Undergraduate Research in the Sciences E-Book

Sandra Laursen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 498

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Undergraduate research enhances the learning experience of students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Undergraduate Research in the Sciences offers a groundbreaking and practical research-based book on the topic. This comprehensive resource addresses how undergraduate research benefits undergraduate participants, including those populations that are underrepresented in the sciences; compares its benefits with other types of educational activities and experiences; and assesses its long-term value to students and faculty as both a scholarly and educational endeavor.

In laying out the processes by which these benefits are achieved, this important book can assist faculty and program directors with practical guidance for design and evaluation of both new and existing undergraduate research programs.

Praise for Undergraduate Research in the Sciences

"This meticulous, definitive study of the effects of working with a faculty member on research as an undergraduate confirms the overall value of the experience by taking us deep into the minds and actions of participants—both faculty and students. As a result we now have many more compelling reasons to get more students involved with research mentors and ways to optimize the benefits for all parties."—George D. Kuh, Chancellor's Professor and director, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research

"This timely book offers a unique, comprehensive analysis of undergraduate research in the sciences, based on the voices of college students and faculty mentors who have participated in these voyages of discovery. As our nation struggles to train more scientists, this book will be a valuable resource for designing undergraduate research experiences that can build our country's capacity for discovery and innovation."—Arthur B. Ellis, Vice Chancellor for Research, University of California, San Diego

"The text is written in a lucid and engaging style and will be a valuable guide to policymakers, academic administrators, and faculty members who want to find ways to engage undergraduates in the 'real work' of investigation."—Judith A. Ramaley, president, Winona State University

"This book is a 'must-read' for anyone who directs undergraduates in research. It presents an impressive and rigorous body of work that brings fresh insights into the field of undergraduate research. The next generation of scientists will benefit greatly from the findings and recommendations!"—Jo Handelsman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Yale University

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

The Authors

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 - What Is Undergraduate Research, and Why Does It Matter?

History of Undergraduate Research

Current National Context for Undergraduate Research

Scope of Undergraduate Research

Studying UR: The Nature of the Evidence Presented

Overview of This Book

Chapter 2 - What Is Known About the Student Outcomes of Undergraduate Research?

Overview of the Literature on UR

Studies Establishing the Benefits of UR

Alignment of Findings on Student Gains Across Studies

Studies of Programs Aimed at Undergraduate Retention and Recruitment to ...

Ties Between Theory and Practice: Explaining Documented Outcomes

Conclusion

Chapter 3 - What Do Students Gain from Conducting Research?

Probing Student Gains from Research

Student Gains: Robust in Character and Type

Categories of Student Gains

Group Differences

Conclusion

Chapter 4 - Are the Gains from Research Unique?

Varied Professional Experiences of Comparison Students

Overview of Findings from the UR and Comparison Student Interviews

Comparison and UR Students’ Observations on Gains from UR and Other ...

Conclusion

Chapter 5 - What Are the Career and Longer-Term Impacts of Undergraduate Research?

Nature of the Evidence

The Career Influence of Undergraduate Research

Lasting Changes from Authentic Research Experiences

Conclusion

Chapter 6 - How Do Minority Students Benefit from Research?

Challenges for Minority Students in STEM Majors

The Choice of UR: The Case Study of SOARS

Critical Program Elements

Institutional Commitment

Longer-Term Career and Educational Outcomes of SOARS

Conclusion

Chapter 7 - How Do Research Advisors Work with Students?

Nature of the Evidence

Student Recruitment, Selection, and Matching

Authenticity as the Central Organizing Principle

Achieving Authenticity: How Student Research Projects Are Chosen

The Research Advisor’s Role as Teacher

Building Students’ Skills

Conclusion

Chapter 8 - How Do Research Advisors Mentor, Advise, and Evaluate Students?

Advisors as Mentors

Career Advising

Advisors’ Markers of Student Progress

Assessing Overall Effectiveness

How Advisors and Their Colleges Evaluated Their UR Work

Conclusion

Chapter 9 - What Are the Costs and Benefits to Research Advisors?

Nature of the Evidence

Is UR Teaching or Research? A Fundamental Tension

Difficulties of Authentic Research with Students

Situational Strains Arising from Efforts to Expand UR Opportunities

The Benefits of Doing Research with Undergraduates

Conclusion

Chapter 10 - Summary, Implications, and Issues for the Future

How Do We Know What We Know? The Nature of Evidence and Interpretation

Generalizability of the Findings to Other UR Settings

The Deep Roots of Authenticity as a Central Organizing Principle

The Role of Student Metacognition

Implications for Assessment and Evaluation

Implications for Expanding Opportunities for Undergraduate Research

Implications for Broadening Participation in STEM

Emerging Issues

Potential Contributions of Undergraduate Research to STEM Classroom Reform

Appendix A - Interview Samples

Appendix B - Research Design and Methodology

Appendix C - Interview Protocols

Appendix D - Detailed Frequency Counts for Observations of Student Gains

References

Index

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Undergraduate research in the sciences : engaging students in real science / Sandra Laursen . . . [et al.] ; foreword by Jim Swartz . . . [et al].

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-22757-2 (pbk.)

1. Research—Study and teaching (Higher) I. Laursen, Sandra.

Q180.A1U48 2010

507.1’1—dc22

2010008094

PB Printing

The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series

The Authors

ETHNOGRAPHY & EVALUATION RESEARCH (E&ER) is an independent research and evaluation unit at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Our interdisciplinary team specializes in qualitative studies of education, career paths, and diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, most often at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels. Founded by Elaine Seymour and Nancy Hewitt, the group is currently led by Anne-Barrie Hunter and Sandra Laursen. At the university, E&ER has been affiliated with the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences.

