Abstract:

The Boyer Commission Report (1998) suggested that changing the reward structure for faculty would be necessary to increase faculty involvement in undergraduate research. Yet, nearly a decade later, few large research institutions have made concrete changes in the faculty tenure review and promotion process to include undergraduate research. The University of Texas at Austin has developed an innovative new program that addresses this issue from a new direction: changing the undergraduate research model to reward faculty participation using traditional currency. Our new program, the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) connects undergraduates with authentic, advanced research projects from their first semester on campus. “Research Streams” of 30 undergraduates are mentored by a Research Educator (usually a Ph.D.-level scientist) who is supported by graduate research assistants and undergraduate mentors. Each Research Stream then carries out a series of parallel but independent research projects over the course of two semesters. This model benefits faculty by incorporating undergraduates into existing reward structures: space, graduate student support, materials and supplies, publications, concrete connections with industry and leverage for additional external funding. Because of the innovative nature of the educational efforts associated with the FRI, The University of Texas at Austin has received funding from NSF and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. We intend that our new model will change the way research faculty think about undergraduate research entirely. Our program has already begun to demonstrate the value of undergraduates as true contributors to the research endeavor and the benefits to the faculty of adopting the elements of our model.

Presentation:

Dr. Sarah Simmons discussed foundation principles, motivations, implementation specifics, and innovative features of the Freshman Research Initiative, as it exists in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin [1]. This program was developed in response to a NSF Undergraduate Research Collaborative solicitation in chemistry, expanded into the biological sciences with the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and modified for computer sciences, physics and astronomy using internal funding.

The ninth recommendation of the Boyer Report asserted that research universities needed to change faculty reward systems to include emphasis upon teaching.

“Recommendation IX. Change Faculty Reward Systems - Research universities must commit themselves to the highest standards in teaching as well as research and create faculty reward structures that validate that commitment.”
           
There were eight specific recommendations under that sub-heading.

Two were external to the institutions:

4. Prestigious professional research meetings such as national disciplinary conferences and the Gordon Conferences should contain one or more sessions that focus on new ideas and course models for undergraduate education.

5. Sponsors of external research grants can and should promote undergraduate participation, as the National Science Foundation has begun to do, thus facilitating the research experiences of undergraduates.

Six within individual institutions:

1. Departmental leaders should be faculty members with a demonstrated commitment to undergraduate teaching and learning as well as to traditionally defined research.

2. The correlation between good undergraduate teaching and good research must be recognized in promotion and tenure decisions.

3. A “culture of teaching” within departments should be cultivated to heighten the prestige of teaching and emphasize the linkages between teaching and research.

9. Rewards for teaching excellence, for participation in interdisciplinary programs, and for outstanding mentorship need to be in the form of permanent salary increases rather than onetime awards.

10. Teachers capable of inspiring performance in large classes should be recognized and rewarded appropriately.

11. Committee work at all levels of university life should be greatly reduced to allow more time and effort for productive student-related efforts.

What is important to recognize is that each of the six institution-based recommendations intrinsically pitted education against research through recognition of a separation between undergraduate teaching and research as they apply to tenure and compensation.  In essence, there has been a historical notion that we cannot accomplish anything (in terms of progressive initiatives related to undergraduate curricular reform) until we get past this glass ceiling of the traditional reward structure of faculty at research universities.

We present a few excerpts from the proceedings of previous Reinvention Center conferences:

“There was concern that the importance of undergraduate research has not yet fully penetrated to the departmental and dean levels. If this is the case, what can we do to protect junior faculty who become involved in undergraduate research?”

“One participant noted that it was easier to “climb Mount Everest” than to change tenure policies and recommended a parallel system that would supplement the current structure. For instance, some faculty could be hired on a tenure track for teaching and for these faculty different promotion criteria would apply.”

 “It was generally agreed that universities have not yet found a reliable way to assess a professor’s contributions toward the advancement of knowledge by mentoring undergraduate researchers, nor is it easily assessed by the tools routinely used to evaluate teaching performance and effectiveness. A major challenge in the development of undergraduate research in higher education will be for universities to invent appropriate rewards for faculty who undertake what can be a very time-consuming role as a mentor to student researchers”.

Indeed, there is a growing frustration at institutions that change called for in the Boyer Report is not happening or has been slow in adoption and implementation.  It is argued that significant progress cannot be made without change in the existing rewards structure to reflect a priority placed on undergraduate research and inquiry.

Change would include emphasis upon teaching credit for undergraduate research, substantive recognition of these activities in tenure and promotion review, and allocation of resources in a way that reflects an institutional shift in relative priorities as they relate to these objectives.

Indeed, “reform the existing faculty reward system” was on the recommendation list of more than half of the breakout sessions and ranked second to “defining undergraduate research” as an issue that needs to be addressed by the Reinvention Center and individual campuses.

There is a wall that exists between research and teaching at research institutions. 

There are separate funding systems, ordering systems, and methods of appointment.  The PI and the Professor are two separate institutional faces of the same scientist.  This is the crux of the problem.  Occasionally there is successful crossover with respect to the wall.  These occurrences are typically limited to tenured faculty researchers who later apply for educational grants and have some amount of success.  One rarely sees early career faculty who are able to exercise this type of initiative as a priority due to the inherent risks involved.

In order to penetrate the glass ceiling of the existing rewards structures at research institutions one must first enumerate them.

Research I Institutions operate with research as the primary goal.

The measures of “success” are those things that represent research success: publications, graduate student matriculation, and successful and influential alumni.  Alternatively, awarded grants, space allocation, materials and supply availability, equipment, and a talented and productive research group that includes postdoctoral fellows and graduate students can measure potential for future research success.  In some cases things tangential to research can also be powerful, depending on the research climate.  This might include high profile research that catches the attention of the state legislature, external funding of research initiatives, press coverage, and involvement in STEM diversity initiatives that are a priority to the institution itself.

