ENG 101 - Career Research (Buzzard)

2. Explore Your Career

After thoroughly examining your assignment, now it's time to look for some initial background research on your topic.  Try a search in the following database to learn more about your topic.

Select a Career Issue to Research

This assignment requires you to research using specific sources.

Step 1

Start by researching your career in general using Ferguson's Career Center Database. Gain a basic understanding. For example, students may choose to research the nursing field. 

Step 2

Once you have located your career in Ferguson's Career Center Database, look in the Table of Contents for Unions and Associations. This assignment requires you to examine professional organizations to learn more about hot topic issues related to those fields. If you researched the field of nursing, you would find organizations such as the American Nurses Association (ANA) listed in the database. 

Step 3

Visit the association website (you should be able to search for the website with a search engine like Google).

Step 4

Most (but not all) of the professional organization websites include a "News" section on the main page. This is where you want to look for current issues related to this field. 

Step 5

Familiarize yourself with the issues. Choose an issue to investigate. For example, I might select to investigate more about patient abuse of nurses. This is now the narrowed topic for my informative research essay.

Step 6

Now that you have identified a specific issue in your field, it's time to research. In addition to the articles you have already found on the professional association's website, you will need to use the library's databases to research the topic. Gather data and explore the different sides. 

Need more help? Check out the Instruction Module for this essay.