FALL 2008 • Volume 29, Number 1
CUR Focus
Kathy Hoke, Lisa Gentile,
University of Richmond
Early Involvement in Undergraduate Research at the University of Richmond
The University of Richmond (UR) is a private, liberal arts institution of approximately 2,800 undergraduate students that
is very focused on undergraduate research across its campus.
In the summer of 2008, there were 145 students involved in
undergraduate research in science and mathematics, 29 percent
of whom were funded internally and 71 percent of whom were
funded externally by various grants and awards (HHMI, MerckAAAS, Beckman, NIH, NSF, ACS-PRF, etc). One of the distinctive
features of our undergraduate-research program in these areas
is the number of students who get involved at early stages in
their careers in significant interdisciplinary research projects.
In general, the purpose of our undergraduate research program
is to cultivate further interest in STEM areas and increase the
number of undergraduates, particularly among underrepresented groups, who feel well prepared for graduate level research.
We also seek ways for our students to improve their oral and
written communication skills, learn to be better scientists, and
increase their self-confidence and ability to work independently. That undergraduate research experiences lead to these
outcomes is well documented (see, for example, Guterman,
2007; Lopatto, 2004; Russell, Hancock & McCullough, 2007;
Seymour, Hunter, Laursen & DeAntoni, 2004; Wilson, 2006).
Involving first- and second-year students in research enhances
these outcomes in several ways. Early engagement in science
is important for retention (NRC, 1999), and undergraduate
research can capture a student’s interest before she or he
decides to pursue other majors. When a first-year student
becomes involved in a research project and continues the
work for multiple years, there is more time to make a significant contribution to the field that culminates in presentations at regional or national meetings and in peer-reviewed
publications. Finally, there is more opportunity for students
to become integrated into a community of interdisciplinary
scholars and to generally be immersed in the process of doing
science and mathematics.
This article describes the financial support the University of
Richmond has obtained for undergraduates’ early involvement in research, the programmatic features we have included
that specifically address the needs of first- and second-year
students, and challenges we have faced. In addition, how we
measure success is discussed.
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Early Undergraduate Research Involvement
in the Sciences
In the sciences, early involvement in research has been supported primarily by two major grants from the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI, 2004-2008 and 2008-2012),
supplemented with internal funds. Both of the university’s
HHMI grants have two mechanisms for supporting early undergraduate research experiences: a pre-freshman program and a
program for first- and second-year students. The pre-freshman
program supports between five and 13 incoming students per
summer. It focuses on underrepresented groups, including students from the African American, Native American, Hispanic,
Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander communities, as well as those who are first-generation college students,
those who are economically disadvantaged, and women in
computer science or physics. The office of admissions identifies students who have expressed an interest in science from
these under-represented groups. These students spend 4.5
weeks on campus the summer before their freshman year
doing research in a lab that has been matched with their interests. They are housed in a single dorm with a resident advisor
(RA) (for liability reasons, students are housed in a dorm with a
designated RA rather than in apartments with the majority of
research students). Not only do these pre-freshmen gain valuable research experience, they also meet each other as well as
other research students and a research mentor before officially
arriving for the fall of their freshman year, giving rise to an early
support network.
The second HHMI-supported program providing early undergraduate research experiences for our students is aimed at students completing their freshman and sophomore years who are
interested in an interdisciplinary research experience. Students
are chosen for this program based on a competitive application process and spend 10 weeks on campus doing research full
time in a lab of their choosing. All students from this program
who choose to live on campus are housed in university apartments with other summer-research students. In UR’s first HHMI
grant, funding was provided for 10 such students per summer,
while in the second, 24 students will be supported from a combination of HHMI (14 students) and internal funds (10 students).
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HHMI-funded fall Science Symposium. All science-research
students are encouraged to participate in this symposium,
which also features a keynote talk from a well-known interdisciplinary scientist.
2008 HHMI first-and second-year research students
For all of these students, funding is provided by HHMI for lab
supplies ($1,250 per year per student) and travel to professional
meetings to make presentations ($750 year per student).
For the students in this program, we focus on broadening their
perspectives, forming a supportive community (see below) and
providing opportunities for them to communicate their results.
