Carleton College

Ian, I'm glad to hear you are interested in Carleton. We have research opportunities for students in most academic disciplines. Given that you are applying to the SQRI program, I assume that you are somewhat interested in quantitative research. We have a program on campus called QuIRK (Quantitative Inquiry, Reasoning, and Knowledge Initiative), which is an innovative project intended to help Carleton and other institutions of higher education better prepare students to evaluate and use quantitative evidence in their future roles as citizens, consumers, professionals, business people, and government leaders. The focus of the project is on how quantitative reasoning (QR) is used in the development, evaluation, and presentation of principled argument. There are summer research fellowships available to students. For example, several Carleton students, who were QuIRK fellows one summer, recently had their research proposal accepted by Yale Experimental Philosophy Project. They examined whether intuitions on personal identity---what it is that makes a person one and the same over time---vary across demographic differences such as gender, religion and philosophical background. The group worked over this past summer with their QUIRK faculty supervisor, associate sociology professor, Annette Nierobisz, who helped the students refine their methods of statistical analysis, and with their philosophy department supervisor, assistant professor of philosophy Angela Curran, who helped them to conceptualize their questions about personal identity and link their work to the field of experimental philosophy. The Yale Experimental Philosophy Month, a competition that included a large number of applications, mostly from professional philosophy professors and graduate students, selected their proposal. The team will work with a leading experimental philosopher on their research, which will include an on-line survey available in the spring. If you have any questions about this program or about research opportunities in other areas at Carleton, please do not hesitate to ask.