There are hundreds of programs with decades of data that support the impact undergraduate research experiences have on student retention and success.

Why are these opportunities then limited at research institutions?  Capacity, as dictated by status quo approaches to undergraduate research involvement, is at maximum.  Additionally, faculty time with respect to direct, meaningful involvement is limited by the very nature of the existing rewards structure, which focuses upon achievement in research funding and publication.  Additionally, the methods, resources, and timing of research projects often limit the capacity for undergraduate involvement therein.

Traditional student behavior, as well, limits their involvement in research activities.  The knocking on doors approach favors students with characteristics (persistence, familiarity/comfort with academia) not necessarily tied to research potential.  Additionally, it is disproportionately daunting to students underrepresented in the sciences.  Undergraduate students, per the guidance of advisors and pre-set curriculum plans, typically become involved in research at a stage of their education where it is too late to have a meaningful impact (Junior, Senior) on their collegiate education.

Finally, in the traditional model there are very limited links and interaction between research and education.  The undergraduate research assistant is kept on one side of The Wall and the student on the other.  This perpetuates a situation where research and curriculum are at odds with each other further enforcing both the idea and reality that faculty reward structures are not tied to education but to research deliverables (progress, funding, publications).

The question we asked when developing our NSF/HHMI-funded program was:

Can we develop large-scale undergraduate research programs that weave the undergraduate education objectives into the EXISTING rewards structure?

More pointedly:

Can we weave the two sides of The Wall together in such a way that we fit rather than fight the existing rewards structure?

The Freshman Research Initiative at The University of Texas at Austin

The tagline of the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) is Education through Research.  In this fashion, we designed a program where education is integrated with rather than in opposition to the direct interests and faculty reward structures of a Tier 1 research institution.

The Freshman Research Initiative, implemented within the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin addressed four objectives of immediate note.

First, the students would engage authentic research experiences as compared to cookbook labs; novel, publishable research as judged by the scientific community.

Second, participation in the program fits into their degree plan in such a way that they receive academic credit for their efforts and preparedness for upper-division lab and lecture courses.

Third, while the program is called the Freshman Research Initiative, it is designed in such a way that it can effectively improve student success across all four years of their undergraduate education.

Finally, we wished to improve academic success for students in what are traditionally risk groups for academic achievement in the sciences (African American, Hispanic, American Indian, low socio-economic groups, first generation college students, and for some research settings women are considered a risk group).

The Freshman Research Initiative is entering its third year of existence.  At this point, over 600 undergraduate students have matriculated through our program.  In 2008 we reached our goal of offering this experience to 25% of incoming College of Natural Sciences students: 500 of 2000 total freshman students each year.

Our program connects undergraduates with authentic, advanced research projects from their first semester on campus as part of their regular course of study. In doing so it merges the twin missions of a research university, research and education.  It also provides a workable model for all large Tier I Research Universities as well as exportable modules for use in “traditional” labs.

The Freshman Research Initiative demonstrably retains and helps our students succeed in a scientific degree plan through student engagement in authentic research.  Additionally, the program both recruits students to scientific careers and creates a more science-aware public for the students who gain experience under our program’s umbrella but later choose not to pursue a career in scientific research.

What is different about our program as compared to the traditional experience of undergraduates involved in research programs?

First, our program involves students at the freshman level, giving students the chance to be trained all four years of their undergraduate experience.  Conversely, students who learn that scientific research is not for them have the chance to evaluate options and choose a different path of study early in the process of degree planning and course fulfillment.

Second, our program operates at an unprecedented scale.  It demonstrates both the capacity for impact and the assessable efficacy of integrating research into education.

Third, our program was specifically designed to not be a select honors program.  This allows a larger population of students to engage scientific research while demonstrating that honors-based and high school statistics and academic qualifications are not the only or most effective indicators for research potential.  This inclusion ethic extends to students who might not have previously considered themselves interested in scientific research at all.  Formal studies have demonstrated that if you ask early undergraduate students the question “Do you wish to do research?” many respond negatively, often because they simply do not understand what is really meant by the term.  Conversely, if you rephrase the question to ask “Do you like to discover?  Do you like to invent things?  Do you like to solve problems?” the affirmative responses increase significantly.

Finally, our program is purposefully designed to be financially non-gating, “cheap” per se, for the population of students that join and matriculate through it.  Our students who are worried about staying on track with their degree plans or who need to manage parental concern regarding participation in a non-standard execution of courses are able to truthfully communicate that they are simply taking a research version of courses that they are otherwise already required to fulfill.  This is especially important to students who come from backgrounds or families with limited collegiate experience.

The timeline for a student in the Freshman Research Initiative is divided into semester-based formal components that span their freshman and sophomore years.

Students begin by taking a Research Methods course in the fall of their freshman year.  This is a large and interdisciplinary look at research as an enterprise.  They explore the joy of discovery through formal inquiries, statistical analysis, written proposals and reports, and oral delivery of experimental results and analysis.  During this time they select what we refer to as a Research Stream – the specific research group and focus they will engage in the next semester of their programmatic experience.

Next, students transition to a Research Experience course in the spring of their freshman year.  The Research Experience spans the spring, summer, and fall of their freshman and sophomore years.  They begin in the spring with an introduction to both generalized and research-specific laboratory techniques and transition to a specific research project.

The summer experience between their freshman to sophomore year is optional.  We provide a number of research fellowships that allow students to stay and continue work with their Research Streams while taking summer courses.

