All About Doing Research at MCC as an Undergrad
Professor Ted Magder was the chair of the Department of Media, Culture and Communication from 2003 to 2009. The department was initially named Culture and Communication, and it was during his term of office that the word “media” was added, which was also the time when the MCC Honors program got started. He is the Special Advisor for Strategy, Innovation and Policy and an associate professor in MCC. Professor Magder also teaches the MCC honor seminar, which is a two-credit course that takes students through the initial steps of writing a thesis.
As a current student at MCC doing the Honors Program, I asked Professor Magder some questions about the MCC Honors Program, doing research as an MCC student, and research in general. The questions answered in this interview can provide a little guidance for MCC students who are interested in doing their own research projects, working closely with a full-time faculty member, or doing more research in their career path.
What are the typical research topics, methods, and areas for the MCC Honors Program?
MCC is a very broad department. We really encourage our students to think very widely and broadly about the role of media. In some ways, no topic is off-limits, provided there is a lens through which we can receive a story of how it relates to culture or how something impacts or influences our media. For example, right now we have students looking at media and Covid-19 through QR health codes. We have students looking at the cosmetic industry and comparing advertising images in China with the US and Europe. We have students looking at nostalgia for analog photography and how we think about taking images and photography. We have students looking at the Black Lives Matter movement. We have students looking at Nigerian films and the representation of the LGBTQIA+ community. Honestly, if the topic is something that is of interest to an MCC student, normally, by virtue of a course that they've taken in an apartment, it's a topic that can be the subject of the honors research paper.
What other opportunities for doing research are available besides the honor program?
Some faculty will hire undergraduate students to help them with their own research. But that doesn't happen very often because it only happens really when the faculty get to know students and their abilities. There are also courses where students have an opportunity to do some research, but doing real and original research takes a lot of time. It takes more than 15 weeks, so we can teach in our courses about the fundamentals of doing research, we can talk to students about methods, but it's really hard to research a course of only 15 weeks, which is why it needs to be longer, like in a year for the honors program.
What should MCC non-seniors do to prepare for applying to the honor program?
I think the most important thing they need to understand is that doing the honors program is an enormous commitment of time. During your senior year, you might be considering applying for graduate school, in which case the honors program might be a good idea. You might be looking at the job market, and preparing for that can take a lot of time, so you need to know you're going to have the time to do it. You also need a good idea or a good topic. A good topic usually comes in the following way. It's something you've already worked on. It can be a term paper or an area of interest that you've had an opportunity in one of your classes, whether that class is in MCC or not. Then, you should try to fabricate that idea and make it a proposal in order to apply for the Honors Program. In general, the students who are most comfortable in the Honors program are the ones who are building on something they've already been thinking about. You’re better prepared if you have an advisor that you already know and that you already have a relationship with. I know that's difficult for a lot of students because it's often only in their junior year that they really get to start working with the senior faculty, but that really helps a lot.
What kinds of students are suitable for the honor program?
Students who are interested in graduate school. Because graduate school is a place where we really go in to learn how to do research. A student who should not take Honors is the student who's doing it just so their transcript says “Honors.”
What's life like when doing research as a career?
The life of a university professor and the life of a researcher are not quite the same. A lot of students at MCC are going to be researchers. Your jobs are going to revolve around research. You're going to solve problems like how to reach consumers within the premium product, how to improve content. These are research problems. You're going to apply the writing skills and the analytic skills that we're teaching you in your careers, so many of you are going to end up doing research. But being an academic researcher is a highly specialized occupation. Honestly, it's not for everybody. You’re very much on your own. I mean you can be part of a research team, but still, it requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline, and I think it's a kind of self-discipline that not everybody has. It's not a common profession, but that doesn't mean that people don't do research. It just means they do applied research in settings like the business environment, and the period is about months instead of years. Think of it this way, what is an investigative journalist? A researcher. What is a data analytics expert in an advertising company? Also a researcher. What about someone who's trying to develop a new strategy to make podcasts at Spotify. Also a researcher. You're all going to end up being a researcher on different scales.
Further information about the MCC Honors Program can be found here. For applications for the next cycle of the program, all MCC juniors will get emails about the application process during the spring semester. Professor Madger also mentioned that there will be information sessions possibly with current honors students to talk about their own experiences doing research.