Anne-Barrie Hunter, codirector and senior professional researcher with E&ER, served as lead researcher and analyst of this eight -year study to establish and explore the benefits and costs of undergraduate research (UR). Since 1991, she has collaborated with group members to conduct qualitative research and evaluations on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) initiatives to improve college science education, including the research study that produced Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997). She has played a major role in evaluations for ChemConnections, the College Board, Project Kaleidoscope, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory internship program. More recently, she has collaborated on evaluations of several UR programs: Louisiana State University’s LA-STEM Scholars program, Carleton College’s off-campus Marine Biology Seminar, the University of Colorado’s Biological Sciences Initiative, the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science program (SOARS) sponsored by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and the Society of Physics Students internship program. She is also coauthor (with Seymour) of Talking About Disability: The Education and Work Experiences of Graduates and Undergraduates with Disabilities in Science, Mathematics and Engineering (1998), the first study of STEM students with disabilities. Current research interests include issues for women and underrepresented groups in STEM education and career pathways, faculty professional development, and organizational change and development in higher education.

Sandra Laursen works in both research and practice in science education. As codirector and research associate with E&ER, her research interests include underrepresentation of women and minorities in the sciences, professional socialization and career development of scientists, teacher professional development, and science education reform. In addition to UR, her recent publications have addressed scientists ’ participation in education and outreach, STEM graduate education, and gender issues in academe. In her work as curriculum developer and outreach scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, she has developed inquiry-based teaching materials and led professional development for educators and scientists on a wide range of topics in earth and physical science and inquiry-based teaching and learning. As an undergraduate at Grinnell College, her summer research efforts yielded brown gunk of high molecular weight, leading her to abandon synthetic inorganic chemistry and pursue instead a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. She later taught and conducted chemistry research with undergraduates at Kalamazoo College. She has published chemistry curriculum modules and journal articles in chemistry, education, gender studies, and the Journal of Irreproducible Results; codirected a documentary film on scientific inquiry; and recorded a CD with Resonance Women’s Chorus.

Ginger Melton was a research associate with E&ER for several years. She worked for fourteen years as an electrical engineer before obtaining her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her area of special interest is the experiences of racial minorities and women in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. As a researcher with E&ER, she was the lead interviewer and analyst for the evaluation of SOARS and studied the professional development of teaching assistants and of scientists involved in science education. She is currently working as a project manager for implementations of geographic information system software.

Elaine Seymour was cofounder and, for seventeen years, director of E&ER. Her best-known work, coauthored with Nancy M. Hewitt, is Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences (1997). In 2005 she and E&ER members published Partners in Innovation: Teaching Assistants in College Science Courses, a work drawing on several of the group’s science education studies. She has been an evaluator for many initiatives focused on improving quality and access to science education and careers. In response to the learning assessment needs of classroom innovators, she designed two online resources for undergraduate faculty: the Field-Tested Learning Assessment Guide and the widely used online instrument, the Student Assessment of their Learning Gains. In 2002, in recognition of her work on women in science, she was awarded the Betty Vetter Award for Research. In retirement, she is helping to organize a national endeavor, Mobilizing STEM Education for a Sustainable Future. She is a sociologist and a British American whose education and career have been conducted on both sides of the Atlantic.

Heather Thiry is a research associate with E&ER. She has a Ph.D. in education and a background in women’s studies. She has worked with E&ER since 2003 on research and evaluation studies on undergraduate research, STEM education reform and assessment, professional development, teacher education, career pathways in the sciences, and graduate education. She specializes in qualitative research and analysis, and her current research interests include gender and science and the professional socialization of doctoral students in the sciences. Her recent publications examine the needs and motivations of scientists involved with educational outreach and nontraditional career paths of doctoral students in the life sciences.

Foreword

ALL FOUR OF us had experiences as undergraduates that substantively involved us in scientific research. Those experiences made significant differences in our professional lives. We all have spent our careers at institutions that have strong traditions of undergraduate research (UR) in the sciences and believe that such experiences have positive educational value. Reviews of the literature, however, yielded scant scholarly work about what kinds of learning occur in undergraduate research. The literature revealed studies correlating undergraduate research with pursuing graduate study or careers in science and plenty of anecdotal testimonials, but it was essentially devoid of studies of learning. Based on our experiences as students, faculty members, and administrators, we believed that undergraduate research results in high -quality student learning, but we did not know that with confidence since no careful assessment had been done.

Grinnell College decided to look at this issue using funding from its National Science Foundation (NSF) Award for Integration of Research and Education (AIRE). At an AIRE project directors meeting, Jim Swartz, professor of chemistry, vice president for academic affairs, and dean of the college, and David Lopatto, professor of psychology, discussed this project and invited others to participate. Mary Allen, professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College, Jim Gentile, professor of biology and dean of the natural sciences at Hope College, and Sheldon Wettack, professor of chemistry and vice president and dean of the faculty at Harvey Mudd College, all expressed enthusiasm, and their institutions agreed to engage in a pilot project in the summer of 1999. Elaine Seymour, a sociologist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, attended that project meeting, expressed a real interest, and joined in the pilot project. Elaine and her research group, Ethnography & Evaluation Research (E&ER), had done seminal work in science education using ethnographic techniques to shed light on the issue of why excellent students leave the study of science and had helped to assess a major pedagogical development project in which one of us (J.S.) was a principal. Thus we were thrilled to partner with a group with experience and credentials to help in the assessment of student learning and whose members could offer a complement to the quantitative research that David Lopatto was starting.

That first summer, our AIRE funds were used to pay for surveys and interviews with participants in summer research projects on our campuses. During the time when we were working on the pilot project, David and Elaine submitted a proposal to the NSF in the first round of funding of the Research on Learning and Education program. The focus of the project was to address the question of what learning gains are achieved by students who engage in undergraduate research. Specifically, the grant proposal requested support to:

• Clarify the nature of authentic undergraduate research experiences—and their variations—in a sample of science disciplines from the viewpoints of participating and nonparticipating undergraduates (both as seniors and one year from graduation), faculty, and their institutions

• Identify and categorize the essential elements of good UR experiences, the learning gains (cognitive, behavioral, affective, social, and professional) that they produce over time, the conditions and processes by which these occur, and their relative significance in the achievement of outcomes that students and faculty value.

