What Constitutes Successful Undergraduate Research?
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What Constitutes Successful Undergraduate Research? Colin Inglefield and Adam Johnston Physics Department, Weber State University Ogden, UT, 84408-2508, U.S.A. ABSTRACT Research has become a point of much greater emphasis in the undergraduate science curriculum within the past few generations of undergraduate students. However, there is not universal agreement upon what constitutes a successful undergraduate research program, and how degrees of success should be measured. A model for a successful program based principally on student ownership of research projects will be presented here. This approach is an attempt to give undergraduate students the most holistic research experience possible, by involving them in all stages of a research project in a limited amount of time. A central goal for each student is a definable product of their particular project, which is disseminated to as wide an external audience as possible. Measures of success, from student perspectives, will be discussed. These measures include data from interviews of students before and after their research experience. INTRODUCTION The number of students involved in some kind of research project, throughout the sciences, has risen to the point where it may be viewed as a standard part of the undergraduate curriculum. For example, in a survey of graduating seniors in physics departments from the class of 2000, only 26% listed no undergraduate research experience [1]. Clearly, we do not want to define a successful research program by participation alone. This means that, both in terms of educational and career goals of students, the quality of the research experience is very important. Defining quality requires some agreement upon what constitutes a successful program beyond participation. For example, how should scholarly value of the research, and efficiency of doing research, be balanced and prioritized with the educational benefit for the student? The answer to this particular question is probably strongly dependent on the research goals as defined by the particular institution and will have no universal answer. Nonetheless, there is available literature to aid institutions and mentors in creating viable programs, including issues related to institutional evaluation of undergraduate research as compared to other research [2], and what level of scholarly activity is implied by the term “research” [3]. Here we focus on measures of success from the student perspective. Any such measure of success will be twofold since undergraduate research necessarily has the dual purpose of contributing to the body of knowledge within the discipline, and educating the student researcher. For the former, success might be measured by the degree to which particular goals of productivity set by both student and mentor are met. In principle this type of success could be measured by the periodic “audits” which are done by the mentor, department, or institution. Measuring the educational benefits for the student researcher is a somewhat more ambiguous process. If
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