We designed a New Collaborations Seminar Series in which
HHMI-funded students and their mentors choose an interdisciplinary scientist to invite to campus and give a seminar. For
these seminars, the HHMI students are encouraged to interact
informally with the seminar speaker (they take them to breakfast) and then to attend their talks. By having different students
and mentors select the speakers, we ensure that a wide variety
of interdisciplinary topics are introduced to the students. For
the 2007-08 academic year, the following interdisciplinary
speakers spoke on campus: Jose Onuchic (Center for Theoretical
Biological Physics and Department of Physics, University of San
Diego); Liisa Galea (Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, University
of British Columbia); Sue Mooberry (Southwest Foundation for
Biomedical Research); Adrian Roitberg (Computational Nanoand Bio-Physical Chemistry, University of Florida); Chris Miller
(Biochemistry, Brandeis University); Linda McGown, (Center
for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute); Danielle Liubicich (Department of
Integrative Biology, University of California-Berkeley); and
Jeanne Nerbonne (Department of Developmental Biology,
Washington University School of Medicine).
To build communication skills and to continue broadening
their scientific perspectives, HHMI-funded students present
either an oral or poster presentation of their research at the
Students who have been supported for summer-research
opportunities by either of these HHMI programs are then
eligible to feed into other externally funded programs as
juniors and seniors. For example, one student was funded
to do research the summers after his freshman and sophomore years by HHMI. The summer after his junior year he was
funded by UR’s interdisciplinary Merck-AAAS scholars program,
all while working with the same mentor. He has co-authored
two peer-reviewed publications and will start graduate school
in biochemistry following graduation. Another student was
similarly funded by HHMI and is currently, in his junior year,
funded by UR’s Beckman scholar’s program. He has had two
peer-reviewed publications and is planning to attend graduate
school in chemistry.
Early Undergraduate Research Involvement
in Mathematics
Richmond’s mathematics department has a long history of
engaging undergraduates in research; however, the initial summer experiences were somewhat frustrating. Although the
typical research student would be completing his or her third
year, too much of the 10-week experience was spent simply
familiarizing students with the mathematics necessary for
the research. The faculty in mathematics sought to change
this experience. They observed that the science programs
were recruiting research students earlier and keeping them
longer, which led to the idea of the LURE program—the Long
Term Undergraduate Research Experience. Specifically, LURE
recruits first- and second-year students and pairs them with
faculty members who serve as mentors throughout a two-year
research experience. Through closely supervised research and
independent study activities spanning two summers (10-weeks
each) and two academic years, students experience all the
steps in a research project, from background reading to the
professional presentation of results.
In 2004, the mathematics faculty submitted an unsuccessful
proposal to NSF for the LURE program through NSF’s Workforce
in the Mathematical Sciences program; the main criticism of
the proposal was its limited impact. The math faculty decided
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FALL 2008 • Volume 29, Number 1
to form a consortium of schools running parallel programs, and
NSF funded the new proposal in 2006. Now in its second year,
it is a collaborative effort among Central Michigan University,
Sam Houston State University, Coppin State University, Olin
College, and UR (two comprehensive universities, a historically
black university, a gender-balanced engineering college, and a
selective liberal arts college, respectively).
Prior to LURE, the number of students doing mathematics
research in a particular summer had oscillated between zero
and 10, and only a handful of faculty members were involved.
The LURE program involves all mathematics faculty members
at our university, who rotate in and out over a four-year period;
they mentor between 15 and 20 students each summer. Each
faculty member commits to being engaged for two consecutive years, during which time they lead a group of three to four
students working on a single problem. The expectations of
the faculty mentor during this two-year period are significant;
therefore (in contrast to the science program) each mentor is
paid a summer stipend in both summers he or she is involved.
The program was designed to mimic the science model, particularly the strong mentoring aspect that comes with recruiting
students early into labs and working with them over a period
of two to three years. Community-building within and among
groups is therefore essential. Realizing this after the first summer, the principal investigators made a successful request to
NSF for supplementary funding to add a student assistant at
each of the five participating schools. In the second summer,
UR hired a rising senior with strong research skills and an innate
ability for building community to work with all of the math
research groups and serve as liaison among the groups.
The mathematics students get ample opportunity to hone
their oral communication skills. At the end of the summer,
all mentors and students from each of the five participating
schools come together for a conference, to meet each other
and present their results. In addition, all UR groups meet each
Friday afternoon during the summer, with one person from
each group giving a presentation. At these sessions, the students also learn how to listen to and respond to mathematics
talks. The students relish the opportunity to question their
colleagues and report that they try to anticipate the questions
likely to be asked when preparing their talks.