All students return to their Research Streams in the fall of their sophomore year.  They engage an upper-division laboratory research course where they expand and complete their research projects.  Additionally, they have the capacity to serve as mentors for the new set of freshmen starting the Research Methods course.  The formal component of a student’s experience with the Freshman Research Initiative ends here, at the completion of the fall semester of their sophomore year.

Students continue to be mentored and provided several options, however, in the spring of their sophomore year for them to build upon their already rich research experience.  Many choose to take positions performing independent research in faculty labs where they either engage new projects or continue to expand the research they studied within the Freshman Research Initiative courses.  Additionally, students begin to apply for and attend summer research experiences (REUs), conferences, and corporate internships.  Finally, many students choose to become Research Mentors for a complete year of another Freshman Research Initiative cohort.  In this capacity they expand their knowledge and experience through both continued research and instruction of younger students just beginning their work.

What we have accomplished is dissolution of The Wall.

We have PIs involved in the teaching of a course that is intimately involved and related to their research.  We have a postdoctoral fellow who mentors students in the Research Streams; this position we refer to as a Research Educator.  Our graduate research and teaching assistants (GRAs, TAs) are typically affiliated with the faculty PI and are engaged in research relevant to their graduate education.  Once again we have engaged a normally resistant audience, graduate student assistants, through engagement of activity directly relevant to their immediate reward structure.

In 2008-2009 we are offering twenty different Research Streams.

This growth was accomplished through both small and large yearly additions of new streams.  We began in 2005 with a pilot program of just three streams – each with 15 students.  The University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences internally funded this pilot program.  With the acquisition of HHMI and NSF funding in 2006 and 2007 we expanded those streams in both number and disciplines engaged.

The Freshman Research Initiative now includes streams teaching and engaging authentic novel research in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Botany, and Astronomy.

Discussion:

Some participants asked if it is possible to define and target something essential about the humanities that faculty want students to take away from their classes, no matter which discipline. Since students might take only one course in humanities, how can we ensure that they take away something valuable?  Are students missing something essential about the humanities if the focus in our courses turns towards popular culture?

One participant described how she teaches music appreciation through film, using the music in the film to create a bridge to the compositional techniques of Western art music. In this way, popular culture becomes a way to make traditional humanistic material accessible.

This approach is good, but it is also important to teach students media literacy to understand how they have been affected by popular culture. Thus, there is something important about learning how to interpret and critique it, which is not something they have already learned when they get to college.

This seems like a question of whether institutions want students to take what is taught and be able to generalize it to other topics or learn something grounded in a specific disciplinary point of view.

Music and other aesthetic experiences are always shaped by the contemporary culture. The whole idea of “great works” that all students should learn is an ideology that is itself shaped in specific historical and political contexts.

The question we have not addressed is “So what?” Have we concertedly stepped outside our own disciplines to understand what the justification is for what we do? The humanities are the “meta-courses,” – ethics courses, for instance – but we have not really united to identify some central questions and values. No matter how good the individual courses, as a whole, the discipline does not necessarily make the case to students about what the humanities are.

Different disciplines do not necessarily unite or agree on what critical thinking outcomes they share, but it can be done, and these foundations exist. Institutions need to articulate a set of core competencies that can cut across disciplines.

In engineering departments, there is an accreditation system that has objectively-defined goals. For example, at the end of the course, students have to be able to design a rocket engine that flies. Thus, goals can be objectively assessed.

UCLA is currently refining its “capstone” model to articulate goals for students. The cluster program has these goals built into freshman seminars and major and minor course series. But within individual courses, the goal is to have students demonstrate that they can apply course themes and content to analyze the cultural functions of how, for example, music works in a musical. What students need to learn is that they already have some idea of how music works (its conventions and meanings), but faculty have to awaken this in the students, tell them why it matters, and give them the skills to articulate and analyze the content.

Q: Do you tell them these are the goals ahead of time? What is the test?
A: Yes, we tell them ahead of time in the syllabus. And the test is the final paper.
It’s good to have a list of learning objectives in the syllabus. Some people do not like the phrase “learning outcomes” because it sounds like “no child left behind,” but we do need to ask how can we know students are learning and what they are taking away from the course.

Q: What should General Education courses achieve? What is the overarching outcome of humanities courses that encourages people to develop courses on specific topics and to teach those topics in a specific way?
A: New focuses come out of critical thinking. For example, diversity is an important goal for general education courses at UCLA (8 general education courses are listed in the application materials, including critical thinking and diversity). Some courses develop out of disciplines, while others develop out of what GE courses need to do broadly.

Q: Consider the example of alumni who return to the department and offer to donate two million dollars because the courses they took were so enriching. Can we assess whether we’re getting this kind of success? Can we measure success of courses by how they enrich the self?
A: Critical thinking is important across campus, but this is not specific to the humanities. How do we approach humanistic goals, such as the cultivation of self and ethics?

Q: Should we be able to teach or make students more ethical?
A: Some schools try, but there seems to be a consensus that humanities majors are no more ethical than other students on campus.

Q: Do we encourage ethical behavior through other means, such as broadening perspectives, emphasizing diversity, etc.?
A: The old tendency in humanities was to celebrate some kinds of art as the best. That is a problem because it says by extension that some cultures are better.

Case Example: Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis

Up until this point we have presented the Freshman Research Initiative as an existing but generic concept program.  We have included specific implementation details such as the timeline for student matriculation through the program but have not discussed the specific research that might be performed by one of the twenty active Research Streams.

Dr. Keith Stevenson, Associate Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, discussed the creation and management of a Research Stream as a tenured faculty member of a Tier 1 research institution.

The Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis stream began as one of the three pilot Research Streams internally funded in 2005.  During that time, Dr. Stevenson was an untenured Assistant Professor involved in the written proposal to the NSF for the funding and expansion of the Freshman Research Initiative.

