SOURCE Explore programs are hands-on, interactive workshops designed to introduce students to research by doing short-term research activities. Led by a faculty member or research staff member, the SOURCE Explore programs are for students in their 1st or 2nd year with no prior research experience but who are curious to learn more. We partner with faculty and research staff from a variety of disciplines to offer SOURCE Explore workshops.
If you are a Faculty Mentor looking to host a future SOURCE Explore Program, please contact ugresearch@syr.edu
Student Eligibility and Expectations
- Must be a first- or second-year student to apply
- Open to students in all disciplines
- Commit to attendance at 4 SOURCE Explore sessions (refer to the application for dates)
- Complete any pre-program readings or materials by the first SOURCE Explore session
- Complete a short-term project with your group members and present your findings, students are expected to dedicate around 10 hours to this final project.
- Submit a pre- and post-program reflection form.
- $250 participation stipend will be awarded after the conclusion of the program and completion of all reflection forms
Applications are due January 18, 2023 by 11:59pm
Click here to apply for the Spring 2024 SOURCE Explore Program
Spring 2024 SOURCE Explore Programs
Finding Yourself in the Archives with the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC)
You’re a student at Syracuse University. Maybe you’re from the city itself, or somewhere nearby, or perhaps you’re from another state, or even another country. But you’re here now. You’re learning places on and off campus, being introduced to new topics and ideas through your classes, and you’re becoming part of a larger community here. There’s a history to Syracuse University, to the city of Syracuse, to this region of New York, to the United States, the Americas, the world. Ideas and stories turn into books, letters about life are sent from one friend to another, photos are taken to capture a moment, inventions are dreamed up and then created, culture is made and re-made each day through humans just living on earth. History is made up of countless stories that needs many to give it voice; your voice included.
Have you ever wondered where documentary filmmakers get their archival footage? Have you found yourself thinking about what trying to record sound was like before the iPhone (or even before electronics)? Are you curious about what college was like in the 1960s? Not just college, but what life was like in the 1960s? What about the 1400s? Have you ever questioned how our understanding of scientific fact came about? Or, how different cultures form their own myths and ways of communicating knowledge? What about where your takeout food container came from? Or where writing came from? Have you ever just wondered?
Let your wonder wander through doing archival research in special collections. Join Librarians Amy McDonald and Jana Rosinski in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) for a one-month research residency through The SOURCE Explore: Finding Yourself in the Archives program. Over the course of one month, students will not only learn how to do research in archives and special collections, but will get to explore something of themselves—their own experiences, their own interests, their own curiosities– within SCRC’s collections. Students will create a presentation of their researching experience to share in an informal forum, along with a publication of their project in the SCRC blog, in the SU Libraries’ SURFACE digital repository for scholarship, and in a zine with their fellow research residency cohort.
Mapping Stories, Making Change with Syracuse Community Geography
Maps are powerful storytellers. They help us visualize and share pressing stories like the impacts of climate change, the global pandemic, housing inequalities, and ongoing racial injustice (among many more). They help us locate people, places, and events within our stories. They help us identify patterns, trends, divergences, and relationships that nuance our stories and illustrate changes in our stories over time. Maps have the capacity to bring us together as communities to better understand the complexities of the world around us and our everyday experiences of the challenges we face. Perhaps, most importantly, maps create social change by centering stories that are too often left off the map.
By the end of this program, students will tell a map-based story with industry standard mapping software by developing a geographic research question, conducting background research, identifying relevant spatial datasets, and analyzing and visualizing their data to answer their research question. Students will reflect upon the power of maps as storytellers throughout the research process in a research journal. Students will create an ESRI StoryMap (i.e., an online platform that allows for map-based visual storytelling) that documents their spatial story and answers their research question. Students will share their ESRI StoryMap and research experience in a presentation at an informal forum sponsored by SOURCE.