Ultimately a grant was awarded, and the project took off. Since this was a research project, we decided to start with a relatively homogeneous set of subjects—like chemists trying to use the purest reagents to study a chemical reaction. The study would examine students at liberal arts colleges who were engaged in full-time, ten-week summer research projects supervised by the faculty members at those same colleges. Our colleges were certainly not the only sites where these questions could be explored, but we knew there was much to learn on our campuses that would be of interest to us and to others—and importantly, we and our colleagues were willing to host the study. Furthermore, we were interested in the possibility that the results would help our institutions seek support from foundations and individuals to expand and enhance our UR programs. The colleges also brought the study some diversity: Wellesley is an eastern women ’s college; Harvey Mudd in the West focuses on science, engineering, and mathematics; and Grinnell and Hope are midwestern colleges, with Grinnell having a more national and Hope a more regional student body.

David and Elaine regularly gathered the four of us to talk about their findings, coordinate surveys and interviews, and suggest directions and questions for the project. Three of the four of us have changed jobs since this project started, but we remained committed to the project. The work described here and in Lopatto’s forthcoming book, Science in Solution, gives the findings of this important project. The E&ER team and David Lopatto accomplished much more than we had imagined in those first informal conversations.

The results mirror much of what we, as practitioners, intuitively thought were the benefits of UR. There are, however, some surprising findings, in particular about the impact on student career choices and faculty concerns about the costs and benefits of UR. We not only learned about what students learned but also about faculty views of their work with students. Although the work started with summer research in science, engineering, and mathematics at liberal arts colleges, we believe that much of what was learned can be extrapolated to other institutional types and disciplines. There is much to learn from it about how to create fertile environments for both students and faculty members to engage in what George Kuh calls a “high-impact” educational practice. We are very happy to see this product of the work.

Jim Swartz, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa Jim Gentile, Research Corporation for the Advancement of Science, Tucson, Arizona (formerly at Hope College) Mary Allen, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts Sheldon Wettack, Hope College, Holland, Michigan (formerly at Harvey Mudd College) March 2009

Preface

EACH YEAR IN the summer and during academic terms, thousands of undergraduate science, mathematics, and engineering students participate in research in U.S. university, college, and government laboratories. Some students attend organized programs that involve them with a cohort of peers and a planned curriculum of academic, career, and social activities to support the research experience; others simply join a laboratory group at the invitation of an individual faculty member. Millions of public and private dollars are spent to provide these opportunities. Faculty and institutional leaders affirm undergraduate research as a powerful form of experiential education, and departments track the entrance of their research students into graduate programs. Many scientists recall their own undergraduate research project as a formative experience that launched them on a path to a scientific career.

Undergraduate research (UR) experiences in the sciences are thus a common practice in U.S. higher education, and their benefits to students are nearly a matter of faith. Yet until quite recently, little evidence from educational research underlay this belief. In this book, we report on evidence gathered from a decade of research on the nature and outcomes of UR as practiced in the sciences—using the latter term broadly to include the natural sciences but also mathematics, engineering, computer science, and psychology, all represented in our research. Our findings identify the benefits to students in the short and longer terms and address the extent to which these benefits are uniquely derived from research experiences. We also describe the practices of research advisors who supervise students’ work and guide their development, and the inherent tensions that frame that work as faculty balance their own scholarly goals with students’ educational needs. Together with recent work from other scholars and evaluators who have examined undergraduate research as an educational and scholarly practice, our studies yield a body of evidence that elucidates and supports many practitioners’ long-held beliefs, challenges others, and provides a research basis to ground the development of future innovations.

While current interest in inquiry-based science education has led to broadened use of the term undergraduate research to include research-like activities and projects included in formal course work, this book focuses on the traditional and most intensive model of undergraduate research, where students are immersed in a multiweek, open -ended scientific project, often part of a larger, scientist-led research effort. Summer is the time when this intensive immersion is most readily, though not exclusively, accomplished. One crucial component is the relationship of the novice researcher as apprentice to an experienced scientist. As the novice learns the intellectual craft and social practice of science by doing it, she is guided by advice, help, and moral support from a more experienced colleague. Also crucial is the authentic nature of the scientific problem under study, which motivates and gives intellectual significance to the investigation, but also offers a limitless supply of teachable moments that research advisors exploit for their deep educational value. As we shall argue, the participation of a faculty research advisor as both a scholar and a teacher is a key aspect that distinguishes this apprentice model of undergraduate research from course-based forms of inquiry.

This book is aimed at all those who are interested in undergraduate research in the sciences:

• STEM faculty and other scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who work with student researchers, are considering it, or seek similar outcomes from their classroom work

• Faculty in other fields where UR is less common but who seek to understand the fundamental nature of UR so that they can adapt it to the forms of scholarly and creative work practiced in their own disciplines

• Academic administrators interested in the value added by UR to their institution’s programs, the costs incurred, and the choices to be made about whether, and in what form, UR can be supported and sustained

• Program developers and facilitators who coordinate UR efforts on campuses or run UR programs for universities and laboratories

• Policymakers and program officers whose organizations promote and support UR or are interested in the broad educational and workforce issues that UR is thought to address

• Researchers and evaluators who seek to improve science education through studying or evaluating UR program outcomes or by collaborating with UR practitioners.

We have sought to elucidate the outcomes and processes of undergraduate research as practiced by science students and faculty. Most of our data come from two studies, each of which examines UR in a best-case scenario of a particular type. The four-college study examines apprentice-model UR as practiced at four liberal arts colleges with long experience of UR. The Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science program, known as SOARS, serves as an exemplar of structured UR programs designed to recruit, retain, and support students from groups underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. These sites are not unique in providing the student benefits and elucidating the practices of research advisors that we document here, but as excellent examples of both faculty-led and structured UR programs, each offered an opportunity to study a well-defined and relatively homogeneous phenomenon. This research thus addresses the question, “What outcomes are possible from well-designed and well-implemented apprentice-model UR experiences, and by what means do these arise?” This is distinct from the separate, and also important, question of what outcomes actually result from the broader set of practices encompassed by all the forms of UR that have arisen in diverse institutions and settings. Given the lack of research on UR in nonscience disciplines and on all the varieties of UR and similar experiences available to students, the latter question cannot be generally answered at this time.

Chapter One establishes our definition of undergraduate research and its crucial components of authenticity and apprenticeship. It traces the history of UR in the United States and its apparent, though ill-documented, growth in recent decades. The national context for the interest in UR now is described, and the design of our research studies is outlined to illuminate the source and nature of the evidence offered throughout the book.