Specifically focused upon in that proposal were both the benefits and the challenges of designing an undergraduate research center and curriculum at a large research institution.  The problems to be solved were significantly different from what might have been engaged at a smaller liberal arts college or network of smaller colleges in a region.

One immediate problem and catalytic motivation was the realization that most undergraduates at a large research institution actually have little to no experience in actual research and thus have no experience or connections to leverage in the post-collegiate pursuit of graduate school or industry-based professional positions.

Additionally, many research grants and career development funding opportunities now include an educational outreach component.  As a newly hired assistant professor in 2001, Dr. Stevenson wrote a NSF Career proposal in 2001 in which he was required to design and fulfill such an educational component.  He initially struggled with the challenge to initiate a new research program while also adding a new educational component.  In hindsight, the Freshman Research Initiative design and implementation allows for those often-separate areas of professional motivation to be aligned and simultaneously engaged.

As previously detailed, the fall Research Methods component of a student’s freshman year includes application and assignment to a specific Research Stream – to begin in the spring of that same year.  In the spring they engage their Research Experience by taking a Freshman Research Initiative version of a general chemistry or biology laboratory course they would otherwise be required to complete.  Using a chemistry-specific example, the skills they begin to learn in a Research Stream setting are the same ones they would be learning in the general chemistry course.  The key difference, however, is that the Research Stream based course has a curriculum that is tailored to prepare them for the specific authentic research engaged by the faculty member that heads the stream.  Thus, Freshman Research Initiative courses are specially designed to fulfill the skills-based and curricular requirements of general chemistry and biology courses while imparting higher-level potential in students to engage research questions in a meaningful, productive manner.

One specific perspective imparted on Freshman Research Initiative students is the notion that repeat execution due to experimental failure is not only commonplace to the study of science; it is core to the essence of what it means to study science in a research setting.  General chemistry and biology labs are focused upon the attainment of an answer: a number, measurement, or sentence that can be applied to a laboratory worksheet and handed in for an immediate grade.  Matching experiments performed by Freshman Research Initiative students are not performed once and abandoned as is typical in general laboratory education settings.  Instead, experiments are repeated until success in the same fashion they would be in authentic research settings.  Students respond positively to this difference in that it imparts intrinsic meaning and space for imperfection in their work.  They learn that imperfect results are not a reflection on their intellect or research but rather an opportunity to rethink, redesign, and improve overall results.

Students assigned to the Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis stream engage research related to nanoparticles and chemical reactions as they relate to fuel cells, solar energy, and chemical transformations. 

For instance, students engage laboratory procedures in which they synthesize small copper nanoparticles and then evaluate them as catalysts.  General chemistry classes teach the basic concepts of chemical catalysis (e.g. activation energy, kinetics, rate laws) but do not typically engage laboratory exercises that drive home the fundamentals of the principles therein.  Dr. Stevenson’s stream uses a simple but authentic scheme to allow students to not only come to understand the fundamentals of catalysts, rate constants, and chemical reactivity but to use methods that allow for the development of novel, functional, and superior catalysts.  Students have created new catalysts that through orders of magnitude are more active than existing and more traditionally favored catalysts.

Thus, the scientific output of this Research Stream is both significant and meaningful to its research community.

Summarily, both general education and Freshman Research Initiative versions of chemistry laboratory courses teach synthesis of catalysts, stoichiometery, product separation isolation and yield, basic data collection, and instrument calibration.  The Freshman Research Initiative versions of courses go on to impart invaluable lessons in the properties of more advanced catalysts, evaluation of synthetic parameters, exploration of new synthetic routes, specialized instrument use, the challenges of nanomaterials, validation of novel methods, visualization of chemical structures and sizes, and measurement strategies of catalyst performance and behavior.

Dr. David Vanden Bout is a faculty co-leader of the Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis stream as well as the coordinator of general chemistry curriculum.  He discussed some perspectives of designing Freshman Research Initiative stream curriculum to both fulfill general chemistry education requirements while engaging authentic novel research.

Freshman chemistry lab is a basic lab environment; students learn how to make solutions, measure concentrations, and make acids and bases - all in a very cookbook style.  In this setting instructors have to work very hard to make discovery-based laboratory exercises.  Unfortuantely, the secret of the discovery lab is often quickly communicated or posted electronically among the thousands of students taking the course.  This often destroys any potential for engaging the students in inquisitive, open-ended discussions or for teaching them the iterative nature of the scientific method.

Conversely, authentic research on unsolved research topics provides an intrinsic solution to this general problem.  Laboratory exercises can be designed to engage novel materials and methods such that the discovery component cannot be artificially communicated – or it may be unknown.  Even the most basic problem, like using various reagents in a synthesis, the processes takes on a new level of challenge in an environment engaging materials and methods not previously worked out for amounts or concentrations required. These students have the opportunity to play around with the experimental parameters to discover what works.

For instance, students in the Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis stream learn kinetics to an amazing degree of understanding when assessing how newly synthesized nanoparticles function as catalysts.  They do this through the engagement of new catalyst materials under a variety of reactive conditions.  They also learn to engage tough questions faced by researchers daily.  For example, few general education chemistry labs present students with the conundrum of a dozen measurements of kinetic rates of catalysis – all wildly different and ask them why is this so.  Freshman Research Initiative students encounter this situation and must then learn accompanying statistical techniques and visualization methods to evaluate the meaning and validity of data under such conditions.

All of this experience counts toward their degree requirements as the FRI course is taken in lieu of the standard laboratory courses that are required.  To provide the greatest flexibility standard skill sets for both introductory chemistry and biology courses have been estabilished and credit for one or the other is offered based upon the specifics of each research stream.  Similar approaches have been implemented in physics, astronomy, and computer science to allow the FRI course work to substitute to introductory major requirements.

