<p>USA Today article on undergraduate science and tech opportunities for research</p>
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Traditionally, undergraduate education has taken place in the classroom, while research has been for graduate students and faculty. No more. College and universities are pushing hard to get many more undergraduates involved in research.</p>
<p>More than one-third of graduates at the University of California-Irvine do research work with faculty. Rutgers, Georgia Tech and the Universities of Florida and North Carolina-Greensboro are among numerous large institutions to ramp up major undergraduate research initiatives in recent years.</p>
<p>So have smaller schools, like Meredith, a women's college in Raleigh. And numerous journals and conferences have sprung up as venues for young researchers to present work.</p>
<p>Occasionally, undergraduates make genuinely important research contributions — such as the University of Michigan students involved in the discovery of a key breast cancer gene.</p>
<p>Far more often, though, it's about experience rather than outcome.</p>
<p>"It changes the students," Barthalmus says. "They see themselves more like graduate students and faculty. They go to faculty seminars. They become colleagues."
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<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-02-05-undergrad-research_x.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-02-05-undergrad-research_x.htm</a></p>
<p>I definitley agree with the last paragraph of the article exerpt posted. At our university all tenured faculty and even some emeritus faculty are available for independent study research for credit. And almost all colleagues I know enjoy the mentoring relationship which inevidibly developes. Sometimes the biggest surprise comes when we give them their own building/lab keys. Its a very tangible signal that their faculty mentor sees them as more than just another undergrad.</p>
<p>And of course there are the surprises. I walked into our big bay hydraulic lab one morning and there was this crude wooden platform holding a 12 foot sonotube above and with a small garbage can below positioned so he could load it from a perimeter catwalk. I immediately knew that it was my undergrad IS student who was doing landfill leachate research and didn't have the budget to purchase a large scale manometer. A week later it was rigged with 6 piezometers which the lab did have and the contraption worked like a charm.</p>
<p>My daughter at Florida State has had some marvelous opportunities as an undergrad to do research, including individually funded research and having her work published. I've never seen undergrads with this kind of opportunity before...I am amazed.</p>