Department: Religion
Professor Irene Oh Koukios
The Project: The project involves both research on the topic of American Muslims, and translating that research into a multi-media online format. The research is an extension of a Summer Institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities that centers around two important questions: What impact has American culture had in shaping the religious identities of American Muslims and in the creation of a uniquely American Muslim identity? What impact have American Muslims had on the religious, cultural, and political life of the United States? We probe the experiences of individuals and communities, using their journeys to illustrate wider trends in the American Muslim population.
The goal of this project is to catalyze the study and teaching of the Muslim presence in the United States. We provide college faculty with ideas and tools for developing new courses or revising existing courses on Islam in America; and second, create a multimedia website offering extensive pedagogical resources for educators in the United States and abroad. The Institute itself draws upon the collaboration of 25 faculty from around the country, sponsored by the NEH, who have been selected to contribute to this exciting endeavor.
Tasks: The research assistant will prepare research and materials on the topic of American Muslims generated by the NEH Summer Institute for online presentation. This will involve collating, organizing, and fact-checking research developed by teams of faculty on topics ranging from Muslims and the American slave trade to Muslim Hip-Hop to Islamic feminism. The student will help to think about presenting the material online in the most effective way possible, and then help with the design of the online resource.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 3 credits
Contact Email: ireneoh@gwu.edu
To Apply: Please send me an email explaining why you are best suited for this research assistantship, and include both your resume and your GPA. Students with an interest in Islam, American history, teaching, and with experience in website creation are especially encouraged to apply.
Tag: Summer 2015 Research Assistantship
Gender, War, and History: Women Fighters and Victims in World War II and the Holocaust [Research Assistantship]
Department of Sociology
Professor Daina Eglitis
The Project: “Gender, War, and History” is a historical and sociological project that focuses on women volunteers in the Red Army in World War II and women victims of Nazi Germany in the Holocaust. The project highlights the idea that women’s particular motivations and experiences have been obscured by larger, male-centered narratives of the past. For instance, few people know that women comprised about 8% of the Soviet Red Army and many of these women served on the fronts, engaged in violent and dangerous tasks. The work focuses on developing two women-centered case studies: (a) the motivations and experiences of Jewish and Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army’s Latvian division, who served on the Eastern Front ; (b) the particular experiences of women in camps and ghettos and at liberation and how those experiences have been represented historically.
Tasks: I am seeking a well-organized and meticulous RA who can work independently and is a good, clear writer. Language skills would be valuable: there are materials in Russian, Latvian, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew in this project. These skills are, however, less important than commitment, interest, and a strong work ethic. Ideally, the student will have some background knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust and a desire to learn more.
I am looking for someone who can do both on-line database research and spend time at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum library looking at materials. The student researcher will be responsible for gathering and checking historical data, researching specific names for case studies, gathering and summarizing secondary literature on topics related to the project, and looking into photo and video archives for related materials. Some more mundane tasks, such as preparation of bibliographies, will also be required.
The student is encouraged to use the opportunity to gather data that he/she can also use for a research or writing project.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 7-9 hours per week; varies
Contact Email: dainas@gwu.edu
To Apply: The applicant should send Professor Eglitis his/her resume and a cover letter describing briefly his/her academic achievements, interests, and ambitions, as well as why this project is of interest. Potential applicants are welcome to send emails with questions before making the decision to apply.
Gun Control, The Empirical Controversy [Research Assistantship]
Department: Sociology
Professor Robert J. Cottrol
The Project: For this I would want an undergraduate familiar with basic social science research techniques including the ability to do basic literature reviews. The student should also have a knowledge of elementary statistics such as might be gained from the undergraduate statistics course in sociology, political science or other social science disciplines. Student would review literature from a variety of disciplines, criminology, economics, sociology, public health and public policy, among others. Review would also include student’s critical examination of the literature and discussion of whether there are different perspectives on topic depending on discipline. An examination of the extent to which scholars in this field look at each others work, particularly across disciplines would be important
Tasks: Literature reviews summarizing and critiquing empirical studies on gun control.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 3 credits
Contact Email: bcottrol@law.gwu.edu
To Apply: Email your undergraduate year, major, career interests, and resume.
Regulatory Policy: Understanding the White House's Office for Regulatory Oversight [Research Assistantship]
Department: Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
Professor Chris Carrigan
The Project: This research project is aimed at understanding the impact of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on the regulatory review process. We are analyzing both how OIRA’s preferences shape regulatory outcomes and when the agency is most influential in impacting the content of government regulations submitted by agencies. We will see when OIRA has the biggest impacts on new regulations and when it acts more as a pass-through. The student will also gain a familiarity with the federal legislative and regulatory processes and learn about the available public sources for information on federal regulations and legislation.
Tasks: The student’s work would assist this project by examining the underlying legislation upon which the regulations are based. The student would use legislative data sources and do “content analysis” on the bills, such as word counts of sections of the legislation as part of an estimate for the complexity of the underlying legislation.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 4-6 hours per week; 1 credit
Contact Email: ccarrigan@email.gwu.edu
To Apply: email resume with relevant experience
*Looking for a summer assistance. 1-2 credits possible
Is Executive Function Associated with Academic Functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder? [Research Assistantship]
Department: Speech and Hearing Sciences; Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Professors Greg Wallace, PhD; Lauren Kenworthy, PhD
The Project: Executive function (EF) is an omnibus term describing supramodal, higher-order cognitive abilities including working memory, planning, flexibility, and organization, all in the service of problem-solving and behavioral regulation. It is now well-established that EF skills are crucial to academic functioning in both typically developing children and at-risk youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, early EF skills, including working memory and inhibitory control, have been linked with school readiness during early development (Blair & Razza, 2007). Later developing EF skills also foster academic achievement as several studies now demonstrate that individual differences in EF performance are associated with individual differences in academic functioning during adolescence (Latzman et al., 2010).
