Send that fan mail—Researchers are people too!

Hey NIRSA friends!

I took January off from NIRSA President’s Notes, since the full NIRSA Board had a message to share with members. I hope this month’s post finds you all enjoying a strong start to the new year and a new academic term.

Somehow, we are already nearing the end of my presidential term—what‽ In these final few months of my presidential blog posts, I am excited to pass along some of the advice I received from the researchers I spoke to for this series. My first tip for campus rec practitioners is around staying engaged with research through personal connections.

Tip #1: Connect with researchers

The advice to reach out and connect came from nearly every researcher I spoke to. Send them an email because they truly want to engage with you! If there are faculty doing research on your campus that is related to recreation and wellbeing, send them an email and ask to meet. Yes, your campus researchers want to chat with you!

Dr. A’Naja Newsome, Lecturer, Department of Health Sciences at the University of Central Florida reminds us that researchers and practitioners sometimes collect similar data to examine similar problems. By connecting with a researcher, you can help guide research questions from the beginning of a project and contribute to knowledge at a larger scale. But even when you aren’t collecting similar data, you can still meet and share ideas on what research topics can benefit you as a practitioner, and maybe that will inform a future research project.

Dr. Krista Soria, Assistant Professor, Adult, Organizational Learning, and Leadership at the University of Idaho also emphasizes how we never need to approach research alone. She encourages us to consider partnerships not only with faculty but also with institutional research staff or graduate students. We may know a student with research requirements for their degree and working with them can help us add knowledge to our field while supporting their academic projects.

A final recommendation—inspired by Sera Janson Zegre, Coordinator for Research at West Virginia University—is to reach out to your division’s assessment leader. They may be aware of other folks who are interested in collaborative research projects, if not conducting research themselves.

I hope to see you soon

I am grateful to be traveling to Howard University for the Emerging Recreational Sports Leaders Conference later this month as well as the NIRSA Conference and Campus Rec Expo in April during this very special milestone year. If you will also be in Washington D.C. or in Orlando, look for me! I’ll be the introvert masquerading as an extrovert, and I would love to chat about research, assessment, data dashboards, or anything else that may be on our nerdy minds.

– EP