Working with External Partners

Working With External Partners

Civic Partners

Imagine a first year student named Serenity who is completing a big project with a civic partner. Last year, someone at the civic partner designed a survey and collected responses from 100 people. Now, Serenity is going to look through those survey responses and do various data analysis and visualization. Serenity will have to submit information about this plan to the MU IRB. The reason is that she is doing this work as a Minerva affiliate and because it may count as Human Subjects Research (which can include the collection and/or analysis of information from people). Notably, we expect the process for approving civic project work to be straightforward. In particular, our goals for the IRB in this case are:

Easiness. Provide a high level of support so that meeting the regulatory requirements is as straightforward as possible—first year students are already juggling a lot of new things in Foundation Year!
Awareness. We want first year students to be aware that there is such a thing as an IRB at MU, and that various projects students do might count as Human Subjects Research and require informing (and maybe working with) the IRB
Consulting. We want to be a resource that all Minervans can consult with, beyond the scope that is typically provided by IRBs at other institutions. Whereas most IRBs are focused only on making sure that [more here talking about IRB as a resource for #ethicalconsiderations and #SS110-researchbestpractices

Internship Experiences

Imagine a student named Carlos who is planning to do a research internship at Stanford during the Summer before his third year at Minerva. The internship at Stanford is intended for undergraduates who visit from other schools, but Carlos will spend the Summer as a Stanford affiliate: he will have a Stanford email address, do human subjects training provided by Stanford, and be added to a protocol that the lab has approved by the Stanford IRB. In no way will Carlos be doing research as a Minerva affiliate. In this case, Carlos does not need to submit any information to the Minerva IRB (though he is welcome to contact us to ask questions and get guidance!). This remains true if Carlos writes up his experience for IL199 internship credit.

Likewise, imagine a student named Tintu who is planning to spend her Summer working with a software company. She will be working with a team gathering information about preferences of app users and market trends, and making claims about what features should be prioritized in an upcoming app. She will be doing this as an intern at this company and her Minerva affiliation is irrelevant. Just like Carlos, she can consult with the Minerva IRB, but does not need to, and this remains true even if she writes up her experience for IL199 internship credit.

In summary, the Minerva IRB can be consulted, but does not need to be, when research is being done purely as an affiliate of an external organization. Note that IL199 was listed here as being okay, but work included in your capstone falls under another category (see below).

External Work AS Capstone Work

Imagine a student named Pia who is planning to do a capstone project with a board game as the main deliverable. The board game will have the goal to teach math skills to 10-year-olds, and Pia has the option to work with a nonprofit that focuses on math education. Pia will work with this nonprofit to design and test the board game. Because Pia is doing this as a Minerva affiliate (she is working with people who are outside of Minerva but she is collaborating with them as a Minerva affiliate) she does need to submit her plans to the Minerva IRB and get approval. As part of this, the capstone process at Minerva requires Pia to pre-plan how she will pivot her capstone plans if the collaboration with the outside partner does not occur; this plan should also be shared with the IRB.

External Work REFERENCED in Capstone Work

Let’s imagine that Carlos has a great experience at Stanford (as described further up on this page), and during his third year at Minerva comes up with a capstone idea that will build on what he did with his Summer internship. Minerva capstone projects are produced as Minerva students, and so can include human subjects research only if that research has been approved (before being done!) by the Minerva IRB. This means that Carlos can not have the summer internship be his capstone. Instead, he will talk about the research done at Stanford just as he would talk about any other research done by other people, citing it appropriately. Important notes about this:

This is common in real world projects! As one random example this paper cites previous work by the authors multiple times (you can search the references section for each of the names to see how often previous work is being cited); the current project is building on previous work, and describes how it builds on that previous work, but the current paper is a distinct contribution. The same is true of some capstone projects: your capstone in Year 4 might build on substantive work you did earlier, and you can make reference to that work without it being your capstone work. In the context of a capstone, and especially when building on previous work that has not been publicly published, you might end up writing a short description of it (e.g., a sub-section of your capstone might begin “Section 1.4. In this section, I describe previous work I did as an intern at Oxfam International, and that served as one of the foundations for my current capstone work.”).
Returning to the example in this section, Carlos should not be trying to make a summer project from before his third year his capstone anyway! Instead, the capstone is something that should be done at the end of the Minerva journey, mostly during Year 4. If you have a particularly strong foundation from previous years, that is great for you producing a particularly advanced capstone—great!
A final example to consider is one that returns to the previous section: If Carlos has an ongoing relationship with the Stanford lab and wants to run a followup study during his Senior year, then that would be his Capstone, and he would need to get approval from the Minerva IRB, because he would be collaborating with the Stanford researchers as a Minerva affiliate.