Communications professor, alumna co-author journal article

Anthony Hatcher, associate professor of communications, and Mia Watkins ’16, a cinema and television arts major, published an article in the journal Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring (PURM). The article, published online on Sept. 13, is titled “Finding Patterns and Making Predictions: A Dialogue on Mentored Student Research and Engaged Learning Abroad.”

During the week of April 7-11, 2014, a team of five undergraduate researchers and two mentors from Elon University traveled to Hong Kong to conduct oral history interviews with inductees at the Internet Hall of Fame (IHOF) Induction/International IT Fest. The PURM essay presents an overview of the planning and research processes used by School of Communications students who interviewed and recorded the histories and predictions of the inductees.

The essay concludes with a dialogue between a professor/mentor, Hatcher, and one of the student researchers, Watkins, who conducted follow-up research based on the interviewees’ responses. Watkins’ commentary on various stages of the process appears throughout the essay.

Coverage of IHOF is one of many joint initiatives of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. Imagining the Internet ​Center Director and Professor of Communications Janna Anderson has sent teams to gatherings around the globe to conduct, record and archive interviews with internet pioneers such as Vint Cerf, Timothy Berners-Lee and others who created the tools and infrastructure now used in daily online communications.

​The article abstract reads as follows: Undergraduate researchers and mentors from Elon University traveled to Hong Kong to record oral histories with inductees into the 2014 Internet Hall of Fame (IHOF). This essay presents the planning and research by students who interviewed IHOF inductees, and includes a dialogue between a mentor and student who conducted additional research.

Guest editors for this issue of PURM were Barbara Miller Gaither, associate professor of communications, and Steve DeLoach, professor of economics.

Published by Elon University, PURM is an open-access, multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed online journal supporting the mission of undergraduate research and the programs that strive to provide undergraduate students opportunities to participate in scholarly activities with faculty mentors.