The Council on Undergraduate Research

Written Testimony

The Role of Primarily Undergraduate Institutions in the Nation’s Scientific Endeavor

for Consideration by the House Science Committee’s National Science Policy Study

Vernon Ehlers, Chairman

Elaine Hoagland, National Executive Officer, CUR

Neal Abraham, President, CUR and Professor of Physics, Bryn Mawr College

Charlotte Otto, President-Elect, CUR and

Chair, Department of Natural Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn

April 10, 1998

The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) is a national professional organization representing nearly 900 colleges and universities in the United States. We exist to support research by undergraduates and their faculty mentors in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. We commend the House Science Committee and Congressman Ehlers for taking on the challenge to review science policy in the United States. We would like to comment for the hearing record. In summary:

Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUI’s) in the United States, including community colleges, baccalaureate colleges, and comprehensive universities, focus on excellence in preparation of undergraduates to do research. They are essential elements to our research endeavor. It is not only "research universities" that carry our R&D forward. The federal government should encourage research and educational collaborations among PUI’s, industry, government, and the research universities. All policy makers should consciously invite representatives of PUI’s to participate in science policy discussions.

Multiple funding agencies with different missions and programs are the drive train of our research infrastructure, and are necessary to maintain the full complement of U.S. research/educational institutions. We suggest that Congress and our federal agencies increase the access that Primarily Undergraduate Institutions and other types of academic institutions have to these federal resources, first through unrestricted and widely publicized competitions and, second, through competitions that recognize special needs, such as those for undergraduate research opportunities.

Federal laboratories and their scientists are an underutilized resource for a large part of the nation’s scientist-educators and students. We suggest that Congress, through its oversight function, and the agencies, through their performance reviews, monitor the accessibility of the federal science infrastructure, and develop regular, advertised opportunities for appropriate research activities by undergraduates and their faculty mentors in the federal labs in order to maximize use of federal research capacity and to develop a constituency for federal research goals.

Graduate programs often generate young PhD’s who are not prepared to develop independent research careers at PUI’s or in other settings. PUI faculty members should be used as resources in the national debate on graduate education. They can suggest training that will improve creativity and independent thinking in all graduate students, to the benefit of their future employers in whatever setting.

Narrative

The United States is unique in the world for centering important elements of our R&D in universities and colleges that are at arm’s length from both government and industry. A second, seldom-mentioned strength of U.S. science, is the diversity of academic institutions that support research and training. This diversity of size, affordability, geography, governance, and educational philosophy, not to mention research interests, draws participation from every sector of the American population including those who are first-generation college attendees. The U.S. finds its scientific genius in many places; opportunity for individuals is great.

However, in science policy circles, we hear of the "research university" as if these institutions, which are a small fraction of U.S. colleges and universities, were the only source of research training and scientific discovery. This is reflected in funding: In recent years, close to 90% of the federal R & D funding for academic institutions has gone to but 125 research universities, out of more than 2200 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. Research universities are but one end of a diverse spectrum of academic institutions, all of which contribute to the leadership of the United States in science and technology. Among the Primarily Undergraduate Institutions, there are:

2-year colleges that provide an opportunity for many disadvantaged or older students to discover their aptitude for science.
4-year baccalaureate institutions that focus on excellence in undergraduate liberal arts education and provide some of the best-qualified students to the research universities for graduate work.
Comprehensive regional universities that service large, ethnically diverse populations of students, most of whom reside in the vicinity of their university and become productive members of the local economy upon graduation. These schools often form partnerships in research with local government or industries, and contribute to solving community problems.

All of these Primarily Undergraduate Institutions address science literacy in the general population. Not only do they expose non-science majors to courses in science; they also serve as public resources for their local community. Most communities in the U.S. have a college that they consider their own.