Chapter Two summarizes the literature that provides evidence about the outcomes of undergraduate research, in both faculty -led research efforts and structured programs, particularly those targeted to students from groups underrepresented in the STEM fields. Relatively few well-designed research and evaluation studies have been published, and most of these have appeared within the past few years. To date, the outcomes of these studies align well with each other and with our own findings.

Chapter Three describes the benefits to students of conducting research as undergraduates, based on the evidence from interviews with UR students, alumni, and research advisors in our four-college study. These benefits are grouped into six main categories and identified in reports from students, alumni, and advisors.

Chapter Four addresses whether these benefits of UR can also be gained from other sources, including courses, based on data from interviews with a group of comparison students who did not undertake summer UR. Because these students participated in a variety of other educational experiences, we can discern alternative sources of the same benefits gained by the UR students and discuss the efficacy of these alternative sources, relative to UR, in providing the benefits.

Chapter Five discusses the longer-term outcomes of UR that are seen in longitudinal data from both UR and comparison students when interviewed as alumni, two to three years after they finished college. These outcomes emphasize the influences of UR on early career paths for alumni, and they reveal gains that were enhanced with the perspective of time as students recognized additional gains and came to value others more fully.

Chapter Six examines the use of UR in programs seeking to recruit and retain students from groups that are underrepresented in STEM fields. Because certain benefits of UR directly address the challenges minority students face, UR is often a centerpiece of such programs. Through a case study of one such program, we examine critical elements and how they build on, amplify, and augment general features of undergraduate research to address minority students’ needs.

Chapter Seven discusses how UR advisors work with students, based primarily on data from interviews with faculty who were active or former UR advisors, and with program administrators. Advisors clearly identify aspects of their UR work as teaching, while also emphasizing the importance of working on unsolved problems of genuine interest in their field. Their use of authentic projects and methods with students gives rise to several distinct pedagogical strategies that are individually adjusted to foster individual students’ development. This chapter emphasizes the strategies that advisors use in their everyday work with research students.

Chapter Eight examines research advisors’ mentoring and career advising work. By the use of distinctive markers, they monitor and assess students’ progress toward their learning objectives for students. These more global functions of advisors arise from their close daily work and observation of their research students but extend beyond it.

Chapter Nine discusses the costs and benefits to UR advisors of conducting UR as part of their faculty work. It explores what motivates and sustains faculty’s UR work, what they need to sustain it, how they balance the costs and benefits of undertaking UR, and how these shape individual decisions to participate. Central to this discussion is the dual role of UR as an educational experience for students and a scholarly activity for faculty. Faculty report benefits that are largely intrinsic, but their costs are more concrete. Some difficulties are inherent in conducting research with short-term, novice assistants, while other strains arise from unresolved considerations of the place of UR in the institutional mission.

Chapter Ten summarizes key findings and makes arguments about the implications of these findings for faculty, campus leaders, funders, and researchers, including those working in diverse institutional settings. Some emergent issues and issues for future study are also highlighted.

In order to keep the main narrative readable and engaging for those who do not have prior experience with social science research methods, we have documented in a set of appendixes the methodological details for the four-college study that provides the bulk of the evidence discussed. Appendix A describes the interview samples in detail, providing breakouts by discipline, gender, and other key variables. Appendix B elaborates on the methods of the study. Appendix C summarizes the interview protocols. Appendix D provides a detailed table that includes the frequency counts for each student benefits category for all five main interview groups. These counts underlie the discussion of quantitative evidence in the student-focused chapters.

This book is not a how-to manual for those starting new UR programs or labs. For such resources, we recommend that readers consult the extensive publication list of the Council on Undergraduate Research. This research aims instead to identify the good outcomes of UR for students, elucidate how and why these outcomes arise, and clarify what factors support or constrain UR. It can thus work in tandem with the wisdom of experienced UR practitioners to guide program designers and faculty in identifying trade-offs and making choices among approaches or in creating new types of programs that aim to secure similar benefits for students. Which strategies best protect the fundamental importance of authenticity in achieving the benefits of UR for students? What methods might begin to foster the same benefits in younger students or in more constrained circumstances? How should institutions recognize and reward UR as part of faculty work? Our research does not answer these questions, but it does provide a platform of evidence on which possible answers can be devised and tried by individual advisors, programs, and institutions.

If our findings come as no surprise to readers who are personally familiar with undergraduate research as students or advisors, then that is validation that we have gotten something right. The details of how research advisors work—and, to a lesser extent, how students respond—will necessarily vary from place to place. But we are persuaded that many of the UR outcomes and processes documented here can be achieved in other institutions and through other models of UR when those settings adhere to fundamental principles that are apparent in the accounts of research advisors and research students that we share in this book.

Acknowledgments

WE HAVE MANY people to thank for their many contributions to this book. We are especially grateful to the faculty and students who shared their experiences and ideas at the four colleges that hosted this study and to the faculty, staff, and leaders who made arrangements and facilitated our work. We have valued the insights and assistance of our collaborators at these colleges: Jim Swartz and David Lopatto at Grinnell College, Jim Gentile at Hope College, Sheldon Wettack at Harvey Mudd College, and Mary Allen and Adele Wolfson at Wellesley College. From the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) program, we thank the protégés, mentors, and other study participants for their welcome and for their candid observations. Thomas Windham and Rajul Pandya were gracious, astute, and interested supporters of our SOARS work. We also thank Tom and Raj for their input into Chapter Six. We award a special gold star to Joanne Stewart for her rapid reading, critical commentary, and long-time encouragement to “get it out.” S.L. thanks her former research students for their good work, scientific insights, and companionship: Luke, Stew, Jamie, Becky, Hannah, John, Mike, Jenny-Meade, Craig, James, Alice, Kwasi, and Heather.

