Membership
CUR Membership is designed to guide and assist faculty, mentors, administrators, researchers, staff, and students in their efforts to develop, enhance, sustain, and support undergraduate research on their campuses and beyond.
Bethany Usher, PhD.
Radford University, CUR Immediate Past President
Recognition
CUR recognizes institutions that have exemplary programs providing high-quality research experiences to undergraduates, as well as faculty facilitating undergraduate research at their institutions through their mentorship and leadership, and undergraduate research students excelling in their disciplines.
Publications
Over the last few years, CUR leaders have been conversing with funding agencies, industry partners, human resource experts, future employers, professional societies, and beyond to understand the impact of URSCI on career readiness. Take a look at our latest position statement on Recognizing URSCI as a Career-Readiness Tool.
Jeanne Mekolichick
Radford University, Author of Position Paper
Advocacy
For CUR, advocacy primarily means bringing the CUR message to legislators, staffers, and agency representatives in Washington, DC, or helping our members spread the message to their state levels. CUR engages in advocacy through many avenues.
Mission
The mission of the Council on Undergraduate Research is to support and promote high-quality mentored undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative inquiry.
Upcoming Events
Featured Event:
ConnectUR 2025 in Grand Rapids, MI
June 16-18, 2025
The ConnectUR conference will provide a forum where attendees can draw on knowledge exchange, scholarship of teaching and learning, group discussion, and community building to expand their approaches to undergraduate research. Registration will open in March 2025.
Apr 21
Undergraduate Research Week 2025
April 21-25, 2025
This is a national celebration in which CUR showcases what other campuses are doing to celebrate undergraduate research, congratulate students, and thank those faculty and mentors who have helped guide the way.
Apr 21
CUR Conversation: Teacher Research Thinking and ‘reasoning’ AI
April 21, 2025
Preservice and in-service teacher thinking risks being outsourced to ‘reasoning’ models of AI (e.g. Open AI 3.0 mini and Deep Seek). Simultaneously, the same risk is true for the thinking of the school students they teach. This webinar provides ways to manage this risk through conceptualization and practice about facilitating rich research thinking, using examples from the open-access Springer book ‘Research Thinking for Responsive Teaching’.
Apr 23
URP Exchange: Cultivating a Research Mindset on Campus
April 23, 2025
Hosted by the CUR Undergraduate Research Program Division, these 50-minute Zoom sessions are monthly facilitated exchanges of ideas and information on a variety of topics and issues related to undergraduate research programs.
