Student Researchers’ Reflections on the AAA Undergraduate Fellowship

Abstract

When the American Anthropological Association offered its Undergraduate Research Fellows program in 2019–2020, the intent was not only to obtain ethnographic insights into the college-workforce transition for anthropology majors, but also to provide a meaningful educational experience to the participating student-researchers. Previously (Ginsberg and Jackson, this issue), we have situated the fellowship program with reference to ethnography of higher education and native ethnography; in this paper, by contrast, we contextualize it with scholarship on high-impact practices in undergraduate education, including research opportunities, collaborative assignments, and community-based learning. We then present reflections from the student-researchers themselves regarding what they learned through participation in the fellows program. In their reflections, the fellows describe a process of becoming more central members of three overlapping communities of practice: the AAA research team, their respective home departments, and the discipline of anthropology overall. We conclude by discussing reasons why anthropology is particularly well suited to provide undergraduate research opportunities, and why doing so would strengthen the discipline as well.