A variety of funding agencies provided essential support for our work across its life span of nearly a decade. Initiated under a National Science Foundation (NSF) award to Grinnell College for Integration of Research and Education, the four-college study was supported by the NSF’s Research on Learning and Education program under grant 0087611 and by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additional data analysis and dissemination were made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. The SOARS evaluation study was supported by the NSF’s Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Geoscience Directorate, under grant 0401704, and by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Funds for the preparation of this book were contributed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Noyce Foundation, and Research Corporation for Science Advancement, with additional assistance from the National Science Foundation under grant 0548488, jointly supported by the Division of Chemistry, the Division of Undergraduate Education, the Biological Sciences Directorate, and the Office of Multidisciplinary Affairs.

The late John J. Coppers, Elaine’s long-time partner, was a great cheer-leader for our work: he stood ready to brag about E&ER’s accomplishments to anyone who would listen. John was not an academic but had the knack of getting to central issues quickly. When he attended one of our early brown bag sessions on this work, he listened carefully to everything we had to say and then asked, “Why would these good people put themselves through that every summer?” We have been trying to answer his question ever since. John was particularly supportive of the UR book project during a period when funding was elusive. After several setbacks, he encouraged Elaine to persist until she put together the collaborative sponsorship that made it possible to write this book. John was often right about things that matter. We miss him.

This book truly represents a group effort. From conceiving the project and writing proposals (and still more proposals), to conducting the many interviews, transcribing them, coding, parenting, and analyzing them, every author has taken responsibility for particular tasks and done a lot of heavy lifting. At various stages, each has provided significant professional contributions in carrying out this research. A qualitative study as large as this indeed depended on a team effort. Close collaboration and cooperation throughout was essential. We thank others in our group whose efforts also helped this research: Tracee DeAntoni, Catherine Riegle -Crumb, Kris De Welde, Rebecca Crane, Liane Pedersen-Gallegos, Richard Donohue, Becky Gallegos, and our many student transcribers. Susan Lynds was our punctilious and speedy technical editor and spreadsheet wrangler; her expertise and calm were invaluable. Special thanks go to Sandra Laursen, who took charge, organized our unwieldy group, put us on a schedule, coordinated this volume, and ultimately sewed our individual ragged bits and pieces together into (we hope) a strong, coherent whole. The collegiality and friendship experienced throughout this project are in themselves immeasurable rewards. To Elaine Seymour, our fearless, indefatigable leader, we offer our deep gratitude and best wishes for her retirement.

Chapter 1

What Is Undergraduate Research, and Why Does It Matter?

CONDUCTING RESEARCH IS an important culminating experience in the education of many undergraduate science students in the United States. This book describes the outcomes of undergraduate research (UR) experiences, the processes by which these outcomes are achieved, and the meaning of these outcomes for both students and the mentors who work with them on scientific research projects, based on our findings from a multiyear study of undergraduate research and its role in science education. An overarching theme in these findings is the notion of “real science,” which recurs throughout the comments of undergraduate research students and their advisors. Their work together on scientific research projects provides the experiences and observations that form the backbone of this book. The importance of “real science” for students’ educational and professional growth is evident in their own words:

It’s kind of scary, especially at the beginning. I was like, “How can someone like me be doing this?” [But now] I’m coming up with valuable information and it’s great. I mean, actually producing data and actually doing it, I felt like a scientist. But you really feel more like a scientist when you have something good! (female UR student, biology)

Once your superiors—whom you admire and look up to as scientists—start asking your opinion on a scientific matter. . . . Personally, it made me feel like I was actually a real physicist. (male UR alumnus, physics)

Presenting at a conference made me feel like I was a part of the scientific community. . . . I have been able to talk about my work and feel like an equal [with my advisor], and do it with other people [at my school]—but being able to do that with a total stranger was a really, really neat experience. It gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel like I was a real chemist! (female UR alumnus, chemistry)

A lot of things you do in school, like you do homework or whatever, and you never feel like you’re really doing something real. And this was one of the first things that I did that, like, really encompassed everything and really brought things together. It was one of the first times I really felt like I was really doing something. (male UR student, engineering)

Clearly, being “real” is important to students. So what makes a research project “real”? As we will show, real research is an investigation whose questions, methods, and everyday ways of working are authentic to the field. The research questions are well defined so that they can be systematically investigated, but, importantly—and unlike most questions in a classroom—their answers are unknown. Research results may not be quickly forthcoming, but they constitute a genuine contribution to the field if and when they do emerge. The research methods are ones used in the discipline and seen as valid by disciplinary experts. As in any other research project, the choice of methods may be constrained by intellectual, technical, or financial resources. For an undergraduate research project, such constraints may arise from the involvement of novices and the educational mission of their institution—but the term undergraduate research does not inherently rule out particular approaches to the research question. Perhaps most important, as we shall see throughout this book, students and faculty work together in ways that are typical of their field and authentic to the profession. Thus, students learn the intellectual and social practices of science by doing it. By engaging deeply themselves in a particular question, they begin to understand more generally how scientists engage questions and construct knowledge, and that this is a human activity in which they too could participate.

As Merkel (2001) points out, the use of the term undergraduate research has not always been clear—indeed, the term research itself has different meanings in different disciplines and settings. The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR, n.d) offers a broad-based definition: “An inquiry or investigation conducted by an undergraduate student that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline” (see also Wenzel, 2003). This language is inclusive of CUR’s multidisciplinary audience, but in its lack of mention of faculty guidance or mentoring, it does not fully describe UR as typically practiced in the sciences. As we shall describe, the research advisor ’s role is critical in guiding students’ work and inducting them into the intellectual and social ways of the profession. The way that UR advisors work with students parallels the master-apprentice relationship that is traditional in many professions, including graduate education in science.

A note is in order to clarify our choice of language. Throughout this book, we commonly use the terms science, scientist, and scientific with the intent to include psychology, mathematics, and engineering, at least with respect to UR in these fields. The acronym STEM, standing for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, is also used, but this acronym is sometimes inelegant and comes with neither a corresponding adjective nor a term for the individuals who practice it. The studies that we discuss in the bulk of the book involve mainly students and faculty in the natural sciences, but they also include mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, and psychologists. Our intent is to be fully inclusive while avoiding unwieldy language.

