Undergraduate Research Experiences Support Science Career Decisions and Active Learning

The Importance of Scientific Publishing: Teaching an Undergraduate How to Swim the Entire Length of the Pool

The impact and benefits of undergraduate research experiences (URE) in the first two years of post-secondary education have been well documented. Early exposure to research experiences is effective in recruitment, diversity and persistence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degree programs, particularly among underrepresented minority students. The Summer Undergraduate Research Experience Course (SUREC) presented in this paper is a cross-institutional collaboration between a two-year college (2YC) and a four-year college (4YC), designed to expose 2YC transfer students to a rigorous 12-week URE focused on geosciences. Findings from the program evaluation indicate the SUREC increased transfer student’s STEM knowledge and skills, science identity, and self-efficacy. Twenty of the twenty-four SUREC participants, representing underrepresented and majority students alike, transferred to a 4YC to continue in geosciences or in a related STEM field within two-years of the URE. A strong cross-institutional collaboration that combined academic, financial, and mentoring support was key to enhancing transfer students’ URE experiences. Leveraging teaching and research expertise of 2YC adjuncts as emerging academics and educators was a hallmark of this program. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2021.2005510

Six Steps for Cultivating Successful Undergraduate Research

We present work-in-progress reflecting on the initial year of a distinctive summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Our REU model combines fundamental research in computational sensing with a scholarly context that connects computer science with computational liberal arts. Students are intellectually stimulated to make sense of people's behaviors and cognitive processes with multimodal sensing hardware and software. In doing so, they explore the fundamental challenges found at the intersection of computing, the human experience, and scientific interrogation. The placement of the human experience at the core of the research theme enables an environment that stimulates and cultivates an innovative undergraduate research model. We highlight outcomes from the first year and discuss three emerging practices that are central to our REU framework: (1) team-based collaborative training; (2) transdisciplinary integration; and (3) systematic prioritization of inclusiveness. We also describe how these practices are incorporated into our overall undergraduate research framework and touch upon lessons learned from feedback collected.

: The Undergraduate Research Experience in Ocean/Marine Science program supports active participation by underrepresented undergraduate students in remote sensing and Ocean/Marine Science research training activities. The program is based on a model for undergraduate research programs supported by the National Science Foundation. The URE project features mentors, research projects, and professional development opportunities. It is the long-term goal of the URE in Ocean/Marine Science to provide an active research experience as an effective way to attract talented undergraduates and retain them in careers in ocean and marine science. In addition, this program supports the involvement of students from the African Countries of Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. Funds were leveraged with the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant # ANT-0944255 [2].

Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) is a new National Science Foundation (NSF) program designed to attract talented undergraduates into research careers in science, engineering, and mathematics. The program is intended to provide active research experience to students while they are still in their undergraduate years. There are two categories of support under this program: REU Sites and REU Supplements. The supplement, as the name implies, is to supplement existing NSF grants to permit an investigator to hire an undergraduate assistant. Here, I will report o n the REU site award made to the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska for summer 1987.

Undergraduate research experiences have been supported by the National Science Foundation since the late 1980s in an effort to integrate research and learning and to encourage students to continue their education by pursuing graduate degrees. This paper adds to our understanding of whether undergraduate research experiences influence graduate school pursuit by examining survey responses from 61 industrial engineering alumni in three groups: those that worked as undergraduate research assistants, those who took an undergraduate research methods class, and a comparison group who graduated from the same bachelor's degree program but did not participate in either research opportunity. Results indicate similar levels of interest in graduate school from the comparison group and the research assistants with 71 to 75% of each group showing interest, while 100% of the alumni who took the research methods class have interest. When those with interest in graduate school were asked why, a small percentage of the responses were directly related to undergraduate research experiences, while a large percentage of responses related to encouragement from professors, friends or others, and desire for career advancement and professional growth.

Undergraduate research involves experiential learning methods that helps animal science students gain critical thinking skills. There is high demand for these opportunities. For example, 77.9% of incoming freshmen in the Department of Animal Sciences & Industry at Kansas State University in Fall 2017 and Fall 2018 planned to conduct research sometime during their undergraduate career (422 of 542 students). Conventional, one-on-one mentoring methods in the department were only serving 1.7% of the undergraduate population (21 of 1,212 students). This creates a unique challenge of increasing the number of undergraduate research opportunities, while maintaining the impact of individualized experiential learning. One method to address this challenge is the incorporation of a course-based research program. In this model, research projects are conducted during a conventional semester during scheduled classroom hours, with project components divided into 3 sections: (1) research preparation, including compliance requirements, hypothesis testing, experimental design, and protocol development; (2) data collection; and (3) data interpretation and dissemination. Students collect data as a team, but individually develop their own research abstract and poster to maintain a high level of experiential learning. By teaching multiple sections of this course per semester and incorporating the concepts into existing laboratories, 13.5% of students in the department completed undergraduate research in the 2018–2019 academic year (162 of 1,197 students). To monitor the quality of these experiences, student critical thinking ability was assessed using the online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts & Understanding Test (Foundation for Critical Thinking, Tomales, CA). Undergraduate research experiences increased (P = 0.028) the growth in student critical thinking score, but the type of research experience did not influence assessed skills (P > 0.281). Thus, course-based undergraduate research experiences may be an option for growing the quantity and quality of undergraduate research experience in animal science.

