Benefiting Historically Excluded Student Populations Through Targeted Undergraduate Research Programming

Introductory political science courses are considered Gateway courses to student success in college, yet those courses rarely use high impact practices. This study investigated student-led research projects based on the idea of a Coursebased Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) as a means to increase students’ self-assessed learning gains and motivation to acquire critical thinking skills. This study used a quasi-experiment across two online sections of American Government taught at a large public university. The experimental section made use of a CURE project, and the control section did not. Pre- and post- surveys indicated significant differences in self-assessed learning gains. The section with the CURE project showed more confidence and a better understanding of political science. No difference was found in motivation for acquiring critical thinking skills.

A total of 126 domestic and international undergraduate students attended a research experience program in engineering during the summers of 2017 to 2019. We explored how the programs affected domestic and international undergraduate students’ experiences in research, mentoring, and career goals differently from their expectations. A total of 87 students responded to at least one of the prepost surveys, whereas 45 students responded to both prepost surveys. All students expected to gain more research knowledge in hard skills but acknowledged significant acquisitions of professionalism in soft skills. All students expected faculty to be the most influential mentors, but domestic students ranked peers as their second most influential mentors. Domestic students slightly decreased their interest in graduate school while international students preferred a job after graduation.

The new Cambridge Handbook of Undergraduate Research provides key insights to the global diversity of undergraduate research (UR) philosophies and practices. This article introduces the Handbook, discusses its structure and key themes, explains how the Handbook was written and explores the lessons that emerged during the writing process. The article demonstrates how global UR is linked to the educational research literature, to academic disciplinary contexts and to educational systems in different countries. The authors draw attention to cultural and sociopolitical differences between nations and suggest fruitful avenues for UR’s future global development. The variety and complexity of worldwide UR implementation frameworks notwithstanding, UR holds significant potential to network community-based research efforts and to support democratization of knowledge creation and dissemination.

Welcome to the Spring 2023 issue of Scholarship & Practice of Undergraduate Research (SPUR). In this issue, we consider the impressive reach of undergraduate research to varied student groups, different types of institutions, and across international and physical distances.