Beyond the Classroom: Educating Undergraduates in Materials Science Research and Careers via the CPIMA SURE Program

2001 ◽  
Vol 684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marni Goldman ◽  
Charles G. Wade ◽  
Brenda E. Waller ◽  
Curtis W. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Career Decisions ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Traditional Classroom ◽  
Polymer Interfaces ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Macromolecular Assemblies

ABSTRACTThe Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies (CPIMA), an NSF MRSEC and joint partnership among Stanford University, IBM Almaden, and University of California at Davis, established the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program in 1995. Its mission is twofold: to expose undergraduate students to cutting-edge research and to help students with their ultimate career decisions. Approximately twenty-five students each summer are assigned a research project under the direction of a mentor. Students are exposed to a variety of research environments including universities, industry, and laboratories overseas. Regardless of site, students participate in research group meetings and learn the research process –a valuable experience that is often not obtained during a student's undergraduate years. To complete the research experience, SURE students attend a CPIMA Forum where they present posters on their research and interact with members of both academia and industry. While undergraduates are exposed to academia, they are often not exposed to industry or alternative careers. SURE students learn about industrial research by visiting IBM and getting a tour of the Almaden Research Center. A Career Day is held during the Program where students are given workshops on applying to graduate school as well as talks from people in different scientific careers, both traditional and nontraditional. Assessment surveys show that after their exposure to a number of experiences and ideas over 10 weeks, the SURE students have learned important lessons that a traditional classroom does not afford. To date, over 150 students have participated.

High-Impact Practices in Materials Science Education: Student Research Internships Leading to Pedagogical Innovation in STEM Laboratory Learning Activities

MRS Advances ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (31-32) ◽  
pp. 1667-1672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lon A. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Digital Design ◽  
Education Student ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Student Research ◽  
Pedagogical Innovation

ABSTRACTTraditional lecture-centered approaches alone are inadequate for preparing students for the challenges of creative problem solving in the STEM disciplines. As an alternative, learnercentered and other high-impact pedagogies are gaining prominence. The Wabash College 3D Printing and Fabrication Center (3D-PFC) supports several initiatives on campus, but one of the most successful is a computer-aided design (CAD) and fabrication-based undergraduate research internship program. The first cohort of four students participated in an eight-week program during the summer of 2015. A second group of the four students was successfully recruited to participate the following summer. This intensive materials science research experience challenged students to employ digital design and fabrication in the design, testing, and construction of inexpensive scientific instrumentation for use in introductory STEM courses at Wabash College. The student research interns ultimately produced a variety of successful new designs that could be produced for less than $25 per device and successfully detect analytes of interest down to concentrations in the parts per million (ppm) range. These student-produced instruments have enabled innovations in the way introductory instrumental analysis is taught on campus. Beyond summer work, the 3D-PFC staffed student interns during the academic year, where they collaborated on various cross-disciplinary projects with students and faculty from departments such as mathematics, physics, biology, rhetoric, history, classics, and English. Thus far, the student work has led to three campus presentations, four presentations at national professional conferences, and three peer-reviewed publications. The following report highlights initial progress as well as preliminary assessment findings.

In To Africa: Teaching Nanoscience to Undergraduates in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian H. Augustine ◽  
Orde Q. Munro
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Laboratory Course ◽  
Kwazulu Natal

ABSTRACTThere has been considerable interest in developing curricular programs and materials for teaching undergraduate courses in nanoscience in the United States and other developed countries in the past decade. Materials science and nanoscience research programs are growing in developing countries in South America, Africa and Asia. However, there still exists a significant disconnect between the research efforts in developing countries and undergraduate coursework. This report will focus on the teaching of an upper-division one semester lecture/laboratory course developed at James Madison University (JMU) called “The Science of the Small: An Introduction to the Nanoworld” taught in the School of Chemistry at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg (UKZN-PMB), South Africa in 2009 through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar program. We report insights into the preparation needed to teach a cutting-edge laboratory course in South Africa. Also addressed will be some of the challenges of teaching an instrument-intensive laboratory course in a developing country, academic preparation of the typical native isiZulu-speaking UKZN undergraduate student compared to a typical U.S. student, and pre and post attitudes and content assessment of students who were enrolled in the course. Further discussed will be observations of post-apartheid science and math education in South Africa, and the beginning of a pilot program bringing South African undergraduate students to the U.S. to gain undergraduate research experience.

