notes and suggestions on research agenda

I've been pooling notes for the exhaustive and exhausting self-study that I need to submit by October 1 in order to keep my job. one of the items I am asked to supply is my research interest and agenda. I do not know what a research agenda is, so I did some searching and found the following links.

Professor Barbara Ryder of Rutgers University has a simple, very understandable list of ideas on how ad why to do research.
this link goes to a pdf with her questions and answers. I am going to use this one in writing the paragraph on my research goals and agenda for my self-study.

Luis Villa made a blog posting of a series of notes from a seminar on establishing a research agends. First Movers focuses on legal research but it seems to have good general tips on what belongs in a research agenda and how to think about doing research long-term.

Getting A Teaching Job: The Research Agenda again, is written by a law professor. this article describes what a research agenda is and goes on to discuss why schools look for research agenda in prospective professors. I think the approach fits a variety of fields.

Brad Neuberg's "Coding in Paradise" is one programmer's musings about his own personal approach to research and why he finds it important. there is a list of research questions down on the page that I found helpful when I start thinking about my own research questions, particularly now that I need to explain them in writing to an academic, liberal arts audience that will most likely not understand any technical information but will very likely be evaluating my writing against an unknown and undefined criteria.


You and Your Research is a transcript of a seminar talk given by Richard W. Hamming of Bell communications research on March 7, 1986. the talk is about his relationship to his research peppered with some stories of others around him and where they succeeded or failed in their life's research. it's interesting.