In this book, we restrict our discussion to intensive, multiweek research experiences in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering that involve student collaboration with faculty or other experienced scientists, and we refer to this as the apprenticeship model. Moreover, we argue that the goals and practices of apprentice-model UR are shaped and sustained by its value as both an educational activity for students and a scholarly activity for their research advisors. Because course -based inquiry is generally driven by educational concerns only, we intentionally exclude it from our definition of undergraduate research. Although course-based inquiry is important and still too uncommon in undergraduate STEM education, it should not be conflated with the apprenticeship model of undergraduate research, for reasons that we hope become apparent in this book.

Undergraduate research is widely conducted in the sciences, led by faculty at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) across the United States. At research universities too, faculty whose laboratories include graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and technicians often also host undergraduate researchers. We use the term faculty-led UR to refer to all such research experiences that are largely initiated and directed by faculty themselves and hosted by individual research groups, with modest or no coordination at the departmental or institutional level.

More recently, universities and government laboratories have sponsored structured research programs, sometimes with the goal of recruiting students from groups that are nationally underrepresented in fields. We call these structured UR programs because they often include UR along with organized training, presentation and professional development activities, and other kinds of academic and financial support. Many involve a particular cohort of students who enter the program together and participate for longer than just one summer. While some practices differ in these varied contexts and, to a lesser extent, by discipline, UR experiences in the United States appear to have in common several features:

• A well-defined research project designated to the student or a student team, connected in some way to an ongoing effort in the research group or to an area of scholarly interest of the supervising researcher

• Multiweek immersion—often full time for ten weeks during the summer, though UR may also be carried out through the academic year

• Individualized guidance from an experienced scientist

There is growing interest in earlier entry to UR, but at this time, most students participate in UR as college juniors, seniors, or rising seniors in the summer between the junior and senior years (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2008; Russell, 2006).

History of Undergraduate Research

The idea that undergraduates should conduct real investigations is not new. The California Institute of Technology traces the origins of its undergraduate research program to Arthur Noyes ’s tenure as chemistry department chair beginning in 1920, touting an early publication by two students who later became Nobel laureates (McMillan & Pauling, 1927; Merkel, 2001). A century ago, Drinker (1912) surveyed the practice of UR at undergraduate medical colleges, one of which dated its own UR efforts to 1895. A proponent of UR, Drinker argued that medical students “have a right to gain some notion of what investigation entails,” but “the doing of fixed experiments in fixed hours does not entail the exercise of investigative faculties other than those of the most mechanical nature” (p. 730).

Drinker and his survey respondents postulated outcomes of UR little different from those claimed by practitioners today: in doing research, students must bring to bear both “imagination” and “high scientific accuracy” (p. 730). Students learn “the difficulty of putting a problem on a working basis” (p. 730) and experience “an intellectual awakening” (p. 736) that is as valuable to the “practical man” as to the “laboratory man” (p. 732). Respondents presumed that doing research helped to recruit students into the profession of research, but also argued that research-derived critical thinking skills transferred to other fields. “All of us believe in its value,” wrote one dean, “otherwise we would discourage it—not, I fancy, for the value of the scientific results obtained, but for its educational value on the picked men and the belief that the group of the serious workers in medical science will be recruited from this body of students” (p. 736). A follow-up report (Starr, Stokes, & West, 1919) indicated that opportunities for undergraduate research had “increased greatly since 1912” (p. 311).

In her review of the history of UR, Merkel (2001, 2003) traces the beginnings of organized UR activities at research universities to MIT ’s program, started in 1969 (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000, n.d.). At liberal arts colleges, undergraduate research was under way, at least in chemistry departments, by the postwar science boom of the 1940s and 1950s, further spurred in the 1960s by post-Sputnik concerns about American competitiveness in science and technology (Bunnett, 1984; Craig, 1999; Neckers, 2000; Trzupek & Knight, 2000; see also Crampton, 2001; Hansch & Smith, 1984; Pladziewicz, 1984). Participants in a 1959 conference on teaching and research debated whether scientific research was an appropriate activity for undergraduate colleges, or instead a cost- and time-intensive distraction from faculty ’s main work of teaching (Spencer & Yoder, 1981). In the mid-1980s, college presidents met at Oberlin College to draw attention to the success of liberal arts colleges in producing large numbers of science majors who went on to science careers and science Ph.D.s. Prompted by findings such as Spencer and Yoder’s (1981) analysis of research activity in chemistry departments at liberal arts colleges and the number of their graduates who earned Ph.D.s in chemistry, the Oberlin report lauded student-faculty collaborative research as a major contributor to strong science education at these schools (Crampton, 2001; Gavin, 2000;). Accounts of UR in this era are consistent in portraying UR as a form of faculty scholarship particular to PUIs, initiated and sustained by individual determination, scrappy grantsmanship, and grassroots networks (in addition to sources cited above, see Doyle, 2000; Mohrig & Wubbels, 1984; Pladziewicz, 1984). Faculty valued research as a means to stay scientifically up to date and connected to their discipline, and thus fresh in the classroom; obtain equipment useful in laboratory courses; and build a positive reputation for their department. They recognized UR’s positive side effects for students, but had not claimed them in public until withdrawal of National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for undergraduate science education in 1981 forced them to reconsider how they might finance faculty development, course improvement, and student research activity (Mohrig & Wubbels, 1984; National Science Foundation, n.d.).

As the arguments caught on that UR was not only important as scholarship for faculty at PUIs but also high-quality science education for students, the profile of UR rose among funding agencies and professional organizations. In the mid-1980s, the NSF initiated the Research at Undergraduate Institutions program to support UR through single -investigator grants from the research directorates (Council on Undergraduate Research, 2006). This was followed by the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, now in its third decade, which supplies site grants to support undergraduates to work on research (National Science Foundation, n.d.). (Both programs were predated by NSF’s Undergraduate Research Program, which made awards between 1971 and 1981.) The Howard Hughes Medical Institute began to award undergraduate science education grants that often supported UR programs, and the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and Research Corporation all offered research grant programs with tracks targeted to faculty working primarily with undergraduates. CUR was founded by chemists in 1978 as an organization to promote and support student research in PUIs. The National Conference on Undergraduate Research began in 1987 to provide an opportunity for student researchers to present their work, and disciplinary professional societies began to include poster sessions for undergraduate research student presenters as part of their conference programs.