Seeding undergraduate research experience: From Georgia Tech to KFUPM case study

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-323
Author(s):  
Samir Al-Ghadhban ◽  
Ali Muqaibel ◽  
Ghassan Alregib ◽  
Ali Al-Shaikhi
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Group Structure ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Georgia Tech ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Research Experiences ◽  
Course Structure ◽  
Experience Survey

In this paper, implementation and outcomes of an undergraduate research course are presented. The associated gains and learning outcomes of the course are evaluated and benchmarked with other international undergraduate research experiences. The course was offered to undergraduate students at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). The research group structure adopts Georgia Tech model. The paper summarizes the course structure, content, and best practices. In addition, the results of undergraduate research experience survey are presented and analyzed. The students reported significant gains in understanding of the research process and significant improvements in writing and oral presentation skills.

scholarly journals Early year undergraduate researchers’ reflections on the values and perceived costs of their research experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaye D. Ceyhan ◽  
John W. Tillotson
Keyword(s):  
Achievement Motivation ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Expectancy Value ◽  
Research Experiences ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Future Work

Abstract Background Prior research reported that motivational beliefs that individuals attach to specific tasks predict continuing interest and persistence in the task. A motivational approach may be particularly useful for understanding undergraduate students’ engagement with research in their first and second years in college. The current study utilizes the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation to qualitatively explore how much and in what ways early year undergraduate researchers value their research experience and what kinds of costs they associate with it. Results The results revealed that intrinsic value had the highest expression in participants’ motivation to engage in research. The second most expressed value type was the utility value of undergraduate research with regards to obtaining the desired outcomes, and attainment value played the least important role in participants’ motivation to engage in research. Findings also indicated that some of the participants associated a cost(s) to their research experience. The highest mentioned perceived cost was opportunity cost, where participants commented on losing other valued alternatives when engaging in research. Participants commented on the time, effort, or amount of work needed to engage in research, and a few participants commented on the emotional cost associated with their research experience in terms of the fear of failure. Conclusion As perceived cost is the least studied in the expectancy-value framework, this study contributes to cost values within college students, particularly about early year undergraduate researchers. The findings of this study can form the basis for future work on exploring ways to increase the values and decrease the costs students experience in their undergraduate research experiences.

Expanding Toolkits for Heritage Perpetuation

2016 ◽  
pp. 1841-1858
Author(s):  
Karl A. Hoerig ◽  
John R. Welch ◽  
T. J. Ferguson ◽  
Gabriella Soto
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
School Students ◽  
Western Apache ◽  
Field School ◽  
Resource Managers

From 2010 to 2013, the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the University of Arizona, with funding from the National Science Foundation, hosted the Western Apache Ethnography and Geographic Information Science Research Experience for Undergraduates. Designed to foster practical skills and scholarly capacities for future resource managers and anthropologists, this field school introduced Apache and non-native undergraduate students to ethnographic field research and GIS tools. Building upon the extensive arrays of geographical, cultural, and historical data that are available for Western Apache territory, field school students engaged in community-based participatory research with Western Apache elders and tribal natural and heritage resource personnel to contribute to the Western Apache tribes' efforts to document their cultural histories, traditional ecological knowledge, local understanding of geography, and issues of historic and contemporary resource management. This essay reviews the program and traces how student alumni have incorporated skills and perspectives gained into their subsequent academic and professional work.

Comparing Mentor and Mentee Perspectives in a Research-Based Undergraduate Mentoring Program

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Y. Tsai ◽  
Daria Kotys-Schwartz ◽  
Beverly Louie ◽  
Virginia Ferguson ◽  
Alyssa Berg
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Retention Rate ◽  
Mentoring Relationships ◽  
Mentoring Program ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Engineering Research ◽  
Reflective Questions ◽  
Undergraduate Mentoring

At the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), a research-based undergraduate mentoring program is now in its second year of implementation. The program, Your Own Undergraduate Research Experience (YOU’RE@CU) has three main goals: improve the retention rate of diverse groups in undergraduate engineering, build undergraduate interest in engineering research, and prepare graduate students to take on leadership roles in either academia or industry-based research careers. In YOU’RE@CU, undergraduate students are paired with a graduate mentor and work in the graduate student’s lab several hours a week. Undergraduate mentees enroll in a one-credit seminar course focusing on research and graduate school opportunities, and are assessed via pre- and post-surveys to gauge their excitement and interest in engineering. The undergraduates also respond to biweekly qualitative reflective questions while participating in the program. Graduate mentors complete several reflective questions about their experiences and are required to complete pre- and post-assessments. Adopting a person-centered, case study approach, this paper focuses on two telling examples of research-based mentoring relationships in the YOU’RE@CU program. Given identical mentor training through YOU’RE@CU, two graduate students start the Spring 2012 semester by meeting with their mentees to launch a research project. By examining application, pre-survey, reflective questions, and post-survey responses from these four participants, the differences in the trajectory of the two paired mentoring relationships can be clearly seen over the course of one semester. This close examination of two disparate mentoring relationships is instructive in understanding the subtle details that create either a positive learning environment or an uncomfortable lab situation for young engineers, and assists program administrators in making improvements in subsequent years.

