When Vibha Gupta visited photographer Logan Muszynski’s studio apartment at an artist colony downtown, she made a note of the high ceilings ““ about 20 feet tall ““ high enough for him to store a giant foam cloud cutout left over from an advertising project.
Muszynski and another photographer had offered a tour of the colony for Gupta and she listened as the two discussed the best shots from the roof, the perks of their studio apartments and old legends about the area. And Gupta, a Michigan State University student, made mental notes the entire night, with plans to write the six pages of field notes for her research project the next day.
Gupta is now a student with “LA at Play,” a summer program at UCLA that pulls about 15 students every year from across the country for eight weeks to conduct ethnographic research in a public space of their choosing.
The class is part of the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, a project that provides research opportunities for college students to get them more involved in the sciences, according to NSF’s Web site.
Students are drawn to the program for the 10 units of college credit, nearly $4,000 in living and research stipends, and, according to sociology Professor Jack Katz who has worked with the project since it launched seven years ago, a taste of professional sociological fieldwork.
Ethnography is a form of social research that gives a descriptive account of communities that have not been closely studied, according to Katz.
Gupta’s research brings her to the Brewery Artist Colony downtown, but other students this year find themselves in activities such as walking dogs at dog parks, playing pickup basketball games, dining at Peruvian restaurants and attending spoken-word poetry shows.
“(Ethnography) is a way of describing social life in ways that haven’t been standardized, so you need to go places people haven’t gone to or take angles on those places that people haven’t taken before,” Katz said.
Students in the program try to integrate themselves into their subject communities, but they also conduct interviews or visit their sites to observe. They write detailed personal journals that give sensory details of their environments and delve into their personal reactions and concerns.
While the chance to live in Los Angeles for the summer and meet new people with a research grant to foot the bill may seem appealing, the program’s organizers emphasize the heavy academic commitment for the program, encouraging students not to pick up any large commitments such as a summer job.
“Just because it’s called “˜LA at Play’ doesn’t mean that the work is all fun and games. It can be arduous work,” said Katz, citing the many hours out in the field and the meticulous effort required for strong field notes.
But students say the work is manageable and some still have time to find a job or tour Los Angeles.
“I put in a lot of hours in this, but it doesn’t feel like it,” said Kim Burgas, a University of Cincinnati student studying bicycling communities. “It seems like most students (in the program) really care about their research and want to learn, and because of that it doesn’t seem too much like work.”
Burgas bikes around the city with various cycling groups that sometimes top more than 100 riders for her research. Her latest focus is on how cyclists interact after bike crashes ““ how riders nurse their egos after falls and how a recount of a crash reveals characteristics of a rider.
Despite the short length of the program, students say they come across real ethnographic research problems out in the field.
In a recent class session, students voiced what problems they came across: What if I cannot get to my research site? Do I have to remember an event exactly as it happened? What if I cannot separate my personal life from my subject? What if I write too much or too little?
For Audris Cotton, a California State University, Northridge student studying the impact of the homeless on Skid Row, one of her main difficulties is finding certain residents who will talk to her.
“When I talked to a few store owners, I didn’t get as much information as I wanted. It was just really brief. When I was at (the homeless center) Midnight Mission, people would just talk to me … and throughout the conversation I would learn a lot about them and the program. I wasn’t sure how to get that type of interaction with people in different environments,” Cotton said.
Cotton has spent four years volunteering for the Skid Row homeless. Her research involves driving around the area and talking to people living on the streets and comparing their experiences to businesses and other community members.
Though the program is designed for students considering graduate studies in the social sciences, Cotton is looking into a future in social work or nonprofit organizations.
But Katz says the program’s lessons span further than sociology.
“If it makes people more creative explorers, and we hope it does, they realize something more general than just what they learned about that place,” Katz said, “They can learn things individually, personally, and find out things themselves.”
To learn more about “LA at Play” and to view an application, go to its Web site at www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nsfreu.