Freshman Research Skills

The aim of Research Skills is to teach students to teach themselves. We hope to prepare students to do meaningful research for their classes at Cate, as well as to give them a sense of the research expectations of college students.

In the course, we introduce students to valuable print resources in the library; we teach students how to correctly cite sources using MLA, APA, and Turabian guidelines and how to create lists of works cited; we discuss issues of academic honesty and plagiarism, as well as the ethical use of the Internet; we introduce students to the online resources available at Cate, and we teach them how to become more effective searchers using appropriate keywords and other strategies; we teach students how to effectively use the Internet to find more authoritative Web sites for their research projects; and we introduce students to the Interlibrary Loan process, which makes available to them an entire world of information.