scholarly journals Recommendations for Effective Integration of Ethics and Responsible Conduct of Research (E/RCR) Education into Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Meeting Report

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. mr2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Diaz-Martinez ◽  
Ginger R. Fisher ◽  
David Esparza ◽  
Jay M. Bhatt ◽  
Christina E. D’Arcy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Responsible Conduct Of Research ◽  
Meeting Report ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Research Experiences ◽  
Undergraduate Research Experiences ◽  
Responsible Conduct ◽  
Effective Integration

Advancement of the scientific enterprise relies on individuals conducting research in an ethical and responsible manner. Educating emergent scholars in the principles of ethics/responsible conduct of research (E/RCR) is therefore critical to ensuring such advancement. The recent impetus to include authentic research opportunities as part of the undergraduate curriculum, via course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), has been shown to increase cognitive and noncognitive student outcomes. Because of these important benefits, CUREs are becoming more common and often constitute the first research experience for many students. However, despite the importance of E/RCR in the research process, we know of few efforts to incorporate E/RCR education into CUREs. The Ethics Network for Course-based Opportunities in Undergraduate Research (ENCOUR) was created to address this concern and promote the integration of E/RCR within CUREs in the biological sciences and related disciplines. During the inaugural ENCOUR meeting, a four-pronged approach was used to develop guidelines for the effective integration of E/RCR in CUREs. This approach included: 1) defining appropriate student learning objectives; 2) identifying relevant curriculum; 3) identifying relevant assessments; and 4) defining key aspects of professional development for CURE facilitators. Meeting outcomes, including the aforementioned E/RCR guidelines, are described herein.

Undergraduate Research at a Liberal Arts College during a Time of Disruption

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-78
Author(s):  
Christopher Fuse ◽  
◽  
Ashley Cannaday ◽  
Whitney Coyle ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Computational Studies ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Usual Research

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors, who have expertise in acoustics, optics, and astrophysics, decided to pivot from the experimental components of their research and focus instead on computational studies. Many of their usual research practices were adapted, creating new techniques to optimize the remote research experience for their undergraduate students.

Application of Computer Simulation in Materials Science

2012 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 453-456
Author(s):  
Su Ping You
Keyword(s):  
Heat Treatment ◽  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Material Design ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Simulation Methods ◽  
Simulation Technology ◽  
Material Microstructure ◽  
Qualitative Estimate

The computer simulation methods have become more and more widely used technique in materials science research. This paper discusses the importance of the application of computer simulation in the field of materials science. There are many application areas of computer simulation in materials science including the heat treatment, material microstructure, corrosion and protection, casting, and material design areas. It can be seen from the results of these applications that computer simulation technology is an efficient, realistic way to fully reflect the variation of the sample in a variety of research process. It can get rid of a rough qualitative estimate of production of the backward state.

scholarly journals MUREs - a new member of the URE-CURE family of research opportunities for undergrads

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly E. Bates ◽  
Shanna Lowes ◽  
Sarah L. West
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Research Experiences ◽  
Research Opportunities ◽  
Biology Students ◽  
Undergraduate Research Experiences ◽  
Stem Students ◽  
Experiential Research

Undergraduate research experiences are important for the development of scientific identity, appreciation of authentic research, and to improve persistence towards science careers. We identified a gap in experiential research opportunities for undergraduate Biology students who were seeking a formal yet small-scale research experience that was unique to their own interests and career aspirations. These opportunities may be especially worthwhile for STEM students aspiring to non-research scientific careers (i.e., medicine, dentistry, forensics, communication) and underrepresented STEM students. Here, we reflect on the use of small-scale, individualized undergraduate research experiences that are based on established methods (MURE). These experiences have helped to fill this gap and create problem-centred learning opportunities for undergraduate students that are as unique as the students themselves.

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