About
The PIT Journal provides an opportunity for undergraduates to explore and engage in scholarly discourse, share their original research, and gain valuable experience collaborating with peers and mentors.
The Journal
In part, The People, Ideas, and Things Journal is just that - a journal that publishes scholarly, peer-reviewed, academic articles. However, unlike a typical academic journal, students are encouraged to submit projects from any major at any stage of development. Ideas, project proposals, or full drafts are all welcome. Peer review takes the form of student-driven peersourcing.
Texts are reviewed throughout the year, with more intensive periods of peersourcing during the spring semester in coordination with PIT courses. Publication typically occurs biannually between academic semesters in the spring and summer.
- view past issues
- learn how to submit an article
The Conference
Every spring, The PIT Journal hosts a two-day conference at which students present their projects to a university audience. As in the journal publishing process, conference proposals are accepted for review at all stages of development. Students who submit a conference proposal or an idea for a proposal in early January will benefit most from peersourcing January through March in preparation for selection and presentation.
Courses
UNC's Writing Program offers eight research-exposure sections of English 105 each semester. Students in these sections are introduced to research practices in a selected field of study; students are challenged to explore big questions facing scholars in their field and to develop research questions that will enable them to join the scholarly debates and conversations about those pressing issues.
Conducting research about what is already known is part of this process but greater emphasis is placed on helping students make meaningful contributions to these ongoing conversations by creating new knowledge. Sometimes this takes the form of an original study (e.g. in the social sciences or natural sciences) and other times it takes the form of original analysis, critique, or interpretation (e.g. in the humanities).
Courses flagged in ConnectCarolina as research-exposure/PIT fulfill one requirement for the Carolina Research Scholars Program.