Introduction

• We hope you enjoy our Senior Seminar Anthropology Alumni Ethnography that follows.
• This project is a compilation of the work of five people. As a result, writing and presentation styles may vary somewhat.
• We would like to thank Linda Belote, as well as those who assisted in this project: Janet Pribyl, Casey Kiess, Paul Treuer, Jan Bower, Kathryn Fuller and Bob Franz. In addition we would like to thank our resident experts, the UMD anthropology faculty.
• We addressed three main problems in our research:
  • What are the alumni doing now? What career paths have they chosen?
  • What is the public perception of anthropology, as experienced by our alumni and faculty?
  • What is the alumni assessment of the UMD anthropology program?

Literature Review

In order to complete, and in fact start this project, we conducted a literature review. We explored the existing literature here at UMD and at other institutions that related to anthropology alumni, and public perceptions of anthropology.

We found that a previous (1996) survey had been conducted for the Sociology-Anthropology department by Bruce Mork, but that there had not been a survey of only the anthropology alumni here at UMD. Reviewing the survey from the Sociology-Anthropology department we were able to get an idea of the types of questions we could be asking.

Through assigned readings we found that Elizabeth Bird and Carolena Von Trapp's article "Beyond Bones and Stones" (1999:9-10) offered an interesting look at how some of the public views anthropologists. We decided to incorporate this into our own project and discover what kind of perceptions of anthropology the alumni had encountered in their own lives.

Using the library here at UMD with the help of Social Sciences Librarian Kathyrn Fuller we searched through the Academic Indexes and the world wide web to try and find information that could help us form questions that would help us get a better picture of the anthropology program here at UMD, what the public thinks of anthropology, and how anthropology alumni use their degrees in their present careers. The literature search provided valuable sources of information that helped us to form the survey. Some sources include: Robert Ehrich's "Anthropology in a Liberal-Arts Curriculum" (2000:399-400), Lee Drummond's "Last Undiscovered Tribe Exposed" (2000:5-6), Warren DeBoer's "Metaphors We Dig By" (1999:7), Hunter and Kratts' "Undergraduate Alumni Survey Results" (1986:), and Tefft et al.'s "North Carolina Undergraduate Anthropology Alumni Survey" (1988:28).

A large part of the literature that we used for this project was obtained from articles that were printed in the American Anthropological Association's Anthropology News. The literature that we found was not restricted to paper sources; we were also able to find web sites that offered alumni survey questions and results that added to our knowledge of what had been done in this area before. One site was from Rochester University (1996) from which we were able to obtain a sample of survey questions asked of their Anthropology Alumni. Also, a site for Northern Kentucky University (2000) which offered information on what anthropology alumni from that school were doing now.