Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia’s Center for
Undergraduate Research Opportunities was the subject of a presentation at the
annual fall conference of the American Society for Cell Biology.
CURO’s Pamela Kleiber and Marcus Fechheimer, a professor of cellular biology and a member of the advisory board
of CURO’s research apprentice program, discussed the unique opportunities
offered by CURO and shared quantitative and qualitative methods used to
evaluate how CURO has affected student participation in research. For example, participation in CURO’s annual
spring symposium has grown from 74 to 178 students in the five years it has
been held. Further, the number of students
writing Honors theses has increased nearly a thousand fold as compared to the
period before CURO was formed.
UGA’s Office of Institutional Research provided additional
data, which revealed that the total number of students who have registered for
research courses has approximately doubled in the seven years since CURO was
created. In 2004, the most recent year for which data is available, 55 percent
of graduating seniors and 67 percent of graduating Honors students were
involved in a research course or project for academic credit during their
collegiate experience.
“Colleagues from other institutions admired the fact that
CURO is university-wide and involves students studying not only the sciences,
but the humanities, arts and social sciences,” says Kleiber, associate director
of the Honors Program. “They were also impressed that CURO was established in
the Honors Program and achieved institutional permanence and stability, using
the Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education grant from the federal government.
Other external funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the
National Science Foundation has allowed CURO to expand the scope of its
programs.”
Kleiber and Fechheimer assessed the effectiveness of CURO
for the last two years in the context of the ongoing national dialogue prompted
by the Boyer Commission Report on Reinventing Undergraduate Education. The 1998
report challenged research universities, in particular, to share their vast
intellectual resources with their undergraduate population through innovative
programs promoting inquiry, investigation and discovery.
“A series of major reports regarding the state of education
in universities across the U.S.
in the last five to ten years call for reform,” says Fechheimer, who has
mentored undergraduates with UGA colleague Ruth Furukawa since the 1980s. “The
CURO program at UGA is one model of an innovation that has been implemented
with some success and significant hope for future gains with continued effort
and commitment.”
Since CURO’s inception, Kleiber has coordinated special
opportunities for students to engage in research in a variety of disciplines
guided by faculty mentors. These opportunities include intensive summer
experiences, research apprenticeships during the first two years of college,
and seminars and forums focused on the research process from inspiration to
final product. The “Promising Scholars” program, one of the newest sponsored by
NSF funds, provides stipends for academically outstanding high school students
and their teachers to attend CURO’s spring undergraduate research
symposium.
Financial assistance from the Provost’s Office, the
Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute and the Graduate School
at UGA has allowed student-faculty research partnerships to also grow over the
years. Summer fellowships have increased from 19 participants in 2001 to 25 in
2005, while research apprenticeships have seen the biggest jump from 19 in 2001
to 39 in 2005. The success stories of former CURO apprentices such as 2005
Goldwater Scholars Melissa Cabinian and Caelin Cubeñas have helped elevate
CURO’s reputation further.
Although CURO has achieved some success, one of the findings
of the CURO assessment was that fewer than 10 percent of those students engaged
in a research course during their four years completed a thesis or presented at
an undergraduate research symposium. Kleiber and Fechheimer hope to increase
this level of engagement so that the students will develop the necessary
skills, values and confidence gained during such an intensive experience. These
capstone projects can translate into admissions essays for graduate or
professional school applications or transferable skills experience for a
career, they note.
“Undergraduate research is here to stay at UGA and other
research institutions across the U.S. Many schools are seeking ways
to enhance student engagement and CURO is a great way to accomplish this goal
and to create a culture of inquiry,” says Fechheimer. “The fact that the
conference participants were so complimentary and wanted to know more about the
program made the effort to share our experiences at UGA truly rewarding. At the
same time, the study is valuable because it shows us where we are and helps to
focus on major goals for the future.”
Fechheimer and Kleiber also plan
to submit a paper on the subject to the education journal sponsored by the
society.
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Note to Editors:
Photo of Pamela Kleiber and Marcus Fechheimer available at
http://ugaphoto.alumni.uga.edu/special/honors.jpg
