Workshop Details |
| Overview |
| Steering Committee |
| Program |
| Presentations |
| Participants |
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Introduction
Despite a track record of outstanding technical achievements in chemistry and related fields, there is growing concern that the number of U.S. students electing this career path is steadily declining. As shown by data taken from the National Science Foundation’s Science & Engineering Indicators 20021, the total number of degrees awarded in the physical sciences has decreased almost 13% since 1980. Degrees awarded in chemistry, although slightly increasing during the early 1990’s, also exhibit a significant downward trend since the late 1990’s. To sustain and diversify our outstanding technical workforce in these fields will require significant creativity and investment in educational infrastructure so that more students, particularly freshmen and sophomores, will be encouraged to select chemistry as a major. This goal requires that we deepen the pool of students we attempt to reach by involving them at an earlier stage of their academic careers, and that we expand the pool by including students at institutions with limited resources, such as community colleges and rural institutions. Participation in research activities is now widely recognized as a key determinant in encouraging students to pursue careers in the sciences.2-9 Anecdotal evidence supports a similar impact of research experiences on the career paths of students in chemistry. Research at the undergraduate level is also known to be a powerful pedagogical tool that significantly enhances the quality of undergraduate science education insofar as research more effectively demonstrates the collective intellectual skills needed by practicing scientists than conventional methods of science education. Undergraduate research experiences are known to provide both tangible and intangible benefits including gains in relation to2,5-9:
There is little doubt that these benefits play a significant role in recruiting undergraduates to major in science and to pursue professions in these fields. The traditional model of undergraduate research, however, provides its benefits to a relatively narrow range of students, primarily upper-level students (i.e., juniors and seniors) at institutions with the resources to support research. Since these students are usually already science majors, the recruitment value of research is limited in this model. The motivating premise that underlies this workshop is that the creation of communities of institutions that more broadly engage younger students (particularly freshmen and sophomores) in research experiences will attract a larger and more diverse student body to chemistry and related disciplines. Research projects conducted within these communities could be more broadly defined than the traditional mentor-student apprenticeship model in order to be better “titrated” to the skills of such students as well as to be consistent with available facilities and instrumentation. Appropriate activities for such a model might include traditional faculty-initiated research projects in addition to carefully designed discovery-based laboratory exercises, or basic research projects that support classroom or laboratory curriculum development, among others. To gain deeper insight into the feasibility of this concept, a workshop was held at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, Virginia from March 30 through April 2, 2003. The goals of this workshop were to assess the interest in and merits and feasibility of creating such Undergraduate Research Centers (URCs) in chemistry. The Steering Committee for this activity (Appendix 1) identified a group of individuals (Appendix 2) representing a broad array of stakeholders from research universities, predominantly undergraduate institutions, comprehensive universities, community colleges, high schools, government laboratories, industry, funding agencies, and foundations to help achieve these goals. The workshop featured seven plenary talks to present existing models for novel undergraduate research programs and small group discussions to facilitate the exploration of issues pertaining to the development of URCs. Participants considered the value of research for undergraduate students and explored alternative models for delivering research opportunities to a wider audience than is currently served by the traditional model of undergraduate research, including students earlier in their undergraduate careers, students at community colleges, and students at institutions in rural locations. Thus, the primary hypotheses of the workshop were that:
This report details the outcomes of this workshop in the form of summaries of the plenary talks and the highlights of discussions that took place during small group breakout sessions. A compendium of undergraduate research program descriptions that embody one or more of the central principles of the URC concept is also included. It is hoped that this information will be a useful resource of ideas for the community as it seeks to weave research experiences into the fabric of undergraduate education in chemistry at all levels of the curriculum. This report also contains the consensus recommendations for the development of URCs resulting from workshop discussions that are respectfully submitted to the National Science Foundation for their consideration.
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