Networking 101 for Graduate Students: Building a Bigger Table

ABSTRACT Although the importance of networking often is emphasized to graduate students, straightforward guidance on how to approach this task is typically reliant on individual advisors who both know and can demystify the discipline’s hidden and informal practices. This article provides concrete, point-by-point tips for both junior scholars and their supporters, building on our experiences in creating an online communication forum for early-career scholars on the job market. Specifically, we suggest a model of community networking focused on robust, cross-rank engagement along dimensions of similar experiences and similar interests. Community networking moves beyond individuals angling to obtain a seat at the table and instead builds a bigger, more inclusive table. Although junior scholars must focus primarily on their research rather than expansive service commitments, community networking is ultimately both a service to the discipline and a fruitful strategy for raising a scholar’s profile and finding coauthors, colleagues, friends, and allies.

Shaping “Digital Futures” in Alberta: Community Engagement for Rural Broadband Development

Background Despite rich literature on rural and remote broadband and community networking initiatives in Canada, limited research is available on the sequencing, mechanisms, and processes of community engagement for this purpose.Analysis The authors use a case study of the Digital Futures initiative in Alberta, Canada—a biannual symposium that engages a range of public, private, and community stakeholders to discuss rural broadband—to illustrate the iterative formation and application of such mechanisms.Conclusion and implications The authors demonstrate how an engaged approach to communications research situated in the unique context of the involved community of practice—in this case, stakeholders involved in addressing broadband deployment and sustainability in Alberta—can help generate a cycle of research and praxis that reflects the normative goals of the scholarship of engagement.Contexte On possède une littérature riche sur les initiatives canadiennes de réseautage communautaire et à large bande dans les régions rurales et reculées. En revanche, la recherche sur le séquencement, les mécanismes et les processus d’engagement communautaire demeure limitée.Analyse Digital Futures en Alberta est un symposium biannuel rassemblant un éventail de parties prenantes des secteurs publics, privés et communautaires pour discuter de la transmission rurale à large bande. Les auteurs ont recours à une étude de cas sur ce symposium afin d’illustrer la formation et l’application itératives de tels engagements communautaires.Conclusion et implications Les auteurs démontrent comment une approche engagée envers une recherche en communication se situant dans le contexte unique d’une communauté de praticiens—dans ce cas, des parties prenantes impliquées dans le déploiement et le maintien de transmissions à large bande en Alberta—peut aider à réaliser un cycle de recherche et de pratique reflétant les objectifs normatifs d’un savoir engagé.

The relationship between community nutritionists’ use of policy, systems and environmental strategies to prevent obesity and its determinants depends on networking

ObjectiveTo apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to examine the relationship between the constructs of background factors and beliefs towards using policy, systems and environmental (PSE) strategies and reported use of PSE strategies to prevent obesity by a group of professional nutrition educators.DesignCross-sectional study using self-reported survey.SettingCooperative Extension in New York, USA.SubjectsNutrition educators (n58); survey response rate 100 %.ResultsNutrition educators’ reported use of PSE strategies to prevent obesity were positively associated with background factors of their community networking and number of staff they managed, their belief of other people’s expectations of them to make PSE changes and the belief that their communities were ready to use PSE strategies; and negatively associated with their belief that individual-level factors contributed to obesity. The relationships among these variables were complicated and their use of PSE strategies occurred only when they utilized their professional networks at a moderately high level (above mean of 5·3 on a scale of 1–7), given that their community was also ready to use PSE strategies.ConclusionsNutrition educators’ use of PSE strategies depends on several internal and external factors. Community networking needs to be emphasized as one of the most significant factors contributing to nutrition educators’ work in this area. Organizational and community support should be in place in order to facilitate nutrition educators’ effective use of PSE strategies.

Community Networking: The Native American Telecommunications Continuum

Community Networking -- The Native American Telecommunications Continuum Computer mediated communications -- has evolved exponentially each decade since the mid-1980’s. Pre-Internet exploration in the era of FidoNet and supported by dial-up modem equipment running over x.25 exchange switching does not seem possible to have existed at all. With three decades of change to reflect upon, questions remain today about whether the impact of technology and telecommunications has advanced tribal nationhood.