In the 1990s, national reports such as the Boyer Commission report (1998) cited UR as a practice that could contribute to improving undergraduate science education, move students from didactic to inquiry-based learning experiences, and reduce the dichotomy between teaching and research (see Katkin, 2003; Merkel, 2001, 2003). The 1990s also marked the accelerated development of programs to recruit and retain students from underrepresented groups, which often incorporated undergraduate research. If the early decades were the years for grassroots growth of UR, the 1980s the decade of its professionalization among faculty, and the 1990s the decade of recognition by policymakers of UR as an educational practice, then the 2000s appear to begin the era of evaluation and research. After “decades of blind faith ” in the benefits of UR (Mervis, 2001a), researchers and evaluators have begun to identify its outcomes, assess their prevalence, and examine how they come about. We review these studies in detail in Chapter Two.

Current National Context for Undergraduate Research

In this book, we examine UR at the local level as an educational experience for students and as an educational and scholarly activity of faculty and departments. However, this local practice takes place in a national context of high interest in UR as an educational strategy, influenced by the traditional role of the research apprenticeship in scientists ’ education and by growing interest in students’ development of thinking skills important for public science literacy.

Scientists, educators, and government and industry leaders have raised concerns over the supply and quality of STEM-trained workers needed to maintain American technological and economic leadership in a globally competitive economy (for a recent high-profile report, see National Research Council, 2007; for a summary of such reports, see Project Kaleidoscope, 2006). Since 1980, the number of nonacademic science and engineering jobs has grown at more than four times the rate of the U.S. labor force as a whole (National Science Board, 2008). Increasing the diversity of the science workforce is another “urgent need,” given changing demographics, decreasing numbers of foreign citizens entering the U.S. STEM workforce, and growing international competition for scientific and engineering talent (Committee on Equal Opportunities, 2004). Equally important, concerns for equity and justice demand that all Americans have equal opportunities to enter the high-status, well-paid positions typically offered by science and engineering careers. Economic competitiveness too depends on a diverse workforce, because diversity fosters greater innovation and problem solving (Chubin & Malcom, 2008; Page, 2007). However, at higher levels of STEM education in many fields, the proportion of both women and people of color declines sharply—the so-called leaky pipeline—and progress in bringing their representation up to match the general population has been slow (National Science Foundation, 2007b). Thus, availability and access to high-quality STEM education remain critical for meeting U.S. workforce needs and providing equal opportunity for all citizens.

While multiple solutions to these pressing problems lie throughout the spectrum of K-12 and higher education, many calls for reform have focused on making undergraduate STEM education more practical, relevant, engaging, and grounded in research on how people learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Handelsman et al., 2004; Project Kaleidoscope, 2006; Seymour, 2002; Wieman, 2007). For example, the American Association of Colleges and Universities has called for higher education institutions to foster more “empowered, informed, and responsible learners” (Greater Expectations National Panel, 2002). The Boyer Commission (1998) urged that research-based learning become the standard in undergraduate education, particularly at research universities. National bodies have called for increased opportunities for student-centered, inquiry-based learning, including undergraduate research, in the STEM disciplines (Kuh, 2008; National Research Council, 1999; National Science Foundation, 1996). Many faculty and institutions are exploring the addition of “research-like” components to regular courses and labs (see DeHaan, 2005). Although different wording is often used, these efforts in undergraduate STEM education parallel efforts in K-12 education to incorporate scientific inquiry as both a strategy for teaching scientific concepts and an element of the curriculum. The aim is for students to develop not only conceptual understanding of the big ideas of science, but also the abilities to conduct an investigation and the understandings of science as a human process of constructing scientific knowledge (National Research Council, 1996; see also Laursen, 2006).

Undergraduate research is relevant to these national concerns because it is commonly believed to be “invaluable” for “engaging, training and inspiring undergraduates (many from underrepresented groups) to pursue higher . . . degrees” (National Science Foundation, 2007a, p. 10) and to have “central importance” in “preparing scientists” (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2008, p. 19). UR may be seen as one end of a spectrum of educational strategies that engage students, both a model for and a culmination of classroom-based inquiry (see, for example, Healey & Jenkins, 2009; Karukstis & Elgren, 2007). But there are substantial barriers to pedagogical change in undergraduate teaching, including the high autonomy of college instructors, their primary allegiance to their discipline, student and collegial resistance, and institutional barriers to research-based pedagogical reforms (Boyer Commission, 2002; DeHaan, 2005; Henderson, 2005; Henderson & Dancy, 2008; Kuh, 2008; Seymour, 2007; Walczyk, Ramsay, & Zha, 2007; Wieman, 2007). Thus, UR may be seen by funders, institutional leaders, and faculty developers as a path of lesser resistance to change in undergraduate STEM education than is classroom-focused reform. Indeed, a recent survey of members of a discipline-based scientific society, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2008), highlights the seeming paradox that although faculty placed high value on “undergraduate research and integrative thinking” (p. 3), their classroom pedagogy was “not reflective of research on student learning” (p. 5)—fully 80 percent of their classes, at all levels, emphasized lecture. Thus, for all these reasons, undergraduate research is often viewed as a solution to national STEM education problems.

Scope of Undergraduate Research

If UR is in fact to aid in solving any of these problems, the numbers of students who participate will have to be substantial. However, that number is difficult to determine. In a survey by SRI International of thirty-four hundred students who received STEM bachelor’s degrees between 1998 and 2003, just over half of respondents said they had participated in UR (Russell, 2005). The Boyer Commission (2002) offers the lower estimate that one-fifth of science and engineering students at research universities engage in UR. Results of the National Survey of Student Engagement indicate that 19 percent of all undergraduates participate in research with faculty (Kuh, 2008), including 39 percent of those with majors in the biological and physical sciences (American Council of Learned Societies, 2007). While Kuh’s (2008) averages across broad institutional types and student characteristics vary surprisingly little, the participation rate is in fact quite variable from one school to another—higher at many smaller schools where faculty lead UR for their own students and lower where no on-campus opportunities are available. Wood (2003) cites 45 percent participation in UR for his biology department at the University of Colorado, while Merkel (2001) cites figures for student participation in UR of 80 percent at MIT, 60 percent at CalTech, and 22 percent for the University of Washington. Figures like these illustrate how departmental and institutional differences affect students’ access to UR, even at schools that have established or are moving toward a “culture of undergraduate research,” in Merkel’s words. Most institutions do not systematically gather these data for themselves (Katkin, 2003). Participation also varies strongly by discipline; STEM graduates in the SRI survey reported participation rates near 30 percent for mathematics and computer science and up to over 70 percent for chemistry and environmental sciences (Russell, 2005).

