Kara Mobley and Grace Murphy

ENGL297: Introduction to Professional Writing

Ethnographic Research Project Proposal
Introduction:
Sustainability and nonprofit writing is an area of interests for us. Therefore, we will focus our
ethnographic research project on (subject), who works as the Terp Farms sustainability and
wellness coordinator. The Terp Farm is a University of Maryland sustainable farming operation
that provides year round vegetable produce to campus dining areas and to College Park
communities in need.
We will study (subject)s writing processes, particularly those she uses when writing to secure
funding for the Terp Farm and to market to the student body. Since the presence of the farm is
contingent upon acquiring outside funding, we hope to learn how (subject) develops documents
involved with this task. We would like to learn how she finds prospective donors and composes
the necessary documents to request funding. We will investigate how she decides on potential
donors, what types of documents the donor requires, who collaborates on these documents,
how long the process takes, and how the process differs for each prospective donor. From
studying this process, we hope to learn how to best look for and decide on donors, and how to
construct the necessary documents to secure funding for nonprofit organizations.
We would also like to learn how (subject) markets Terp Farm to the student body to encourage
student involvement. We will investigate the different mediums of communication that are used
to reach the student body, such as blog updates, social media, and email notifications. We will
also focus on what aspects of the farm are used to entice students to get involved. Are students
more interested in previous accomplishments of Terp Farm, or are they looking for specific
events that they can participate in? We will also research whether the farm markets towards the
entire student body, or just to students in certain majors. By studying this, we hope to learn how
(subject) adjusts her writing to target a specific audience.
Research Questions:
The object of this ethnographic study is to come to an understanding of the processes behind
the writing projects used in the Terp Farm. This includes both collaborative writing (completed by
one or more persons), and writing done solely by (subject). Although we acknowledge that
processes differ from place to place, and will change our plans as needed, the processes we
hope to study include brainstorming, outlining, planning, and editing. We also hope to study note
taking systems, drafts, and revisions within the organization. We hope to learn what techniques
work best when it comes to writing collaboratively and writing by oneself. We are also interested
in studying what problems might arise that are specific to writing in this area.
Some questions in this area might be: What impact does (subject)s role as coordinator have on
writing in her office? How are heavy loads of writing work delegated? What system is used for
editing a project written by one person? What is the hierarchy of a group writing process; is

(subject) in charge, or are members on more equal footing? What challenges do working with
people from other departments present? How important is technology to writing in this office?
Although we are studying writing processes in this office in general, a particular interest of ours
is in the writing used to acquire funding and resources. Therefore we will be paying extra
attention to writing used for different purposes. We will be studying the difference between
documents with the same goal but different audiences. Pitching the Terp Farm to the student
body and acquiring funding are both vital to its survival, but require different written documents.
We will study the difference in documents used for these two purposes, and the similarities and
differences in the writing of those documents.
Questions in this area include: What is the process behind developing funding proposals? How
are potential donors chosen? What goes into determining how each proposal will be written?
What do donors look for in these documents? How does (subject) go about encouraging student
involvement? What gets students interested in participating? How does (subject) guage that?
We will select which of these questions to use in the interview based on information gathered by
the pre-interview survey and collected documents.
Learning to write for your specific audience is an essential skill, so we believe that studying this
process will give us beneficial insight on how to tailor our writing to a specific goal.

Research Subject:
(Redacted for anonymity).
Data Collection Methods:
We plan on gathering a variety of observational and physical data to help us answer our focus
questions for this project. For the physical documents pertaining to funding, we anticipate
gathering a variety of sustainability fund applications and related documents. We also intend to
collect many documents pertaining to budgeting of the farm, since this relates to funding.
Additionally, we will look at annual reports of the farm.
For documents pertaining to student involvement, we will look at online forums of information,
such as the Terp Farms Facebook page and the main site which includes blog posts about farm
updates. We will also look at event materials pertaining to student involvement, like the emails
and facebook events created for the Terp Farm Harvest Festival. Additionally, there are classes
that incorporate the Terp Farm into hands on learning experiences, so we hope to collect a
sample syllabus of one of these classes.
In addition to physical documents, we will be conducting observational data collection at well.
We plan to conduct a personal interview with (subject) to ask her about our research questions.
Before the interview, we will email a short questionnaire to (subject) that will let her know what
kinds of questions to expect in the interview. We will administer a follow up questionnaire to

(subject) shortly after the interview to answer any additional questions we may have, and have
her approve any conclusions we make.
During this interview, we intend to ask (subject) about the documents we collected and reviewed
to find out more specifically about her collaboration on the documents and the personal writing
processes she implemented with each of the chosen documents. We will also use the
questionnaire as a general guideline for the interview, but we will only refer to it as needed
rather than read it verbatim. We will add to the interview by asking her to specify or go more into
depth on the questions we would like to know more about and eliminating the questions that are
less prevalent.
After the interview, we will conduct a 45-60 minute observation session where we will collect
field notes. We will observe and take note of parts of the writing process that we could not
observe in the documents, such as emails, face to face collaboration with coworkers, phone
calls, hand written notes, research techniques, and editing processes. We will also observe the
general environment of her office and take notes on the things we notice. Any questions
sparked by our observations will be included in the follow-up questionnaire.

Data Analysis:
In addition to analyzing finished documents, we will also examine any of (subject)s emails and
notes that we are given access too. Because we are analyzing the entire process of writing that
goes on in her office, we will be reviewing documents from multiple stages in her writing
process. When looking at these documents we will be looking for differences in the writing as it
relates to who the audience is. We will also be looking for the influence of different writers in
collaborative projects.
We will take field notes, which will consist of observation and analysis. The notes will give us
insight into the environment in which the writing takes place, what interpersonal communication
looks like in the office, nonverbal behaviors, and relationships between coworkers. The
information afforded by the field notes will give us insight into the written documents weve
collected, as well as some context and basis of comparison for the interview responses.
To further expand upon our data analysis, we will focus on the two aspects of context:
communication and mediation. For communication, we will analyze the kinds of information
people hand off, to whom and in what order. Also, we want to look at the differences that exists
between the types of communication (subject) does with the different departments. For
instance, we will analyze her communication with the Office of Sustainability, Dining Services,
and the Terp Farm. By following this information, we hope to find patterns. We will use these
patterns to create communicative event models to analyze the chains of communicative events
that (subject) is involved with.
Regarding mediation, we will analyze the types of activities that (subject) does that are not
necessarily interpersonal or formal, such as her notes, checklists, calendars, and other tools

she uses to keep track of what she has to do. This will help us to understand how she structures
her work and how this structure differs for certain documents. We will use genre ecology models
to highlight the material actions that are not communicative.

Schedule of Work:
10/16 - Meet will (subject) at her office to explain the basics of our project, obtain physical
documents, and set up a date for the interview and field note observations
10/21 - Compose a draft of the ethnographic project proposal
10/23 - Turn in final draft of the ethnographic project proposal
10/25 - Send pre-interview questionnaire to (subject)
10/30 - Meet with (subject) to conduct interview, observe and take field notes for up to an hour
afterwards
10/30 - Share field notes and observations after interview
11/1 - Send post-interview questionnaire to (subject)
11/2 - Annotated research e-portfolio draft
11/18 - Professional writing ethnography draft
11/30 - Second draft of professional writing ethnography
12/2 - Professional writing ethnography final
12/11 - Annotated research e-portfolio final