Using an Open Access Platform to Showcase and Promote Works of Student Scholarship, Creative Endeavor, and Student/Faculty Collaboration

How can a regional campus use an open access platform to accentuate that which makes it unique? The Helmke Library at Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne has recently created a new area within Opus, our institutional repository, called the Student Research and Creative Endeavor Commons, designed to promote and showcase undergraduate research and student/faculty collaborations. Regional campuses provide many valuable opportunities for undergraduates to collaborate with faculty members in research, publications, presentations, and creative works to a degree they may not have at larger institutions. The Student Research and Creative Endeavor Commons will showcase such collaborations, as well as providing undergraduates the satisfaction of seeing their works published in an institutional repository and providing them with permanent URLs to share with potential employers and graduate schools. In addition to hosting student works in specifically undergraduate focused conferences and journals hosted by IPFW, the Student Research and Creative Endeavor Commons also includes sections called Student/Faculty Collaborative Presentations and Student/Faculty Collaborative Publications, which will serve to highlight the many opportunities IPFW undergraduates have to gain valuable real world experience working hand-in-hand with faculty scholars. We have sought to streamline the process of promoting such collaborations for our professors by adding a button to the submission fields for publications and presentations in the various departmental areas of our repository which simply says, “Does this work include student research?” If “Yes” is selected, a copy of the work will automatically flow into the Student/Faculty Collaborative Presentations or Student/Faculty Collaborative Publications areas. Beyond publishing student works, the Student Research and Creative Endeavor Commons will also seek to be a driving force in the future of undergraduate research by hosting an open access scholarly journal relating to the pedagogical underpinnings of student research and publishing. In addition outlining present accomplishments and future goals, I will also discuss some of the practical challenges we have faced in creating a space within the repository designed to meet the unique needs undergraduate research in its myriad varieties and navigating the treacherous waters of wildly varying faculty paradigms of student/faculty collaboration from discipline to discipline, as well as how we, along with our faithful bepress consultants, have met and will continue to meet these challenges. In summary, the Student Research and Creative Endeavor Commons will showcase undergraduate research and publishing, along with student/faculty collaborations, and will, in turn, promote the unique opportunities students at IPFW have to work alongside faculty in scholarship and creative endeavors. We also hope that the presence of a uniquely undergraduate focused area within our repository will serve to further drive rigorous undergraduate scholarship, creative endeavor, and student/faculty collaborations at IPFW