These variable participation rates are one reason that it is difficult to tally the total numbers of UR participants. Russell (2006) has estimated that the NSF may support some fourteen thousand students per year, but Merkel (2001) reported thirty-two thousand students supported by NSF REU programs alone in fiscal year 2001. (We requested data from NSF on undergraduate research participation but were unable to obtain either agency-wide or individual division data from those contacted.) Whatever the numbers, it is likely that the number of UR opportunities is not enough to accommodate all students who seek the opportunity. A 2004 study reported that the NSF REU program in chemistry, which then supported about 650 students each year, could accommodate fewer than one in four students who apply (Henry, 2005).

Financial investment in UR by public and private foundations is substantial and supports students through both targeted UR programs and grants to individual investigators at PUIs. Again, numbers indicating the magnitude of this investment are difficult to come by. Academic Excellence, a study of undergraduate research at 136 PUIs, reported a ten-year total (1991-2000) of $682 million in funding for research and research instrumentation at these colleges, with 74 percent coming from federal and state government sources (Research Corporation, 2001). From the cost side, and taking the perspective that the faculty is an institution’s primary investment, Gentile (2001) has estimated the projected investment in a faculty member over a thirty-year academic lifetime to be $4 million, including both research- and teaching-related costs. His worksheet enables this figure to be computed for a particular local setting. From a student perspective, funding for NSF REU awards in chemistry for 2009 averaged $10,000 per summer UR student, covering both direct student support and associated program costs (Colon, 2009).

Without good data about the participation level of students and faculty, the resources committed, or their cumulative impact, it is difficult to state whether the prevalence of UR is growing, shrinking, or staying the same. However, most sources agree that UR is on a rising trajectory. The SRI study (Russell, 2005) noted that participation rates in UR had increased from 48 percent among 1988 -1992 STEM graduates to 56 percent for 1998-2003 graduates; concurrently, the proportion of respondents who said it had not occurred to them to participate in research declined from 24 percent to 15 percent. The Academic Excellence study found that the number of students engaged in summer research at the 136 PUIs in this study increased by 65 percent in the decade 1991 to 2000 (Research Corporation, 2001). In a follow-up study to the Boyer Report, Katkin (2003) reported that research universities had taken many steps to expand UR opportunities and raise the visibility of UR, often establishing centralized offices to support UR and advertise it to students, promote it in departments, and raise funds. Katkin’s data also showed increases in the number and percentage of participating students and the number of faculty UR supervisors. However, the lack of systematic data collection by institutions is a problem: as Kenny (2003) points out, “A lot may be happening, but no one is charged with keeping score” (p. 105).

Several indicators reflect growing interest in UR by funding agencies. For example, NSF’s Division of Chemistry has experimented with undergraduate research centers to explore novel forms of UR that might engage students at an earlier stage or from previously untapped populations, including UR at two-year colleges and curricular forms of research activity (Exploring the Concept, 2003). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and NSF have supported “extreme research” opportunities for students, such as the chance to conduct engineering experiments in the weightless environment of the “Vomit Comet” research aircraft, use international telescopes at distant observatories, or make geoscience field observations from oceangoing research vessels, Iceland, or the South Pole (Service, 2002). Several private foundations that support undergraduate research signaled their interest in UR by commissioning the Academic Excellence study to address their concerns about declining research proposal pressure from these PUIs (Lichter, 2000; Mervis, 2001b; Research Corporation, 2001). Despite the foundations’ observations, the study found that overall, the sciences were healthy at these schools, which educate a disproportionate share of the nation’s scientific workforce. Research-related grant dollars awarded to these schools had increased, as had colleges’ investment in faculty start-up funds and capital facilities for science (Abraham, 2001).

Another indicator of growing interest in UR is a proliferation of how-to resources that seek to help those initiating UR at an ever-widening group of institutions. The CUR Quarterly and the Journal of Chemical Education offer long-running article series. Books by Merkel and Baker (2002) and by Handelsman and colleagues (2005) offer advice on mentoring UR students (see also Pfund, Pribbenow, Branchaw, Lauffer, & Handelsman, 2006), while Hakim (2000) discusses the institutional development and implementation of UR programs. CUR recently compiled a compendium of practices to develop and sustain a “research-supportive curriculum” (Karukstis & Elgren, 2007). Kinkead (2003) has reviewed resources on UR programs and inquiry -based teaching approaches that support them. Gaglione (2005) and Brown (2006) offer advice to two -year college faculty on starting a UR program, and Ball and coauthors (2004) do the same for those at comprehensive institutions (see also Husic, 2003). While interest is growing in UR and other forms of scholarly and creative activity in disciplines beyond STEM (Karukstis & Elgren, 2007; Katkin, 2003; Merkel, 2003), most non-STEM fields do not yet have well-established UR traditions. Similarly, international interest in UR is growing in countries that do not currently have a UR tradition.

The niche of how-to resources for students is also increasingly occupied. WebGURU is an online clearinghouse for students with practical information on how to seek an undergraduate research position and what to do once they get one. At its Web site, CUR maintains a list of the growing number of online undergraduate research journals, which provide opportunities for students to publish their work and learn the skills of professional writing and peer review (Netwatch, 1998).

Finally, there is grassroots evidence that UR is gaining popularity among students. Some campuses document rising participation in UR by their own students (see, for example, Bhushan, 2007; Biggs, 2006; Singngam, 2007). Katkin (2003) observes an increase in the number and visibility of centralized UR offices on campuses to serve growing student demand. These offices typically advertise research opportunities to enrolled students and facilitate students’ matchup with advisors, projects, and funding. As part of its much-publicized annual college rankings used by prospective students and families planning for college, U.S. News and World Report