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One of the University of Richmond mathematics research teams
Recruitment and Community-Building
Activities
In both our mathematics and our science programs, involving
first- and second-year students, recruitment, and community
building are important. Students are recruited into the science program via multiple routes. During the academic year,
faculty present an overview of their research in a Research
Introduction seminar series. Students in first-year science and
math courses are encouraged, and often required, to attend a
certain number of these seminars. Faculty at UR, in general, are
very pro-active about talking about their research and recruiting students into their programs. In fact, before students even
arrive on campus to start their first year, they hear about
undergraduate research at on-campus events such as scholar’s
interviews, recruiting weekends, etc. In addition, some departments include a research component as part of their early
coursework. The mathematicians take a similar approach, making announcements in all introductory mathematics classes
and writing letters to all incoming students who scored well
on the Calculus Advanced Placement exam.
In both programs students submit an application that includes
transcripts (for grades as well as course history) and a statement
of interest. The science students select a mentor (who writes
a letter of recommendation) and write a short proposal. The
mathematics students, on the other hand, rank their choice of
projects from a list generated by the faculty members involved,
but they are ultimately assigned to a group. These students
provide a letter of recommendation from one of their math
Council on Undergraduate Research • www.cur.org
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instructors. For both programs, a faculty committee makes the
final selection.
The faculty members in both the sciences and math provide
many community-building activities for involved students. For
example, during the summer of 2007, research students went
whitewater rafting, attended a Richmond Braves baseball game
and fireworks extravaganza on July 4th, and went to Busch
Gardens. Each Thursday all the math groups ate lunch together,
picking restaurants off campus. Very popular with the math
group were student/faculty game nights and a field trip to the
National Security Agency. At the end of the summer, all science
and math research students get together over lunch, while volunteers give informal presentations of summer results.
Challenges
There are challenges specific to working with students early in
their college careers, many of which revolve around their lack
of formal course training in required areas. In both the sciences
and mathematics, close mentoring is vital. Each mentor must
bring his or her students up to a level at which they can understand the problems in the relevant area. Since the students in
the sciences are all working in different disciplines, individual
faculty members are left to devise strategies to give them the
necessary background to contribute in meaningful ways to
their research, which can range widely from projects involving theoretical computational chemistry to those involving
ecological field studies. Many different strategies have been
devised for this, ranging from group meetings (some groups
alternate meetings on data and meetings on theory), to forming research teams (composed of pre-freshman, early research
students, as well as more advanced research students), to taking students to smaller local meetings.
A similar situation exists with the math students. Because they
are not too far past the introductory mathematics curriculum,
much of the first summer is spent on background material
needed to understand the research group’s area. For example,
the students in the mathematical biology group needed to
learn more about differential equations, and the students
in the coding theory group needed to learn more abstract
algebra. The goal in the first summer is to not simply teach
this material but to introduce open-ended problems and selfdirected learning. Preliminary results from assessment focus
groups at the end of the first summer indicated that getting
beyond background material to problems over which students
could feel some ownership was critical to the student’s feeling
the summer was successful. The issue that the mathematicians
faced then was how to find suitable problems for first-year
students. As in the sciences, faculty members are better able
to use their time efficiently when students work on problems
related to the faculty member’s research; the most satisfied
mentors in the first summer found good problems within their
own research areas.
Assessment
Our goals for our undergraduate-research program include
both tangible goals (to attract and retain more students in
the STEM areas and to increase the number of students who
enter graduate programs in these areas) and less tangible ones
(to improve oral and written communication skills, to train
students on how to become better scientists, and to increase
student’s self-confidence and ability to work independently).
We measure the effectiveness of our early-research programs
towards meeting the more tangible goals by measuring the
number of students who participate in these programs who
continue studying sciences, continue doing research, make presentations at regional and national meetings, co-author peerreviewed publications, and continue on to graduate school. As
a first measure of success, the pre-freshman program is attracting an increasing number of students from underrepresented
groups who continue doing research. In the first year of the
program, fewer than 50 percent continued to be involved in
research in their freshman year, while by the third summer, 92
percent continued to be involved in their labs during the academic year and 70 percent continued doing research full time
during the summer after their freshman year.
Of the 33 students who participated in the first three years of
our HHMI-funded research program for first- and second-year
students, 27 participated in research for at least two summers,
and all continued as STEM majors. Of the 11 students in the
program who have graduated, six entered PhD or MD/PhD
programs, one will do research on a Fulbright Fellowship, two
went to medical school, and two are working for a year while
applying to medical school. Twenty-four of the 33 students
have made 47 presentations at national and regional meetings
and published five peer-reviewed papers.
