Undergraduate research is lauded as a high-impact practice owing to the array of benefits that students can reap from participating. One unexplored construct that may affect student intent to persist in research is research anxiety, defined as the sense of worry or apprehension associated with conducting research. In this study, we surveyed 1272…

Mentorship has been widely recognized as an effective means to promote student learning and engagement in undergraduate research experiences. However, little work exists for understanding different mentors' perceived approaches to mentorship, including mentorship of students from backgrounds and educational trajectories not well represented in…

The communities of practice (COP) framework describes learning as a process of navigating one's position of membership within a community of professionals pursuing a set of common goals using established practices. As students navigate their membership within a community like a physics research group, they develop a mental model of the community…

The benefits of undergraduate research include gains in research and communication skills, increased interest in graduate studies, and improvement in student persistence. Several studies have shown that undergraduate research can help promote career pathways into engineering by increasing enrollment and retention rates. The REU program described…

In a year-long undergraduate research program, life science majors were paired with majors in the other STEM disciplines of computer science, engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, to work on interdisciplinary life science projects. Typical teams had one undergraduate in a life science and one from another STEM discipline, along with…

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) aims to increase diversity in research and health-related careers. The SURP provides underrepresented minority (URM) and disadvantaged students with research, mentoring, and networking experiences; real-life surgical observations; and simulated…

The Arts and Science Honours Academy (ASHA) is a unique interdisciplinary undergraduate honours programme at a large research-intensive university in Canada. Data were collected in early 2020 from 108 past and present students, representing the first eleven cohorts of the programme. Triangulating results from quantitative and qualitative analyses,…

This paper describes an innovative and replicable approach to teaching qualitative research through archived oral histories. Undergraduates with no research experience were able to pursue individual research questions and prepare a public conference presentation within one semester. In so doing, this approach overcame the barrier of a shortened…

Purpose: The National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs are traditionally delivered in-person and full-time (40 h per week) for 10 weeks during the summer. However, this type of format has the potential to limit broader student participation. This study aims to compare learning assessment data between a…

Participation in undergraduate research has been shown to improve students' abilities and increase their interest in pursuing post-graduate education. However, previous research has focused on differentiating between participants and non-participants, not necessarily within-program differences that can affect these outcomes. In Creative Inquiry at…

An opportunity exists to attract students from historically underrepresented communities into the geosciences, the least diverse of the STEM fields. Home to a diverse population, Riverside County in Southern California supports several community colleges with thriving geoscience programs where students can take a range of geology courses in…

In Cell Biology, a sophomore/junior undergraduate-level high-enrollment core course, students areexpected to develop a broad and detailed understanding of the functioning of eukaryotic cells. Forexample, some of the more challenging biological concepts include machinery involved in thereplication and translational processes, protein…

Research-based science education (RBSE) is an instructional model that integrates scientific research with education by giving introductory-level undergraduate astronomy students an opportunity to do authentic research with real data. Its goals are threefold: (1) to teach that science is a process of discovery, not just a body of knowledge, (2) to…

Three studies were conducted for this dissertation around the broader topic of improving undergraduate health research training programs for Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Peoples (NHOPP), and increasing the likelihood of NHOPP pursuing health science research careers. The first study systematically examined existing published literature on…

The proportion of underrepresented minority (URM) students graduating with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) degrees, matriculating to graduate programs, and entering the STEM workforce continues to be significantly low. The Virginia-North Carolina Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (the VA-NC Alliance)…