Undergraduate Learning & Research

“I would get these enthusiastic emails from him, and I’d reply with suggestions and different ideas to try out.” | Will Straw

How do you tell the story of something that disappeared with nary a trace? That question fascinated both Joseph Henry (U3, Art History and German Studies) and Will Straw, Professor of Art History and Com­munication Studies and Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. “Joe had taken my Visual Culture of Crime class and we kept coming across the name Pagano Studio as a photo credit in true crime magazines,” says Straw. Whenever a tabloid such as Inside Detective needed a photographic reconstruction of a crime scene, be it a gritty alley or lush cornfield, they’d turn to the artists at Pagano. “They were like a movie studio that didn’t make movies. All we knew was that in its day it was one of the largest commercial photography studios in the country. We wanted to find out more.”

Thanks to the Arts Undergraduate Research Awards (ARIA) program, they were able to do just that. Established in 2010, ARIA provides an undergraduate Arts student with a $4,000 stipend to conduct summer research with a professor. Henry spent summer 2011 in New York City, where he scoured old popular magazines, newspaper articles, court records, social event announcements and modeling guides. He would check in with Straw once a week. “It was great,” says Straw. “I would get these enthusiastic emails from him, and I’d reply with suggestions and different ideas to try out.”

At the end of the summer, Henry handed Straw a fat binder of informa­tion about Pagano Studios. Straw plans to use Henry’s wealth of primary research–”which I would never have had time to do myself”–to write a reconstructed history of what was a major player, not just in the tabloid trade, but in advertising and fashion–even becoming the first photo studio to have African-American models on full-time contract.

For his part, Joseph Henry has a summer of intense–and unusual–research experience under his belt. “It taught me a lot about the process of tracking down information outside of traditional academic sources–how to approach research archives, how to track leads from one source to another.” These skills have already served him well in school and in a curatorial position tracing the history of pieces of art for New York’s Whitney Museum.

Both student and professor also value the ongoing relationship they developed through doing this ARIA project together. “He stops by to visit me on campus,” says Straw. “It’s too bad he’ll be graduating, in a way, because I’d hire him again in a heartbeat.”

The ARIA program is only one of the ways McGill is strengthening the links between undergraduate teaching, learning and research. Here are some highlights:

A Joint Board-Senate meeting in November 2011 addressed the theme of the role of research in undergraduate education. The goal of the meeting was to highlight how undergraduate research and scholarship can enhance the undergraduate student experience.

The Teaching Snapshots website, launched in 2010, continues to grow, now profiling 39 McGill instructors as they share their perspectives on best practices in teaching and learning with the McGill community and the community at large.

McGill’s International Education increased the exchange opportunities at popular destination schools, allowing more students to get their first choice for an exchange. Of McGill’s 142 bilateral exchange partnerships, 12 were developed or expanded in 2011-12, 19 expired agreements were renewed and 25 are currently in the process of being renewed.

2012 saw the launch of McGill’s revamped learning management system, myCourses, designed to help instructors provide course materials online, engage with students and provide opportunities for them to interact with one another. The new tools enable everything from sharing files with students to evaluating their progress.