Welcome to the Inaugural Issue of SPUR

On behalf of the SPUR Editorial Board as well as the Council on Undergraduate Research, we are very excited to share with our readers the inaugural issue of the Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research. SPUR, the acronym for the new title of the journal, captures the powerful action of undergraduate research to encourage, stimulate, hasten, and prompt. Our hope is that SPUR will encourage best practices and models of undergraduate research. Another goal for SPUR is to stimulate the rigorous assessment of undergraduate research initiatives and programs. We also hope to hasten the spread of undergraduate research at colleges and universities across the globe. With the rising competition and growing challenges for funding higher education, our wish for SPUR is to prompt important theoretical discussions about undergraduate research and the future of higher education in the twenty-first century.