Alumni Accomplishment

There is some amount of student loss as students matriculate through the semester-based components of the Freshman Research Initiative.

Each of the Research Streams begins with thirty students in the spring Research Experience of their freshman year.  Typically, twenty of those students will continue when the Research Streams reconvene for the fall Research Project completion of the program curriculum.  This loss is both expected and by design in terms of the operating goals of the Freshman Research Initiative.  The net result is that the students who leave are typically the ones who have learned that research is not what they wish to continue to pursue.  This is valuable knowledge in terms of what is learned over the course of a collegiate education – especially when students typically learn such lessons much closer to the end of their pursued degrees.  The students who remain have not only found a personal enjoyment in the pursuit of authentic research – they are often quite well trained and very productive.

The Freshman Research Initiative has had significant success with respect to these students going on to acquire significant fellowship, internship, and summer research opportunities.  Below is a sample of the some of the success of the students in the Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis research stream.

• Two students won Beckman Scholar Awards (2007).,
• One student participated in the EXROP summer research program at the Columbia University with Nobel Laureate (Summer 2006).
• One student is hired at the 3M company as a laboratory tech-aid and is participating in the McNairs Scholars program.
• One student presented at the LSAMP student conference and is currently mentoring new FRI students (2007).
• One student received the Merck Company internship with scholarship award (2008).
• One student participated in the REU program in the Nanotechnology research center at University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Summer 2008).

Additionally, the program has had success in the promotion of Research Educators who have used the experience they gained in the operation of a Research Stream to further their academic careers and accomplishments.  The Research Educator with the Nanomaterials with Application to Catalysis stream and is now anAssistant Professor of Chemistry at Augsburg University where she is using Freshman Research Initiative program components to involve undergraduates in authentic research.

The Freshman Research Initiative is founded upon the principle of being in line with existing faculty reward structures at research institutions.

In essence, the program works by doing Education through Research.

What are some of the rewards faculty members experience by hosting a Research Stream?

• Access to a cheap labor pool for performing authentic research.
• Recruitment and interactions with motivated freshmen and sophomore students.
• Potential to hook and reward highly capable students early in STEM disciplines.
• GRA/TA support on activities directly related to research interests, which encourages full integration of teaching and research.
• Research Educator financial support; ability and means to mentor and train younger PhDs who wish to pursue both teaching and research as a career.
• Dedicated lab space for conducting research.
• Additional resources for equipment and supplies to support research.
• Leveraging of resources for supporting broader outreach and education activities.
• Leverages existing infrastructure for increasing participation from underrepresented groups.
• Possibility of finding the “diamond in the rough” - a once in a career, exceptional student who can nucleate new research and scientific discovery.

The Freshman Research Initiative has thus far produced not just one or two diamond in the rough undergraduate research students; it has produced one or two of these students every year of program execution for many of the streams.

The alignment of faculty rewards with progressive educational initiatives will be the catalyst of cultural change with regards to the acceptance of education as a valued-added proposition in a predominantly research-focused environment.

Qualifiers and Cautions

The Freshman Research Initiative is not a model that can be immediately implemented by all researchers or research institutions that may be interested. 

First, the faculty member must have a direct interest in both the research and educational goals of the program.

Second, the research must be amenable to the formats and time frames of the Research Streams themselves.  There are many ways for streams to be implemented.  There must be some way, however, for the research to be divided by thirty students over the course of a one-year program matriculation.  It must be possible for the work of the students to sum to real results, data, and eventual publications.

Finally, not every faculty member of an institution must be involved for the program to be effective.  The Freshman Research Initiative at the University of Texas is involved with a small percentage of the research faculty in terms of faculty who are directly running Research Streams.  The students who emerge from the program, however, eventually impact a much larger percentage of the research faculty through eventual placement in their laboratory environments as trained and experienced undergraduate researchers.

Discussion:

The discussion session was productive and most questions were geared to how others could start this kind of program at their own institutions. However, the main bulk of the discussion was in organization or functionality of the program itself and not necessarily reforming the faculty reward structure through this type of program.  By addressing these questions, a more clear idea of the challenges and functionality of exporting this program became apparent.  Therefore this section has been arranged by the major topics addressed, “FRI Organization, Structure and Funding; Curriculum Reform; Measuring Success; Faculty and Student Rewards”.

There are a number of issues to overcome for other universities to adopt this type of program.  These include funding (both for the research and personnel), space (at the University level providing adequate or renovated educational labs) and curriculum reform.  Diana Henderson, Professor and Dean for Curriculum and Faculty Support in the Literature Section of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) mentioned that MIT has an overlapping program with project based courses.  However, they have trouble fitting it into the general curriculum.  A number of the engineers think they could utilize the program in electrical or mechanical engineering, but not everyone across the board.  Other institutions across the country are trying similar but smaller scale opportunities.  The answers presented below help to address these common questions.

To begin communications of the faculty rewards, an understanding of the personnel structure and their role in the program is required.  The Freshman Research Initiative has a number of very important individual positions to break down the wall between research and education.  The main drive for an individual stream is the tenured or tenure track faculty member who develops the educational research goals.  These goals often complement work in their own lab. 

Question: How can you find enough work for 30 students?

There are three main types of ways to utilize ~30 undergraduate students for a research endeavor that is both educational and effective:

• Divide and conquer.  When man-hours are necessary for a problem, the work can be parallelized where many students work on the same protocol with different components. 
• Many parts make a whole.  When the project involves the assembly of many parts or expertise in a number of areas, splitting students into groups and assigning each group with different protocols towards a common goal has worked well.
• Small steps, not giant leaps.  When there is a clear linear framework for research, having individual students tackle many small projects and quickly analyze data to move on to the next module may be useful.