Nevertheless, in spite of this robust evidence for linkage between EF skills and academic achievement in typically developing and at-risk youth, to date, very little evidence links these domains in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This is particularly startling given that EF deficits based on both performance measures (e.g., McLean et al., 2014) and ratings scales (e.g., Granader et al., 2014) are well-established in ASD and that several interventions (e.g., Unstuck and On Target! Kenworthy et al., 2014) have been developed to target EF difficulties in the service of reducing ASD (e.g., repetitive behavior and rigidity) symptoms and buttressing other (e.g., social-communication) skills.
This study will assess EF skills utilizing a battery of EF tasks (assessing working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, etc.) and examine their unique contributions (above and beyond IQ) to academic functioning, including reading and math. This study will include approximately 30 children with ASD and 30 typically developing controls matched on age (7-12 years old), IQ (>75), and sex ratio.
Tasks: The research assistant will help with a plethora of tasks including, but not limited to: gathering data/testing, data entry, data cleaning, data analysis, literature reviews, and writing.
Time Commitment/ Credit Hours: 4-6 hours per week; varies
To Apply: Please send a curriculum vitae or resume to Dr. Wallace at: gwallac1@gwu.edu
African Diaspora Project [Research Assistantship]
Professor Yvonne Captain
The Project: Researching the whereabouts and movement (migration) of African Diaspora communities in the Americas, including those who are descendants of slaves in the United States. Of special interest is the migration of Creoles of Louisiana to other parts of the United States and to other regions of the Americas.
Tasks:
–Mine archival data as recent as last year or as early as the 1720s.
–Research will occur mostly through GW online access or physically at the Library of Congress and other local libraries
–possible transcription of interviews that the professor conducted with participants
Time Commitment/ Credit: 7-9 hours per week; 3 credit opportunity
Contact Address: ycaptain@gwu.edu
To Apply: Email me know of your interest. Prior knowledge of the African Diaspora is not necessary. No language requirement except good skills in the English language. Can be less hours if you prefer. Let me know so that I can hire more than one assistant.
–let me know when you are available to do the work
–either at end of spring semester or beginning of summer
A Reform to Help Congress Work Better [Research Assistantship]
Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration
Professor Stuart Kasdin
The Project: This project involves historic research using the Congressional Record. The goal is to produce an academic paper, in which the student could receive shared authorship.
The paper would examine the potential impacts of a particular reform to the Congressional budget process: the reform is to merge appropriations and authorization committees. Presently, authorization committees design new programs, creating the terms for program spending (i.e., what a program aims to accomplish, who is eligible, and what they can receive), while the appropriation committees determine how much funding each program will receive. This proposal would do away with this long-standing bifurcation of responsibilities. Each newly designed committee would have a mix of mandatory and discretionary programs.
The greatest potential advantage of the reform proposal is to encourage greater productivity from the Congress. Because appropriations must be completed on an annual basis and because the funding process supports logrolling and ‘splitting the difference’, compromise is easier. The need to annually produce new budgets could encourage greater on-going cooperation, enhanced communication and trust, and less partisan posturing. In addition, the new committees would have all the relevant program spending (except tax expenditures) housed together. This would encourage increased allocative efficiency.
There are potential risks. One risk is that the appropriation bills would be later than usual, with partisanship from the authorization process spilling into appropriations. In addition, there is a risk of increased use of legislative riders and earmarks added to appropriation bills.
Because there are historical examples of congressional committees with combined authorization and appropriation responsibilities, we can get a better sense of the possible outcomes of the reform. Between 1879 and1885, the House of Representatives stripped the Appropriation Committee of its authority over rivers and harbors, agriculture, consular and diplomatic affairs, the military, the Post Office, and Indian affairs. In each of these areas the authorization committees gained the right to report appropriations. On the Senate side, by1899, a similarly broad swath of activities had been removed from the appropriator’s jurisdiction and placed under the responsibility of the relevant authorization committees. The Appropriation Committees only regained the responsibility for appropriations after the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act.
Research Assistant Tasks: You would examine the Congressional Record (which is on-line), comparing committees that made the change and combined authorization and appropriation functions, and committees that did not. In addition, the examination could cover the period of time several years before and after the changes in committee responsibilities. Some metrics to examine would include legislation introduced; public laws enacted and landmark, timeliness of appropriations, and a measure of altered appropriation bill content, such riders.
Time Commitment/Credit Hours: 4-6 hours per week (beginning Summer 2015); 2 credit option
Contact email: skasdin@gwu.edu
To Apply: Email a resume with major and a writing sample to the above address.
Christian Zionism in American Thought [Research Assistantship]
Department: Political Science
Professor Samuel Goldman
The Project: This project is an attempt to understand why American Christians have historically expressed such strong support for the idea of a Jewish state in some portion of the Biblical promised land. Focusing on public arguments in books, pamphlets, and sermons, it traces the discourse of Christian Zionism from the Puritans to the present day. I pay special attention to claims that the United States has a special role to play in establishing/supporting such a state. According to Christian Zionists, how is America’s destiny intertwined with Israel’s?
Tasks: The research assistant will help with the following tasks:
1) Locating and collecting primary sources in internet and library searches.
2) Verifying quotes and citations.
3) Proofreading manuscripts.
Time Commitment/ Credits: 1-3 hours per week; 1 credit
Contact Email: swgoldman@gwu.edu
To Apply: Applicants should send an unofficial transcript and a short statement indicating their background for or interest in this project, as well as any prior research experience.
