Independent Studies, Beyond JMU

Frances Flannery, Professor of Religion, and a cohort of three undergraduates — Sydney Dudley, Abigeal Cronan and Sage Boyer — are influencing biblical studies on a national level.

The students’ research about current debates in religious studies for REL 200: Exploring Religion caught their professor’s attention. “I identified their papers as filling gaps in current scholarship on their topics,” says Flannery, who then designed an independent study for the cohort to deepen their research and bring the papers to a publishable form. The teaching approaches included peer mentorship, vision boards and journaling, as well as strategies for fostering discovery, holistic learning, flexibility and accountability.

"One of my favorite aspects of this independent study was the balance between mentorship and research,” said Dudley. “While guiding us as we dove deeper into our research, Dr. Flannery provided us with the tools to explore graduate studies and engage in professional development opportunities [such as] submitting to journals, applying to conferences and searching for grants and financial assistance.”

The results were immediate and tangible: in November, Flannery, Cronan, and Boyer presented their research experience at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. This internationally attended professional conference has rarely, if ever, included undergraduate research before. For Boyer, “The conference was incredible. It was a one-of-a-kind experience that will shape our academic journeys for years to come.”

Evidently, their experience will also shape future conferences, as SBL considers adding a permanent undergraduate research section to its SBL Global Virtual Meeting. The organization has long welcomed graduate students but offered no mechanism for including undergraduates or showcasing quality undergraduate education. All three students plan to submit a proposal.

What Flannery and these outstanding students have accomplished together represents the very best kind of faculty-student engagement that Arts and Letters celebrates. “The very heart of my approach to teaching is helping students to discover their own voices as emergent experts,” added Flannery. “It has been a pinnacle of my teaching career to work with these three wonderful students and to watch their research projects widen and deepen in ways that continually surprise and inform me.”