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A Society of Scholars: Royster Fellows meet monthly to share their research

High school students or liberal arts undergraduates might learn about classic American literature and natural chemical reactions in the same day. But at the graduate level, students rarely have the chance to learn across such a broad spectrum — typically their research is much more focused within a particular discipline.

The Society of Fellows, a graduate fellowship program launched by Dr. Thomas S. Royster, Jr. and Mrs. Caroline H. Royster, creates this opportunity to share research from around the University for an elite group of students at UNC-Chapel Hill. Since the start of the society in 1996, the Roysters have set an example for other forward-looking donors who have helped to increase the number of fellowships offered each year.

“When you get into a graduate program, there is a tendency to become so absorbed in your work and your department that you become isolated,” said Royster Fellow Ellie Camann, a student in the Department of Geological Sciences. “Getting to meet and talk to people doing such different things is great not only socially, but also intellectually.”

The program’s goal is to foster interdisciplinary learning among top-level graduate researchers. Recipients represent the top students admitted to different graduate programs from across the University. Fellows receive special mentoring by senior faculty to assist them as they develop leadership and academic skills. They also gather monthly to share presentations and discuss research.

According to the fellows, these group meetings are an invaluable opportunity to learn and share across the many departments within the University.

“The longer I’m here, the more pronounced the problem of interdisciplinary communication becomes to me,” said anthropology student Cheryl McDonald. “It’s so disorienting because different disciplines can use the same vocabulary for different things. It takes a lot of effort to cross those boundaries, and the Royster Fellowship has been extraordinarily helpful.”

"Working across disciplines expands one's understanding and appreciation of research."

Susan Lord, director of the Society of Fellows and a professor in the Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine, has also seen the value of the program’s interdisciplinary approach.

“Working across disciplines expands one’s understanding and appreciation of research. As a scientist, I think of research as working at a lab bench with controllable variables,” said Lord. “For the historian, research may be merging records and artifacts to devise new models. So what do they have in common? No field can go forward without good research.”

For Al Armendariz, a Royster fellow in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, the benefits of the fellowship will extend beyond his dissertation research.

“My long-term career objective is to be a university professor,” said Armendariz. “Being a member of the Society of Fellows has given me a view of the lives of faculty and students from other departments that I would not have otherwise had. I think this will help me be a better academic in the future.”

Armendariz just accepted a tenure-track faculty position at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

During their monthly presentations, students not only have the opportunity to learn about each other’s research, but also get to practice talking about their own studies. Although they may be comfortable talking to peers within their departments, the fellows have found presenting to each other to be a new challenge.

Photo by Will Owens

“It’s a difficult process to present to a multidisciplinary audience because they ask different questions than you get from colleagues,” said McDonald.

At one of the group’s meetings, Tom Fahy, a Lyle V. Jones Dissertation Fellow in the English department, shared from a dissertation chapter titled “War, Damaged Bodies, and Literature of the Great Depression.” He used references to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to hide his disability and the theme of disability in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to present his topic, taking some audience members back to sources they hadn’t studied since high school.

“I feel that being part of an interdisciplinary community has helped me understand the various perspectives and expectations that intellectuals from other fields bring to a scholarly project,” said Fahy. “This has challenged me to broaden the scope of my work and to produce scholarship that speaks to a larger audience.”

At the same meeting following Fahy’s presentation, Rick Johnston, a Royster fellow in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, spoke about “Arsenic in Groundwater of Bangladesh.” Johnston had worked with UNICEF in Bangladesh for three years and his dissertation topic focuses on arsenic removal processes. He taught the group about pyrite oxidation and oxyhydroxide reduction, two possible explanations for the high levels of arsenic in Bangladesh groundwater. “Or Theory 1 and Theory 2,” Johnston said smiling, “for those of you whose redox chemistry is a little shaky.”

Attending a meeting to hear presentations on such wide-ranging topics as disability in literature and arsenic in groundwater may seem atypical. But many of these scholars see that the future of research will require an interdisciplinary approach.

“I think the best research crosses disciplinary boundaries,” said Fahy. “It should communicate the importance and the relevance of what we do to those outside of our respective fields.”

While it’s important to focus primarily on one discipline, Lord agrees that progress in one discipline often influences another.

“I think doctoral research focuses on narrow questions, but some of these questions require interdisciplinary work. In genetics, for example, DNA analysis will change how anthropologists and historians view once-living specimens.”

Ultimately, the funding provided by the Royster family and others enables these scholars to concentrate on their research without interference from distractions.

“The financial support has enabled me to focus on my dissertation research without having to spend time teaching and writing grant proposals,” said Armendariz.

Camann agreed, citing specific benefits for her research: “I am doing my research on beach-dune interactions on a barrier island and need to move closer to my study area this fall. Funding from the Roysters frees me from having to commute to Chapel Hill to teach for two years.”

-Cyndi Soter

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