Undergraduate research is a powerful way to create research-rich experiences and courses for students at all levels. For individual STEM faculty, the payoffs come in many ways including richer connections and contributions to his or her discipline along with greater levels of research output. For departments, impacts include access to stronger students and an enhanced intellectual climate. However, getting all faculty in a department rowing in the same direction requires attention to a large array of issues in order to build and sustain cohesive programs. We have witnessed these challenges in our collaborations during the past decade with over 3,000 individuals from 600 institutions that have been seeking to institutionalize undergraduate research on their campuses. These campuses have included schools interested in undergraduate research in STEM areas, others who want to embed it campus wide, entire state systems or consortia and, in our most recent efforts, campuses interested in developing research-rich curricula. We have observed large variations in how each campus and system incorporated undergraduate research into departments and their curricula. Using the results of independent culture audits, we will discuss how the culture of each system or institution helped shape the undergraduate research programs that were adopted. A discussion of what has worked, current challenges, ongoing implementation issues, and lessons learned from the institutions’ experiences will take place. Our current efforts to conduct fundamental research on student, faculty, departmental, and disciplinary influences on the process of integrating and scaffolding the components and outcomes of undergraduate research throughout a four-year curriculum will be described.

Using undergraduate research to enhance STEM education at the individual and departmental Level

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.