Ball State University's (BSU) bold strategic plan, which was drafted in 2019, states that all students will have access to one of four specific High Impact Practices (Immersive Learning, Undergraduate Research, Study Abroad, and Societal Issues) before they graduate. This article documents the key steps that occurred as the Ball State campus…

There is growing awareness of the need for mathematics and computing to quantitatively understand the complex dynamics and feedbacks in the life sciences. Although several institutions and research groups are conducting pioneering multidisciplinary research, communication and education across fields remain a bottleneck. The opportunity is ripe for…

In this paper I will outline the process I have developed for conducting applied mathematics research with undergraduates and give some examples of the projects we have worked on. Several of these projects have led to refereed publications that could be used to illustrate topics taught in the undergraduate curriculum.

This exploratory study seeks to understand how the research experiences of humanities PhD students influence their information behavior. The authors interviewed 10 participants from two academic institutions multiple times over several months. The study used open-ended, unstructured interviewing techniques in an attempt to avoid the introduction…

Student retention is important to any university, especially keeping commuter students who are traditionally less anchored in campus life. Even more at risk, given the leaky STEM pipeline, are STEM commuter students. In 2016, Valparaiso University launched the Establishing Practices Integrating Commuter Students (EPIC) program, centered around…

This case study provides an overview as to how two faculty members co-taught an asynchronous online course with a service-learning component during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Within this paper, the authors recount the adjustments that were made in order to accommodate an online teaching modality while maintaining their commitment to service…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess environmental concern at a Midwest university, analyze trends in concern over time and determine the effect of the development of a campus sustainability office. Design/methodology/approach: A multi-question survey was administered through peer-to-peer recruitment from an undergraduate environmental…

Middle school students learned about their community when they created documentaries as part of a state bicentennial celebration. Students gathered multiple primary and secondary resources and worked with community members to interview them for their perspectives through video presentations as part of the inquiry process. Students work with local…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been described in a range of educational contexts. Although various anticipated learning outcomes (ALOs) have been proposed, processes for identifying them may not be rigorous or well documented, which can lead to inappropriate assessment and speculation about what students actually…

Given the recent and ongoing debates about race and inclusion, history classes can turn to the study of local groups that have been marginalized in an effort to increase students' cultural awareness. One such local history project took place in Evansville, Indiana from 2011 to 2013 through collaboration between the University of Southern Indiana…

This study utilized dissertation bibliographies produced at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, a STEM-oriented university, to ascertain how well Purdue's Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education Library supports doctoral research. To examine a critical mass of data, the authors gathered all the bibliographies of dissertations written…

Amid movements that recognize undergraduate students as knowledge creators, transformative work is being done at the intersection of information literacy and scholarly communication. Absent from the literature so far is research related to students' perception and understanding of scholarly communication. This paper reports a mixed methods study…

In this article, C. Frederick Risinger begins by describing insights from an article entitled, "Trapped in the Bubble." It reported on a doctoral student's study (along with other students and faculty in Indiana University's School of Informatics) which demonstrated that the more people rely on social media such as Facebook, Twitter,…

There have been calls by the Federal government and policymakers for improvements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education through the development of excellent teachers with the content knowledge and skills to teach and motivate students. A shared goal among teacher professional development (PD) programs is to improve…

In the Fall semester of 2009, I taught a first-year course that focused on skills required to successfully complete undergraduate research. This paper will discuss the Simpson College first-year course requirements, my course goals, the graph theory topics covered, student feedback, and instructor reflection.