Talk:ORCA Grant

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ORCA Grant is part of WikiProject Brigham Young University, an attempt to write quality articles about Brigham Young University. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
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[edit] Notability

The citation regarding the carnagie classification says nothing about ORCA. I find the link misleading, as one would think that it supports the claim made in the sentence. As far as I know, ORCA and the Carnagie Classification have nothing to do with each other, and I would appreciate a valid citation linking the two. The statistic for the grants handed out is dated and not useful for users looking for current information. Also, I am not certain about the overall usefullness of this page as a whole. ORCA is a relativly small program, dealing with only about 400 kids a year, and only at BYU. This seems like some attempt by the ORCA office to promote their grant. Also, this page links only to official BYU sites, making for a lack of any external validity. For this page to appear valid, it needs to be demonstrated that this is a relevant topic, that there information is verifiable, and that it is not merely a recreation of what is on the ORCA website.--Hoganhero (talk) 04:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. Give me a few days and I'll try to respond to each of them--others are welcome to chime in also. Thanks. --Eustress (talk) 04:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, well, I don't think the carnagie reference is misleading because it says that this distinction is "due in part to the ORCA Grant," which it is along with a lot of other factors. The fact is, research productivity gains the carnagie distinction, and ORCA Grants fuel research productivity--I'm not implying causation, just association. I think that's reasonable.
Regarding the dated information, the citation reports figures from the 2006-2007 academic year--pretty recent. I'm not sure many institutions, especially private ones, will give out instantaneous figures, so I think the information is beneficial when taken in context.
Regarding citations, it isn't necessary that citations be from non-BYU domains. Of course, if they were all orca.byu.edu, then it would be a regurgitation like you mentioned, but several byu.edu sites and one external site [1] reference ORCA Grants. Remember that this is categorized as a stub (i.e., an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information) and is a subcategory of WikiProject BYU. But, if you still feel it does not belong, then you have the right to propose some type of deletion.
Hope this helps! --Eustress (talk) 21:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Two comments, first, I believe this article has notability. ORCA is a large program (as evidenced by its numbers) and is increasingly being billed as a central part of the mission of BYU. I have added a cite external to a BYU webpage to help illustrate this. Second, I agree with Hoganhero that the Carnagie cite is misleading. BYU attained their Carnagie rating long before ORCA started giving grants. In addition, the Carnagie ratings are based on what faculty do not on what students do (ORCA is aimed at getting students to work with a mentor not necessarily as coauthors, although this does happen frequently). Given that BYU has doctoral programs and research active faculty, this is why they are rated the way they are. I would recommend deleting the sentence in its entirety. Daw44 (talk) 14:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I went back and updated the citation to link to Google Scholar search results which show a lot of articles that have benefited from funding. I think this provides tremendous evidence of the notoriety of this program. Daw44 (talk) 16:00, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability (revisited)

I know I created this article, but I've had more experience in the WP:XfD process, and I now doubt the notability of this article. Any objections to me proposing it for deletion? --Eustress (talk) 15:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think it should be completely deleted. I would much rather see it remain or folded into another article. With that said, I'm not sure what article to fold it into. The BYU article is already plenty long, yet ORCA affects the university as a whole. There is sufficient notability for the article when you consider how many academic articles mention ORCA support. Daw44 (talk) 18:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I could probably say something about it in the Academics section of the BYU main article. --Eustress (talk) 19:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)