Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research

The Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research (CIQR, pronounced “seeker”) at Duquesne University is special both for how it began and for what it does. A number of faculty members were aware that a large percentage of the scholars in the liberal arts, health sciences, education, and other schools at Duquesne used interpretive and qualitative methods in their research. Moreover, the university's psychology department already had an international reputation for its PhD program in phenomenological psychology. Faculty at Duquesne decided that a center devoted to interpretive and qualitative methods would facilitate communication between these faculty members and their students and, in turn, would fulfill a need for intellectual community as well as present information on a variety of interpretive and qualitative research methods. During the summer of 1999, a group of Duquesne scholars wrote a proposal for such a center, including the term interpretive in the title to emphasize that qualitative methods used in literature, philosophy, and other humanities departments would be of an importance equal to those undertaken in the social and behavioral sciences. This grassroots effort was aided by the dean of the College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at the time. After winning approval from the relevant graduate and dean committees, the group was granted “center” status.

The work of the center revolves around several structures. The first of these is a monthly meeting in which faculty and graduate students from Duquesne [Page 74]and other universities in the area present their work, focusing on their methods as well as the phenomena they are investigating. Typically, a half-hour presentation is followed by an hour of lively discussion in these well-attended meetings. The second structure is an invitation to an internationally known scholar each semester. The scholar gives a public talk and then a smaller symposium that concentrates on methodology. The third structure is a CIQR certificate program, where a certificate is offered to those graduate students who take specified method-oriented courses from the general curriculum at the university and then a special proseminar. The proseminar requires that the students engage in and jointly discuss research projects that they are undertaking. They then present their work to CIQR members at a meeting for that purpose. After only a year, this program had already granted certificates to 10 graduate students and 1 faculty member. The center also plans to engage in community action research.

The CIQR website includes a description of the center, the original proposals for the center and its certificate program, a list of all the CIQR external speakers and their topics, a description of all the monthly presentations, announcements of coming events, a newsletter, and a list of the subcommittees along with their members and functions, and a sign-up procedure for those wishing to become CIQR members.