Minutes
11/17/05	04/21/05	03/10/05	11/09/04

Notes from 1st Gathering of Qualitative Research Interest Group
11/9/04, Room 257, College of Nursing

Greetings, all who were able to attend our first gathering yesterday!

From all accounts, our first effort to convene, share interests, & brainstorm our focus as a group, was very successful. Genuine thanks to all who made the effort to join us, & a hearty welcome to all others who may do so in the future; this seems long overdue. In an informal manner, I tried to record some of our key points & major ideas, in order to share them with the larger group & help focus our future meetings. I will share them here, with the open invitation to all others present yesterday to add, enrich, or reframe these points:

• We circulated a hard copy/paper matrix, filled with information about all of us: names, preferred contact information, department/affiliation, primary qualitative interest or focus area, current research projects or grants, willingness to mentor graduate students in qualitative data analysis, & anything else considered important to share. For those who were unable to join us, I invite you to email that info to me in this space, & I will combine it with everyone else's. The plan is to convert all of this material to an Excel spreadsheet that can be shared electronically with interested faculty, staff, & students on our campus. I will take responsibility for getting that done when everyone has offered their own input. Thanks!!

• There was enthusiasm for the possibility of putting this group on the web, probably within WebCT, so that we have a permanent “place” to communicate electronically, to add or revise information about our own projects, etc., to answer questions from our members and interested “others”, & from which we may share information about upcoming activities, future conferences, resources on qualitative research, etc. I volunteered to contact Jane Erlandson, the HSC (Library) WebCT guru we in the College of Nursing turn to for the plethora of classes we teach in WebCT. All that she will likely need from each of us is a CIRT ID. A faculty member (Eileen) yesterday suggested the name of our “class” or group, on WebCT, could be “The Qualitative Voice”. I am meeting with Jane Erlandson on Mon 11/15 for other reasons, but will include asking her about how/when we might do this for our group.Whatever I learn in that meeting Monday, I will share with all of you in this espace.

• People shared many excellent suggestions for how we might use our collective “qualitative voice” for future endeavors. Some of those suggestions include:

• Agreeing to meet quarterly for major discussions, brainstorming, planning, debriefing about our qualitative activities & questions, exploring how we use & honor our “qualitative voice” in research. Next quarterly meeting will be Thursday March 10, 2005, 11AM-1PM, with us bringing our sack lunches. I will secure a room for the meeting.

• Adding “Brown Bag Sessions” every other month for the more focused purpose of sharing specific research activities or strategies, reviewing actual or mock proposals for group critique, & other very specific “learning activities”. Eileen Thomas (CON) will explore possible qualitative proposals currently in process at the HSC. The Brown Bags would be called “HSC Qualitative Café”, & could be publicized in the HSC news, the Daily Lobo (thanks, Robin-Meize-Grochowski), & elsewhere, to be open to all interested. Our FIRST such Brown Bag session will be Thursday Feb 17, 2005, 11:30-12:30PM. I will get us a room in the College of Nursing, & the presenters will be Cindy Mendelson & myself, on ethnographic techniques we use in our research. Special Note: The reason the group voted to support Thursdays for these gatherings was that our doctoral students have 100% of their classes on Thursday-Friday, since many of them work full-time and/or commute from outside Albuquerque. I recognize that may not always work for everyone, but I'll hope we can give it a try…the NEXT such Brown Bag is set for Thursday April 21, 12-1PM, & Barb Hooper from Occupational Therapy will find us a room in her department for that—thanks, Barb! Please mark your calendars & plan to join us!

• Consider working with HSC librarians to establish a link to this group on the HSC Library Homepage. My thought is that once we are established in WebCT, this will really take off…let me know what your thoughts are, but my inclination is to first get us “up” on WebCT, then work to get this link on the library homepage…thoughts?

• Pool our resources (no pun intended—smile!) to generate a set of “resource materials” for everyone's benefit; examples: ask Gil Quintero to provide suggestions/guidance re. qualitative software options; a recommended bibliography of first-rate qualitative resource books, papers, & other materials; news about qualitative research conferences, speakers, institutes, resources, etc. outside UNM. This piece could really be developed creatively on our WebCT place.

• Compile a set of qualitative abstracts documenting the array of qualitative projects, papers written/published, etc.within the HSC or UNM, to share.

• Longer-term:
  
  Plan & implement our own qualitative research conference here, complete with internal presentations, possible posters, & well-known speakers from outside UNM.
  
  Develop an advanced class in qualitative data analysis, for graduate students, interested faculty.

Those are the highlights I wrote down, folks…my heartfelt thanks for all of your enthusiasm & interest; this can be a fabulous way to enrich what we do with qualitative thinking & research. I look forward to lots of rich experiences with all of you & interested others in the future. Best to all & please keep up the good work!

Respectfully,
Jennifer