Joey Matsuzawa
Sports Editor
Members of the La Verne Academy gathered Tuesday in the Executive Dining Room to present their inaugural panel, “What Everyone Ought to Know About Research and Scholarship,” before faculty and students.
The La Verne Academy, composed of a group of recognized scholars at the University of La Verne, is dedicated to promoting and fostering research through publications, grants, lectures and seminars.
Academy members that sat on the panel included Professor of Anthropology Felicia Beardsley, Professor of Psychology Ngoc Bui, Professor of Law Chuck Doskow, Professor of Management Issam Ghazzawi, Professor of Political-Science Jason Neidleman and Professor of Management and Leadership Deborah Olson.
“We have really grown significantly in the last 10 years in terms of the number of people that are doing research,” Olson said.
“Traditionally La Verne has been a primarily teaching oriented school, so La Verne Academy has not been as visible. This was our first panel of academy members sharing our research so you can see the interdisciplinary nature of what we represent. We wanted to share that to not only show what our scholarship, research and work is, but also encourage others.”
As the title of the panel would suggest, each member proceeded to discuss their research and offer advice on research strategies. Beardsley suggested using online tools such as iris.ai, an online AI that assists in finding scholarly sources for research topics.
“I would recommend for anyone wanting to continue or get into research is to get the mindset of being a researcher, which means, make it part of your day,” Bui said.
“Make it part of your week and regularly prioritize it as something you do in your schedule. It’s not going to happen unless you have it as a priority.”
Ghazzawi echoed Bui’s points, emphasizing the importance of keeping an agenda and proactive mindset.
“Research is a discipline, a state of mind,” Ghazzawi said. “If you see my calendar, on a weekly basis I have meetings ‘on this day from this time to this time’ but also you see lots of spots I reserve for research. You need to have an agenda and you need to stick to your agenda.”
Olson stressed the significance of using critical thinking while analyzing potential research sources.
“I think far too often we’re anecdotal, we’re story driven,” Olson said. “We read a story somewhere and we repeat it or it gets cascaded ten thousand more times and then somehow it has more validity, when it had no more validity than the first time it was said.”
“What I’ve seen when is that when I assign papers and I’ll ask people to get scholarly articles from peer-reviewed sources. They might source a Harvard business review article or a Fortune magazine. That’s not peer review, these are usually opinion pieces sometimes by scholars concerning the research they’ve done, but it’s not a peer-reviewed journal article.”
“I always believe that you can further develop yourself, I remember when I started doing research in the past I was not a good researcher,” Ghazzawi said.
“But the more you write, the more you publish, the more you research, the better researcher you will become.”
The La Verne Academy will present another panel of faculty researchers next year.
Joey Matsuzawa can be reached at joe.matsuzawa@laverne.edu.
