Undergraduate research means many things to many people. Students can be given projects varying from PhD school level work to an expansion or further exploration of an undergraduate, even general, chemistry experiment. The level, competence, and commitment of the student researchers and the time and effort commitments by them and the faculty advisors also vary enormously. There are a number of organizations, the ACS and the CUR to name two, that are trying to support increasing amounts of undergraduate research in the curriculum. These efforts are often joined with efforts to regularize and more exactly define the undergraduate research experience. It is assumed that undergraduate research is a good, even necessary, experience for students and that the more rigorous and higher level it is the better. Is this true?
To a large number of people undergraduate research is essentially junior graduate school. At places where there are established graduate research programs some of the best undergraduates are recruited and will be assigned to a graduate student as an extra pair of hands. This experience often makes the best students better. When research institutions recruit for more graduate students they often look for candidates with some undergraduate research experience, and this is the type of thing they are usually looking for. The value of such an experience cannot be doubted. It also says much about the strengths and weaknesses of the major research schools.
Large universities such as the land grant institutions usually have thousands of graduate students, and tens of thousands of undergraduates. These programs often have research as a or the chief purpose and real reason for existence. The students, of course, and often the parents and other tax and tuition payers, think that the students themselves and their education are why the universities exist. Publicly the universities agree, but the huge class sizes in beginning classes and the high percentages of classes taught by graduate students and other nontenure track personnel lead one to think otherwise. Most chemistry programs at large research institutions have large amounts of expensive equipment which undergraduates rarely if ever see. For that matter, many of the faculty seldom see undergraduates on a regular basis.
The above has been recognized for some time, and it is often the stated purpose of undergraduate research to correct some of these problems. Undergraduate research will get students into the research labs, working with all of the expensive and fun equipment and rubbing elbows with the star faculty. These experiences will make up for the large class sizes and the other ways in which students are "treated like cattle" (to quote the students themselves). Will it?
The real reason for the large class sizes and the other mass production techniques used at large universities is their large enrollments (over 50,000 at places like the University of Minnesota). When I was a graduate student at Iowa State University twenty years ago 2500 students were taking general chemistry each quarter. The problems are worse now. These places have no recourse except to use large class sizes and other economizing measures.
Undergraduate research is supposed to give them a quality experience to make up for this, but how can it? Undergraduate research requires large amounts of faculty time and resource commitment; this is represented as one of its pluses. The resources are not there to do this for all students, so only the best receive the experience.
It is not just the large research universities that do this. Chemistry faculty all receive their initial training in an intensive graduate student research program. When they start teaching undergraduates and running their own research labs they naturally want to emulate their own early experiences. So even in an exclusively undergraduate department, the undergraduate research programs are copies of the graduate school programs, just like high school chemistry is often now a copy of general chemistry in college. Should they be this way?
Sometimes yes. Part of the job of a teacher is to develop students and prepare them to fulfil their ambitions. The best students should be encouraged to have high ambitions and they should be prepared and trained to meet and full them. And there are some professors who are very good at this. Those faculty who are good at running high profile mini graduate research programs should be encouraged to do so.
But we forget that most students are not premeds and are not going to graduate school to become copies of us, and that most premeds don’t get into medical school. Most undergraduate students are not going to become research stars. These students tend to get ignored by research programs. The reason is again that undergraduate research copies graduate research. In graduate research the goal is to obtain publishable research, and results are measured in terms of grant dollars obtained and number of papers and presentations. This is often deplored, even by the people doing the counting, but it continues to be the way the system operates. The mindset this produces in graduate students continues when they are teaching undergraduate research. It is reinforced by administrators who can count grants and papers but can’t count or measure the development of a student’s mind, and who set the tenure and promotion requirements accordingly.
Does this matter? I feel that it does. In the military there is often a tendency to put the best people in elite units and give them most of the training resources. Many officers feel that the biggest effect of this is to deprive most of the units of adequate training and lower their level of ability. Are we doing that?
Undergraduate research has stated aims that are different from graduate research. In the latter we are trying to prepare a student for doing independent chemical research. Many of the people who teach it use the verb "training". In undergraduate research we are trying to let them experience chemistry outside of an official course, to work one on one with a professor, to take one aspect of chemistry and explore it in some depth so that they can understand the concept of depth. This should be valuable to any student, not just the elite of the chemistry majors. Undergraduate research has also been charged with generating more enthusiasm and motivation among students. This is needed in almost all of our students, especially the ones not handpicked by us to go to graduate school.
