At the end of the first year, one of the faculty member’s graduate advisees joins the study. She plans to conduct approximately 100 of the interviews and to use the data for her dissertation under the guidance of the faculty member. She will not receive a salary or wages from either the grant or the university (as a research or teaching assistant) for this work. As she has a full-time job, the graduate student plans to do most of her work during the evenings and on weekends.
At the end of the three years, the grant
funding ends and the study is complete. The postdoctoral fellow has obtained
a tenure track position and, in preparing to leave the research group,
requests a copy of the data to take with him. The graduate student used
the data she collected for her dissertation which she successfully defended.
As she prepares to leave the research group, she transfers all of the
data that she collected and used in her dissertation from the computer
onto CDs and packs all the original supporting documentation into boxes
to take with her. The faculty member walks in just as she starts to move
everything to her car. He asks her what she is taking, and she explains
that she is taking with her the data that she collected and the supporting
documentation. The faculty member tells the student that she cannot take
the data with her as he owns it. The graduate student replies that she
collected the data and because she was not being paid by the faculty member’s
grant or by the university to conduct the work, she owns the data.
