Professor of Exercise Science Eric Hall concluded his term as the Center for Engaged Learning’s first senior scholar in May.
Professor of Exercise Science Eric Hall, who concluded his term as the Center for Engaged Learning’s first senior scholar in May, recently reflected on how the opportunity allowed him to advance his scholarship in the area of mentored undergraduate research.
Hall’s project focused on the importance of undergraduate research mentorship to the teacher-scholar model and was an extension of his participation in CEL’s 2014-2016 Research Seminar on Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research.
“One of the things that being a CEL Senior Scholar allowed me to do,” Hall explains, “was to engage in some interesting products around undergraduate research mentoring. I had the opportunity to work on a couple of exciting pieces related to undergraduate research mentoring in writing studies. Additionally, I helped co-write a piece of using the salient practices of undergraduate research mentoring in the performing arts. This paper will be published in the upcoming issue of PURM. In both of these papers I was focused on trying to expand the reach of the salient practices in fields outside of the norms for undergraduate research. Additionally, I have presented and currently am co-writing a paper about using the salient practices framework when stacking undergraduate research with study abroad experiences.”
Hall said that he used his time as senior CEL scholar to collect data about the salient practices from the mentor and mentee standpoint to see where challenges occur in implementation.
Hall published two articles related to his scholarship:
- Walkington, H., Stewart, K.A., Hall, E.E., Shanahan, J.O., & Ackley, E. (2019). Salient practices of award winning undergraduate research mentors – balancing freedom and control to achieve excellence. Studies in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2019.1637838
- Hall, E.E., Walkington, H., Vandermaas-Peeler, M., Shanahan, J.O., Gudiksen, R.K., & Zimmer, M.M. (2018). Enhancing short-term undergraduate research experiences in study abroad: curriculum design and mentor development. Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring, 7(1), 1-17.
Hall also co-wrote a response to a chapter written by CEL Director Jessie Moore, and both the chapter and the response will be included in a collection to be published in early 2020.
In addition, Hall has written several blog posts for CEL’s website as part of the blog series on undergraduate research.
He also gave several presentations over the academic year:
- Vandermaas-Peeler, M., Hall, E., Ketcham, C., & Russell, S. (2019, February). Fostering intercultural learning through undergraduate research in global contexts. Workshop on Intercultural Skills Enhancement. Winston-Salem, NC.
- Vandermaas-Peeler, M., Hall, E., Allocco, A., & Pennington, B. (2018, October). Cultivating a culture of learning: Mentoring undergraduate research in global contexts. International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Bergen, Norway.
- Walkington, H., Hall, E., Shanahan, J., Ackley, E., & Stewart, K. (2018, October). Salient practices of award-winning undergraduate research mentors: Excellence, freedom and control. International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Bergen, Norway.
- Hall, E., Vandermaas-Peeler, M., Mangieri, T., & Ahmed, O. (2018, October). Developing international partnerships: Benefits and challenges of mentoring undergraduate research in a European Context. The Forum on Education Abroad – European Conference. Prague, Czech Republic.
Moving forward, Hall plans to continue his CEL Scholar work. “Additionally, in this work, I have also started to think about the merging of the undergraduate research mentorship literature with that of the students-as-partners literature and hope to write a paper this academic year about this intersection.”
The Senior Scholar position, a pilot initiative, supports a CEL research seminar leader’s or participant’s continued exploration of the seminar topic to complete publishing projects and to extend research related to the seminar, with the goal of the scholar actively assuming leadership in national and international conversations about the engaged learning topic.
For more information about the Center for Engaged Learning, visit the center’s website or contact centerforengagedlearning@elon.edu.