While these models are common for most of the research streams, the framework of the program is modular enough to support any course of action towards goals the faculty member can dream up to utilize all 30 students.  The faculty member however is rarely involved in the day-to-day operations of the lab.  Each stream faculty works closely with their Research Educator whose main job is to manage the lab, teach weekly overview lectures and mentor students individually on their research progress.  The research educator is often a post-doc or younger PhD who is interested in a career in both research and teaching.  The Research Educator is also responsible for an administrative component of the Freshman Research Initiative including areas such as outreach, recruitment, orientation, industry relations, curriculum reform, mentors, public relations, lab safety, publications and grants.  Thus the Research Educator bridges the research and the students with the faculty in addition to providing structure and effectiveness to the program.  The wholly new position is necessary for the smooth flow of the course over the year. 

Question: Who pays for a Research Educator? 

The Research Educator position is supported through grants of the original funding sources (NSF/HHMI), however creative and independent grants written by the stream faculty or monies secured through corporate sponsorship has also been considered.  For instance, instead of a company awarding fellowships for 5 students at $10,000 per year, the company could sponsor one research educator at $50,000 who would then mentor 30 students that could feed into that company through internships and co-ops.  Alternatively, the faculty could fund this PhD level position through grants.  Our Astronomy stream researching dark matter is an example of the stream faculty, Don Winget, writing an educational component into his grant to fund this Research Educator position. 

The third cadre of support personnel at the individual stream level is the mentor and includes the graduate and undergraduate research assistants (GRA and URA) who are responsible for mentoring day-to-day activities or small student groups and grading.  They are also important for refining the protocols and relaying any problems associated with techniques.  Often, the GRA works in a stream performing research associated with their dissertation work.  The GRAs and URAs are supported through the Freshman Research Initiative grants.  The URAs often help make or order reagents, answer questions and provide peer mentoring and support for the students.  These students have often completed a year within the research stream and are paid 10 hours per week.  We also employ graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who perform similar duties but are supported through each department for 20 hours per week and tuition. 

Question: Who directs the program and how much time is involved? 

At the programmatic level, the Freshman Research Initiative Director is Dr. Simmons.  She is responsible for most high-level aspects including funding, approval of streams, management and administration of the Research Educators, and communications between the program and the University at large.  The Freshman Research Initiative takes about half her time and the other half is devoted to the honors program and international studies.  For instance, the college’sDean’s Scholars Honors Program and affiliated advising is run through her office.  Sarah has an administrative assistant responsible for voucher processing, travel, appointments, and billing for the Freshman Research Initiative program.  To help break down the wall, purchasing and procurement is performed by the department associated with the stream faculty.  In this way, the department sees each stream as an extension of the faculty research lab.  Lastly, there are departmental liaisons or representatives who help coordinate interdepartmental Freshman Research Initiative needs with intradepartmental politics.  Ideally, the program is organized through a distributed help model where the Research Educators, Dr. Simmons, stream faculty and administrators are all responsible for specific aspects that help promote fluidity.

Question: Who owns the space?

The chairman of each department assigns who gets space in the requisite building associated with the stream’s departmental designation.  For instance, chemistry related streams often reside in the chemistry building.  Biology related streams primarily reside in the biology building.  Renovation and startup funds were initially written into the grants to transform strictly educational spaces into more modular research facilities with state of the art equipment and resources.  Ultimately however, the college owns the space and the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences (CNS) had the authority to assign courses to educational facilities of which the department assigns the Freshman Research Initiative to a subset of that space.  In this way, the individual departments must also commit to the overall success of the program.  It should be noted that most lab spaces support between two and three streams and are often open much longer hours than a normal educational lab.  The mentors are the personnel who keep the lab running from 9a-10p every weekday and noon to 5p on the weekends.  These times are not set in stone and the students, once trained by both the stream and Environmental Health and Safety, can come into lab at off hours if supervised.  The streams that share space often complement each other with both equipment requirements and research focus.  Other streams such as those involved in computer science often do not utilize or need dedicated space. 

Question: What is the annual budget?  What is the potential for sustainability?

Sustainability is something the program is actively working towards.  The Freshman Research Initiative was initially given ~$100K from the College of Natural Sciences to start a pilot program with three streams.  The idea was to start a proof of principle program that could be written up into proposals where continued funding would be awarded through grants.  With the success of the pilot program, the Freshman Research Initiative was awarded $1.9M from HHMI and $2.7M from the NSF over 4 and 5 year (respectively) with renewal opportunities through HHMI.  A portion of sustainability once those grants expire will likely come from the Dean, who has agreed to fund a share of the program, and the Capital Campaign, a $3B fundraising initiative through the University of Texas at Austin ( http://giving.utexas.edu/).

The initial grant budgets were written to support one quarter of the College of Natural Sciences freshman class (about 500 students), 20 specialized streams, mentor and Research Educator stipends, administrative support, overhead, materials and support.  For most of the “wet lab” or bench streams, the average cost is around $100K/year.  This price drops considerably depending on students and reagents.

Basically, the program can now sustain all of the infrastructure of program and all cost except Research Educator support.  We are working on creative avenues for this key portion including an endowment or partnership grants for modular bite sized pieces of funding.  Funding to a lesser extent also comes from a number of sources, which may be exploited further in the future.  These include the instructional budget from the introduction chemistry course (CH204). The Freshman Research Initiative is also considering external endorsements from corporations including ARP, Merck, and Intel.  We have asked for donations from the University of Texas at Austin Core Facilities and resources such as computational time at the Texas Advanced Computing Cluster facility. 

