally qualified undergraduate students will also be considered.