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FALL 2008 • Volume 29, Number 1
To measure progress towards the less tangible goals, surveys
are used. For the science students, we use both a national
and local survey. The Survey of Undergraduate Research
Experiences II (SURE-II) (http://web.grinnell.edu/sureii/), created by Dr. David Lopatto of Grinnell College and funded by
HHMI, is administered at a large cohort of colleges and universities to collect quantitative data on the benefits of undergraduate research. We also administer a local online survey,
Perceptions of the Science Program, to all students enrolled in
any science class. Partly based on a survey developed by Carol
Anne M. Kardash and Michael L. Wallace of the Department
of Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University
of Missouri-Columbia (Kardash, Wallace, 2001), this survey
also contains items created exclusively for the University of
Richmond. It is designed to assess all aspects of our science
program, but contains several questions that pertain directly to
undergraduate research. The value of this survey data is that it
allows us to compare our program to national benchmarks and
provides qualitative support for observations we make using
the counts of student retention in science.
In the mathematics program, Dr. David Lopatto helped us
develop an assessment plan that would include comparisons
to the science approach we are modeling, as well as evaluate
the value of research with first- and second-year students. We
are using the following to supplement the numbers we are collecting on retention and post-graduate work in mathematics:
•
A student survey at time of application
•
A survey at the beginning of summer research
•
The SURE survey, with supplementary questions, at the
August LURE conference
•
•
Student and mentor focus groups at the August LURE
conference
An exit survey for students who complete the two-year
project or who end the program before the end of the
two-year period
It is too early to draw conclusions, but it is interesting to
note that whereas the early science students focused on the
benefits of gaining skills in science, the first- and second-year
mathematics students appear to be more focused on the less
tangible benefits.
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Conclusions
In summary, it is both possible and enjoyable to do meaningful research in science and mathematics with students early
in their college careers. The success of these experiences
requires funding, close faculty mentoring, and programmatic
features to address each student’s level of coursework. Four
years into the science program at UR, increases in the number
of underrepresented groups (from the pre-freshman program)
participating in multi-year research projects have us excited
about the potential for future increases in the number of these
students attending graduate programs and pursuing careers in
STEM areas. Just two years into the mathematics program, we
have achieved our goal of setting up a mathematics program
that more closely models the successful early-involvement
science program, and we continue to collect data to see if we
get the same benefits. As data from multiple years becomes
available, we will be interested to see whether early involvement in research translates into more science and mathematics
students choosing to pursue higher education in these areas.
References
Committee on Undergraduate Science Education, National
Research Council. Transforming Undergraduate Education
in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 1999.
Guterman, L. What Good is Undergraduate Research, Anyway.
Chronic Higher Ed. 2007;(50):A12.
Kardash CA, Wallace M. The Perceptions of Science Classes
Survey: What Undergraduate Science Reform Efforts Really
Need to Address. J Edu Psychol. 2001(93):199-210.
Lopatto D. Survey of Undergraduate Research Experiences
(SURE): First Findings. Cell Biol Educ. 2004;3:270-277.
Russell SH, Hancock MP, McCullough J. Benefits of Undergraduate
Research Experiences. Science. 2007;316:548-549.
Seymour E, Hunter AB, Laursen S, DeAntoni T. Establishing the
benefits of research experiences for undergraduate: first findings from a three-year study. Sci Educ. 2004;88:495-594.
Wilson R. A Hothouse for Female Scientists. Chronic Higher
Ed.. 2006;52:A13.
Council on Undergraduate Research • www.cur.org
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Kathy Hoke
University of Richmond
28 Westhampton Way
Richmond, VA 23173
[email protected]
Kathy Hoke is Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences for Research
Support and associate professor of mathematics at the University
of Richmond. She is director of the university’s HHMI grant,
overseeing its components in undergraduate research, curriculum
development, and outreach. She is also co-PI on the university’s
LURE grant from NSF.
Lisa Gentile
University of Richmond
28 Westhampton Way
Richmond, VA 23173
[email protected]
Lisa Gentile is an associate professor of chemistry. She is the director of University of Richmond’s Merck-AAAS summer undergraduate research program and is involved in the university’s HHMIfunded activities. Lisa’s research program, with undergraduates as
well as high school students and teachers, focuses on the structure,
function, and thermodynamics of proteins involved in disease. She
has been supported by NIH, NSF, and ACS-PRF.
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