Our students also are given the chance to write letters to corporations they interact with soliciting donations.  While the specific companies would never give away materials to professors, they are more than willing to provide education support effectively to students.  Lastly, tenured successful researchers and HHMI professors have the ability to write post-doc or educational component pieces into specific grants that might apply to Freshman Research Initiative related research.

During the pilot and growth phase, 100% of the support was provided for each stream and the stream faculty had very little to sacrifice monetarily.  The general sentiment was, “if we gave you this, what could you do?”  Now that the program has grown and the success of both students and faculty has gained recognition at the university level, it is different.  The sentiment now is, “we provide some specific aspects of funding your research, but you are required to tailor your consumables budget or administrative needs if you want to start a stream.”  The FRI is substantially more expensive than teaching the standard curriculum that it replaces such as a general chemistry or introductory biology laboratory.  However, this is a poor comparison as the FRI offers the student both a great breadth and depth of science education than could be hoped for in such a course.  A better comparison is to the cost of a summer research program such as a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU).  For a similar per student cost, the FRI offers the student 2 years worth of research experience compared to only 8-10 weeks in the summer for an REU.  In addition, they have the ability to build long term relationships with students, faculty, graduate students, and research educator in an environment that continues to push them farther their independent research.

It is apparent that many faculty in each department are not concerned with introductory course education and therefore, curriculum reform is not important.  Through the Freshman Research Initiative however, faculty become engaged in tailoring general education for a large portion of the College of Natural Sciences students.  Students within the Freshman Research Initiative register for general chemistry or biology course credit while receiving a functional research experience.  For instance, they may receive credit in the spring for introductory chemistry lab (CH204).  Guidelines for the laboratory course have been set by the course and curriculum committee in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. Prior to stream approval, the stream faculty must creatively integrate their research into the guidelines and skill sets applied to accreditation for the introductory course.  The skills are broad enough to accommodate many different types of tasks and the students gain more focused expertise with those tasks.  Students do not just make a solution in one week for a grade but are required to make and validate the solutions they need through the entire year as it applies to their own research.

Question: Has there been backlash from the introductory course instructors?

We actively address curriculum reform is through a feed back loop into the general chemistry courses.  Once course modules within Freshman Research Initiative streams have been created to effectively teach basic skills, those modules can then be adopted by the general chemistry courses or published in education journals such as General Chemistry Education.  The lecturers often welcome labs that are vetted, conform to the curriculum and they did not have to create.  We provide open communication at meetings where the general chemistry lecturers are able to express which labs worked with their limited resources and which did not.  In this way, the culture of general education is changing.  We are more comfortable telling new faculty about the opportunities for teaching introductory courses while still maintaining a research focus.  Through this feedback, we have also been able to influence the other three quarters of students who were not involved with the Freshman Research Initiative program. 

Question: Is there a potential for other departments or majors such as social sciences?

The program is currently limited to the College of Natural Sciences.  However, the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences has begun discussions with other departments and Colleges within the University such as Neurobiology, Social Science and the College of Liberal Arts.  Other departments have begun offering signature courses similar to our Research Methods course so there is certainly an opportunity for students in other colleges to have similar experiences.  We are also in the process of developing a field stream.  It has become apparent that a research endeavor for the environmental major degree plan has great potential.  Both Ulrich Mueller and Tom Juenger within the Integrative Biology department are proposing to develop field research courses that conform to the Freshman Research Initiative framework.  While the lack of a concrete lab space may not be as convenient for students, the opportunities to travel and collect field specimens could be just as beneficial.

One of the goals of the Boyer report was assessing the effectiveness of research to undergraduates.  Assessment as an afterthought is often difficult, while accreditation is a complicated and convoluted process. 

Question: How do you measure effectiveness?

We chose a different approach and continuously monitor our students.  This saves both time and money since a large-scale assessment program is not necessary at the end once the data has all been collected.  Since we have a large population of undergraduates both in the Freshman Research Initiative and in the college as a whole, statistical analysis can be evaluated.  We use control groups from the college with similar ethnicity, backgrounds and financial needs.  The students in our program may have indistinguishable GPAs from the control group, but we have found that our student out-perform them in nearly every category including retention in their major, higher GPA as an upper classman, success of underrepresented groups and awards.

Question: How do we choose better undergraduate researchers?

While the pilot group was involved mainly self-selecting honor students, we have found that true superstars are everywhere.  Therefore, the goal has shifted from analyzing which students are good to identifying them as early as possible.  Through continuous assessment, we not only know what the student has achieved, but can track a student’s progression through their undergraduate career.  This allows us to choose better predictors of the good students.  It has been clear that GRE scores and starting GPA has very little correlation with becoming a good student or performance in advanced research.  While our goal is not to convince everyone to like research, we provide the opportunity for students to get involved and decide for themselves without the commitment associated with faculty research labs.

One of the unforeseen benefits of this continual assessment was discovered during the NSF HHMI annual report cycle.  At the site visit, NSF representatives expressed their enthusiasm of the metrics we provided and they now had the materials with which to go to Congress and support innovative undergraduate science education.  NSF realized they had not focused enough funding towards and assessment because it is expensive after the fact.  Through continual assessment, we have the numbers to leverage additional funding and the NSF is coming to us for help. 

The last organizational section of discussion topics focuses on changing the faculty reward structures as the topic would suggest.

From our recent HHMI annual report we wrote,

“…it has become apparent that faculty perception of undergraduate research is directly tied to the existing administrative award structure for faculty, and the perceived and actual benefit to faculty resulting from their investment in undergraduate research (teaching credits, new funding and faculty grants, published papers resulting from the center).”