Teaching advanced manufacturing through course-based undergraduate research in a vertically integrated projects (VIP) class

Purpose Many studies have examined undergraduate research experiences (UREs) as an influential approach to encouraging undergraduates to pursue doctoral education. However, less is known about the different ways UREs can support students in developing and pursuing graduate intentions. This paper aims to understand how a URE program can support students’ intentions to apply to and enroll in graduate education. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an instrumental case study that focuses on one URE as a bounded system. Using a constant–comparative analytical method, the authors propose a typology of different types of support that mattered to students who participated in the URE. Findings The URE offered four types of support: aspirational support, social support, functional support and connections to opportunities. Within the domain of functional support, this study identified a specific type of assistance – financial support – necessary for many students from underrepresented backgrounds to forego outside employment and participate in the URE. Originality/value This case study builds upon prior quantitative research that examines the relationship between URE participation and an array of affective, educational and career outcomes. Although this case study is not directly generalizable to other UREs, this paper offers a novel typology of support types and has potentially transferrable implications for considering how to design, evaluate and study UREs.

The life science education community has responded to the recommendations of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Vision and Change document with several initiatives designed to improve the way in which undergraduates learn science. These initiatives have often taken the form of one‐time workshops that generate awareness of and interest in developing authentic research experiences for undergraduate STEM classrooms. However, they have been less successful with respect to generating the sustainable change necessary to bring real reform to undergraduate science education. To create sustainable change, long‐term faculty development initiatives focused on mentorship are needed so that instructors seasoned in developing and implementing course‐based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) can convey their experiences to mentees interested in using these pedagogical techniques as the centerpiece of their own teaching. The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Biology Division and American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Education Committee are creating the Mentorship for Integrating Research Into the Classroom (MIRIC) program to provide a means for members with an interest in developing improved and sustainable active learning techniques to gain experience in this style of teaching through close, long‐term interaction with a veteran teaching mentor. Developed from the former ASCB Mentorship in Active Learning and Teaching (MALT) program, MIRIC focuses on the development of instructors who wish to develop a dynamic CURE. Current and future life science instructors pair themselves up with seasoned veterans of CURE development and work with them and their students over the course of a semester or longer to develop a CURE that will allow the mentee to bring authentic research into his or her classes. In our pilot studies, we collected qualitative and quantitative data based on participant interviews and coding videos of student and instructor actions during classroom activity (Smith et al., 2013), respectively, that suggest that MIRIC/MALT mentorships have made positive gains in promoting sustainable active learning techniques among participants. Going forward, we wish to use instruments like the Laboratory Course Assessment Survey (Corwin et al., 2015) and Experimental Design Ability Test (Sirum and Humburg 2011) to assess the effectiveness of the MIRIC laboratory intervention. MIRIC will undergo its full launch in 2018. At present, please consult http://www.ascb.org/mentoring‐in‐active‐learning‐and‐teaching‐malt/ for more information on becoming involved. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .

For many emerging scientists, research experiences for undergraduates (REU) programs are an important gateway to graduate school and a career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). REUs provide guided mentorship and learning experiences in a summer-long program where students develop research skills, build scientific knowledge, and strengthen their scientific identity. While the benefits of REUs are abundant, the process is not always easy to navigate, especially for students who come from first-generation and/or low-income (FLI) backgrounds. This paper provides two-fold guidance for undergraduate students interested in participating in REUs. Rules 1 to 5 focus on demystifying the application process from beginning to end, and Rules 6 to 10 guide students who are on the other side of the application process. Thus, this paper will be most helpful for undergraduate students who are either considering applying for an REU or have been accepted into one and want to learn more about what to expect. It can also be a shareable resource for faculty, staff, and mentors who work directly with STEM undergraduates.

Faculty-mentored summer undergraduate research experiences (SUREs) have been shown to increase the diversity of students pursuing research careers. No existing studies have approached the issue of broadening participation in STEM research training by focusing on mentoring relationship heterogeneity (MRH) in the context of SUREs. Increasing MRH occurs when a mentee does not match a mentor in terms of gender and race/ethnicity and when the mentee’s research experience depends on relationships with multiple mentors. Drawing on data from a multi-sited SURE program, we examine the effects of MRH on student satisfaction and science identity. Results indicate that students’ satisfaction was not significantly affected by MRH. Greater MRH predicted reduced science identity development, but high quality faculty-undergraduate mentoring interactions moderated this negative impact. MRH has the potential to become a positive influence on student training. Results suggest that mentors should strive to improve mentoring competencies in order to better support diverse students.

A Research Experiences and Mentoring (REM) program was developed to provide summer research and mentoring opportunities to underrepresented minority community college students.It was the goal of the program to introduce underrepresented minority community college students to STEM research opportunities they are not traditionally exposed to and aid in their transfer to the University of Arkansas.Over the course of the 10-week program, several strategies to expose the students to these opportunities and maximize the quality of their experience were implemented.This report details these strategies and the degree to which they both increased the awareness of STEM opportunities and influenced the students to pursue them.A common issue among this demographic of students is low self-confidence in STEM areas, often due to lack of successful peers or role models.REM students were paired with students from a parallel Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program to address this issue.Both programs contained strong representation of underrepresented minority groups.All seven REM students were from underrepresented minority groups, including five women.Four out of seven REU students were from underrepresented minority groups.This diverse community fostered the self-confidence of both the REU and REM students.Overall, the program was a strong success based on the outcome of student projects and reports, the feedback from the students, and the continued interest from the NWACC students to transfer to the University of Arkansas.The final component of the REM program is ongoing mentoring for the seven local REM students over the course of the upcoming academic year.

The themed Fall 2024 issue of Scholarship & Practice of Undergraduate Research (SPUR): Career Readiness features content addressing career skills obtained through undergraduate research. The collection offers two open-to-read articles that contribute to our understanding of the current state of career readiness as achieved through undergraduate research and transferable skills. It also includes four additional articles, including writing skills, career readiness from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs, mentoring; and transfer students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).