I have been supervising undergraduate research for over a decade now, and I have seen the powerful effect it has on average students. Just walking up to one and saying, "if you need a few more credits next semester when you register you might think of doing some research with me" tells them that they are not anonymous, that someone (you) has noticed and approved of them and their work. The actual experience itself has an even more powerful effect. Dilution and other solution prep calculations are trivial to us, but they can be very mysterious to freshmen and sophomores, even to the ones that can do them. Having to do them "for real" gives such concepts a whole new dimension. It may be obvious to us that the next step in a project would be to double the concentration or lower the pH and try the reaction again, but for a student whose chief expression in class is silence to suggest such things on their own is a major step, very important in breaking students away from cookbook chemistry.
Undergraduate research is good for the vast majority of students, for any of them willing to do the work. The level, background, or even major of the student shouldn’t really matter if they have the motivation. No matter where the student is in their own academic development, that development will be improved by doing an undergraduate chemistry research project. And that is what education is supposed to be about. Projects can be tailored to the students level, and the sources of possible projects are vast. Many people I know won’t work with students who haven’t had at least organic "because they won’t be ready to do real work". But the student would find a lower level project, such as taking one of their general chemistry experiments one or two steps further, "real work" and very powerful in motivating them and furthering their development. This would have them that much readier to do a more involved project in that persons lab a year later. Many people who became presidents of chemical companies started out by washing test tubes.
Not just chemistry majors can profit from doing chemical undergraduate research. I now have a psychology major doing a project on developing methods for helping blind students learn organic chemistry. A few years ago I had a blind student learning organic in an allied health chemistry course. He had more trouble with understanding the three dimensional spatial nature of organic molecules than he did in lab. The campus disability office assigned him a "buddy" and that solved the second problem, but they were stymied by the first problem. My psychology major is now researching ways to solve this problem. Many students in allied health and liberal arts chemistry courses are better than they think, and they are amazed that someone, their professor no less, thinks that they could do chemical research. They often have unique insights into what can work in an undergraduate lab experiment. Researching ways to improve our undergraduate laboratories is one place where they can do very useful research.
Unfortunately, the emphasis in many programs is still on results, and on getting publishable results. CUR and the ACS have done a huge amount of work in making undergraduate research a recognized part of education, but I feel that they are making getting publishable results too important. It feeds already existing prejudices to let only the best students do research. We would all like only the best in our regular courses as well, but we know that we are here to teach those who need us. Some of our weaker students can benefit the most from a research experience, and they should have it.
I am not saying to take standards and rigor out of undergraduate research, but rather to recognize that it can occur at different levels. We all work hard at maintaining standards in courses such as liberal arts or allied health chemistry, but we recognize that these need to be at a different level than general chemistry for majors. We should do the same in our undergraduate research.
As undergraduate research becomes more commonplace and accepted, some of these perceptions and related problems may be changing. Regional meetings of the ACS and local organizations such as the Georgia Academy of Science are giving undergraduates a less intimidating place to present their work, while still giving them the presentation experience. There is a need for journals dedicated to publishing undergraduate research. Poster sessions such as the one in this conference are an excellent venue for undergraduates to present their work.
In my own work I try to have a number a projects ready for students at different levels. Here is a list of my current projects.
The above list is what I give to students thinking of doing undergraduate research with me. Some of these projects are classical undergraduate research projects, based on ideas that grew out of my own graduate research or collaborations with colleagues over the years. Others are in chemical education. There is a great need for better undergraduate laboratories at every level, and probably always will be. The students themselves often have great insight into what works and doesn’t work in an undergraduate lab setting and are very good at developing and improving the lab experiments. Many people do this with advanced students. It also works well with general chemistry, allied health, and liberal arts chemistry students.
Research experiences such as these can be useful in more than one way. One of the biggest problems in nonmajors courses is "why am I here?", the student feeling that this course have no purpose or meaning for them. A research project that they have a had in developing themselves can alleviate those feeings. Also, some of these feelings come from the more competent students, and these can be the students with biggest "attitude problems". A few such students can infect an entire class and run the educational experience. The problem can be worse because they are competent and know it. An undergraduate research project can soak up some of their energy and lead them to realize that there is more to chemistry than they thought.
I did two undergraduate research projects in my student days. I still remember doing the literature search at the beginning of the second one when I was a senior. I was academically mature enough to have written down some references that the source I was sent to look up implied were important, but I didn’t actually go look them up. My advisor had to send me back to do that. That mix of maturity and immaturity is what undergraduates are all about. Undergraduate research can be important in developing their academic maturity. I feel that this experience should not be limited to the best students, but rather should be made available to all.