Undergraduate Student Participation in Undergraduate Research: Preliminary Findings

Over the past decade, the researchers have worked in higher education and community-based settings and worked with dozens of undergraduate students. Personal experience of working with those students fueled our curiosity. We knew that many of the students that we had worked with really benefitted from their experiences, and we also knew that it had been valuable to our own research projects. Undergraduate research is listed as a High Impact Practice (HIPS) for the undergraduate experience: “Many colleges and universities are now providing research experiences for students in all disciplines. Undergraduate research, however, has been most prominently used in science disciplines. With strong support from the National Science Foundation and the research community, scientists are reshaping their courses to connect key concepts and questions with students’ early and active involvement in systematic investigation and research. The goal is to involve students with actively contested questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies, and the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions”. We embarked on this research to hear from the students themselves. This report represents the highlights from our preliminary findings.