Monday, September 17, 2007

Current Progress

It seems like research is going well. I found a lot of good information during my focused session today. Finding information has been easy but sorting through what is most important is the hardest part. I'm trying to focus mainly on the info that addresses my main question or one of the sub questions. I have also been seeing a lot of the same broad information so I'm still trying to find more specific information and actual facts and figures. I have found a little bit of specific facts so far but I'm hoping to find some more later on. All around though Iwould say this was a productive research session.

Research Prospectus

The topic of my research is affirmative action in college admissions. From my research I would like to address how big of a factor affirmative action is when it comes to acceptance of students of different ethnicities here at UNC. My research will compare UNC’s practices with other major universities and it will examine some of the larger affirmative action cases that have affected other universities. The comparison will also include universities who have completely gotten rid of affirmative action and compare how there demographics differ from UNC’s. I will be addressing it from an objective point of view in hopes of discovering how big of a role affirmative action plays in minority acceptance rates and also in establishing diversity for a university.
I chose this topic because it is close to home for me since I am a minority. I’m not sure how much of an advantage affirmative action gave me in getting accepted into UNC. I also wonder how much diversity would decrease if there was no affirmative action, and I think that can be discovered by examining those schools that have abolished it.
· How much of an impact does affirmative action have in college admissions here at UNC and is it effective in establishing diversity?
§ How does UNC’s affirmative action policies compare with other major colleges?
§ How does UNC’s diversity compare with colleges that don’t use affirmative action?
§ What are the common practices of most universities regarding affirmative action?

Monday, September 3, 2007

Current Info Need

I would say currently Kulthau’s theory fits pretty well with what I am experiencing now. I seem to have a good idea of the direction I want to take but I haven't actually started gathering information yet. Therefore, I am experiencing that stage of uncertainty just like in Kulthau's theory. But I'm sure just as his theory predicts, as soon as I start gathering the information I will feel more confident about the topic I have chosen.

Currently I need to know how much information is out there on affirmative action in college admissions. If there is a lot more then I expect then I'll probably need to narrow my topic to a specific region. But I might just end up keeping my topic as it is if I can't find a lot of good information for a specific region. So really the next stage for me is just researching the internet and the library trying to gage how much information is out there. Once I get a good picture of how many sources are available, then I can start narrowing down the relevent information.