“We intend that our new model will change the way research faculty think about undergraduate research entirely. We are demonstrating the value of undergraduates as true contributors to the research endeavor and the benefits to the faculty of adopting the elements of our model. In addition, it has been suggested that changing the reward structure for faculty will be necessary to increase faculty motivation to be involved in undergraduate research. Not only do we plan to promote changing reward structures for faculty (including consideration of undergraduate research mentorship during tenure and promotion review), our model also incorporates undergraduates into existing reward structures: (a) faculty receive teaching workload credit for the course they develop; (b) each lab provides support for one of the Faculty’s graduate students to perform their stream-related research in the UT-URC laboratory, effectively increasing the primary laboratory space available for that faculty member’s research program; (c) we anticipate that association with our center will bring additional research funding to our UT-URC fellows; and (d) the amount of research leading to publications accomplished by the UT-URC students will be significant.”

As mentioned earlier, initial faculty rewards were indirect.  These included:

• Funding graduate student stipend and tuition.
• Directing research and acquiring preliminary data without directly paying for that research and personnel through their own grants.
• Gaining access to a cadre of well-trained undergraduates that have been vetted and know they truly enjoy research.
• Providing a teaching credit for the spring semester.

Question: Has this program directly influenced the tenure process?

One of the Freshman Research Initiative goals has been to revolutionize the effect of undergraduate research directly in the tenure process.  Because Dean Mary Ann Rankin is a proponent of the Freshman Research Initiative, anecdotal evidence has suggested involvement within the program has become a positive aspect of gaining tenure.  Two FRI affiliated faculty have received tenure since becoming involved, and the Dean publicly acknowledged the Freshman Research Initiative as a highlight of the tenure portfolio for one of these faculty.  Mentions of undergraduate research at the Dean’s reception is also no longer taboo.  Of course other aspects are necessary for receiving tenure, but involvement with undergraduates (primarily through the Freshman Research Initiative) is now highlighted and acknowledged.  The size anf profile of the program enables this.  If one faculty member had suggested a research based general education or introductory course within the College, it would not likely have succeeded.  The common assumption was that “freshman do not have the experience or education to perform quality research”.  But due to the momentum and success of the program, stream involvement is almost coveted.

Question: Can the FRI program help faculty members secure federal funding?

The Freshman Research Initiative has an ambitious diversity component; our goal is is to reflect the demography of Texas with 50% of our student participants representing minority groups.  This diversity component can be leverage for faculty wishing to apply for additional funding because any new branch of the research, equipment or full stream can easily plug into the FRI program and its diverse undergraduate participant base. For example, a request for expensive equipment such as an X-Ray diffractometer, if aligned with FRI, could legitimately claim 50% undergraduate use (50% of those being minority students).  An added benefit of training undergraduates to take advantage of this specialized and expensive equipment is that the cost can be distributed.  A sophomore student in our nanomaterial stream was the first undergraduate on campus to not only be trained, but also utilize the Texas Materials Institute transmission electron microscope.  The instrument is now being used by ~6 undergraduate students more frequently when it would have otherwise been utilized.

Question: Does the teaching credit reduce the teaching load for the faculty?

Due to the direct and indirect rewards previously mentioned, teaching credit does reduce the load for faculty but is rarely the fundamental consideration for starting a stream.  The Freshman Research Initiative is a year round commitment and participating faculty only get course credit for the spring semester of introductory chemistry, biology or introductory courses in the newer departments involved.  The Research Educators get credit for teaching during the fall where the students are registered for an upper division lab course (CH369K or BIO377) or specific lab within the degree plan.

The student reward extends far beyond their course credit.  Ultimately, the students can interact with renowned faculty through courses much sooner in their education.  This interaction has proven necessary for their undergraduate experience.  Those who successfully complete a year in the program move on to serve as role models for younger students.  They are involved in recruitment during the summer, and development of peer based teaching models.

Many students who complete the program are also more goal oriented.  They often change their mind of going to medical school because their parents want it or no longer take a chemistry course because it is the easiest.  For those with positive research experiences, they are often more research focused and consider career paths that lead to graduate school and academia.  Independent research facilitates a means to that end.  While the content and theoretical training in the research course is not extensive, students are able to communicate scientific ideas much more clearly and confidently.  Previously, the common thought was that an undergraduate could not perform research till they understand the theory.  Through the Freshman Research Initiative, we have found that the students are able to learn the theory at a much deeper level after a research experience and are able to form more independent thoughts at a much earlier stage in college.

Recommendations:

For Individual Campuses

• Within our model, the great utility is that it first benefited faculty by incorporating undergraduates into existing reward structures: space, graduate student support, materials and supplies, publications, concrete connections with industry and leverage for additional external funding.  Once the value of undergraduate research was experience by the faculty, it was easier to begin dialogs to change the tenure structure to incorporate it.  Therefore, hybrids that initially interweave undergraduate research objectives with faculty incentives may be the best course of action.

This model is also not for every campus, department or faculty member.  The faculty must have an interest in the goals and get real data from the endeavor.  Every faculty member need not be involved, but the work of a select few will provide benefits to the whole.

For The Reinvention Center

• As a whole, recommendations for the Reinvention center were not discussed during this breakout session.  However, including a link to the model and the annual reports were suggested on the Reinvention Center Website.

Resources/References:

Websites

1. The Freshman Research Initiative: http://cns.utexas.edu/fri/  
2. The Capital Campaign at the University of Texas: http://giving.utexas.edu/

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION
Education through Research: Finding Ways to Reward Faculty Investment in Undergraduate Education without Changing the Existing Reward Structure. The Reinvention Center Conference Proceedings 2008. Washington, DC. Sarah Simmons, Keith Stevenson, and David Vanden Bout, University of Texas at Austin.