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Center for Excellence in Scholarship and Research (CESR)

 

Welcome

The Center for Excellence in Scholarship and Research (CESR) is a support center for faculty, staff, and students at Minnesota State University, Mankato who are engaged in research or scholarly activity. No matter where you are with your scholarship – whether you are just dreaming up an idea or you are looking for ways to share your published work – CESR is here to help.

Consulting Services

CESR offers a wide range of consulting services to help advance the scholarly work of faculty, staff, and students. If you are engaged in original scholarly work, or want to get started, we are here to help! Although our consulting services are available to undergraduate and graduate students, we cannot assist with research being done solely for a class. However, if you are doing scholarly work that you plan to share or distribute beyond a class – for a thesis or capstone project, in collaboration with a professor, or through the Undergraduate Research Center – CESR consultants would be happy to support your work! We just ask that before reaching out, you discuss your goals in working with CESR with your faculty advisor.

Research Design and Data Analysis

  • Developing research ideas and formulating research questions
  • Planning and implementing research designs
  • Developing research instruments (e.g., surveys, interview protocols, etc.)
  • Analyzing and interpreting quantitative data
    • Descriptive statistics
    • T-tests
    • Correlation
    • ANOVA & MANOVA
    • Regression
    • Non-parametric tests like Mann Whitney, Wilcoxon, & Kruskal Wallis
  • Analyzing and interpreting qualitative data
    • Content analysis
    • Narrative analysis
    • Thematic analysis
    • Discourse analysis
    • Grounded theory
    • Interpretive phenomenological analysis
    • and much more…
  • Using statistical software like SPSS and R
  • Reporting and data presentation
  • Using spreadsheet and data management software

Manuscript Editing

  • Using APA, MLA, AMA, or other formatting styles
  • Checking for grammar, document coherence, and completeness
  • Responding to journal editors and reviewers
  • Using word processing, spreadsheet, and bibliographic software
  • Identifying suitable venues like academic journals or conferences for sharing your work