The members of the Council on Undergraduate Research believe that undergraduates gain invaluable experience from direct participation in the creation, discovery, and use of new ideas and technologies. This experience is central to improved science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. The enhanced learning and enthusiasm that undergraduate research generates are central to shaping and sustaining a productive and bright future for this Nation. While many research universities such as MIT and CalTech pay a great deal of attention to undergraduate research, it is often the Primarily Undergraduate Institutions that are the test-bed for ideas in undergraduate research. They recognize its pedagogical importance, and undergraduates serve as the primary workforce for the research programs within PUI’s. The undergraduate research experience is more deeply mentored, and faculty members at PUI’s are likely to be heavily committed to formal class instruction in addition to their research schedules.

Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions is not a whim or a luxury for professors. It provides thousands of teaching faculty with lifelong learning opportunities to enable them to provide their students with the up-to-date information and skills necessary to compete in today’s world.

Given this background, the Council on Undergraduate Research would like to make several recommendations for the future of science in the United States.

Get All Research Partners to the Table. When science policy is discussed at high levels of government, participants today rarely include representatives of the PUI’s. The Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable is an example. Science in the U.S. is not elitist; neither should be science policy. Wider participation will allow development of policy that considers the entire stream of the R and D enterprise. It will allow the goal of integration of science and education, recently articulated by NSF, to become reality much faster.

Insure that PUI’s have equal access to national funding opportunities, and that the national portfolio of research programs is balanced between megascience and the smaller-scale, more nurturing programs that integrate teaching and research . Few of the smaller and often-poorer undergraduate institutions have Offices of Research or Grants, or lobbyists camped in Washington. Because of heavy teaching loads, small travel budgets, and some rural locations, it is difficult for many PUI faculty members to come to Washington or to attend meetings where contact can be made with funding agencies. The distribution of information about federal grants on websites has helped greatly, but there are still many opportunities that are spread by word of mouth in relatively closed circles. We recommend that the federal government and other funders of science and technology increase their efforts to bring opportunities to the entire research community and look increasingly at the research potential afforded by other than the traditional research institutions. Open, peer-reviewed competition is a proven process to achieve this goal.

Insure balance in federal research R & D rather than riding popular waves that commit large chunks of resources to a narrow segment of the research community. Continue effective specialized programs that open doors for PUI’s into the wider research community. We support the existence of some specialized programs for particular types of institutions and fields of research, in recognition of the diversity that we have illustrated. In fact, our own members are benefited greatly from EPSCoR, the AREA grants at NIH, and the Research at Undergraduates Institutions and Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs at NSF, among others. These modest model programs could be expanded to other federal agencies. We also suggest that all specialized programs be assessed periodically to see (a) that they are meeting their stated aims and (b) that the entire portfolio of specialized programs is balanced. For example, while funding of mega-laboratories with major pieces of shared equipment is appropriate for efficient research in some fields, bench-level research equipment upgrades should be supported in other fields. Research consortia should be encouraged to diversify their composition in terms of types of colleges and universities represented, and the educational component should be addressed to see if undergraduate as well as graduate research is involved. This could be one criterion for funding using federal dollars.

Develop a mechanism in every federal laboratory for undergraduate research opportunities. US federal agencies, through their national laboratories and extension services, harbor vast scientific resources, including facilities and human expertise. These resources are under-utilized today. It is in the long-term interest of agencies to integrate mission-directed research with education. It is also in their interest to be integrated with their local communities through collaboration with local colleges. While many federal labs offer opportunities to faculty and students, these arrangements are often ad hoc and based upon word of mouth. We hope that federal agencies can be encouraged to institutionalize these opportunities, while recognizing that the particular chemistry between researchers will still dictate the forming of bonds between collaborators.

Faculty members and students should be welcomed to participate in federal laboratory research initiatives both on-site (e.g., summer intern programs involving both students and PUI faculty, or faculty sabbatical opportunities) and in partnerships at a distance as a part of campus-based research programs. In most cases, these partnerships require relatively little in financial resources. Faculty members at PUI’s are eager to form collaborations with colleagues in their field. The Council on Undergraduate Research runs many "linkage" programs, including workshops, to bring together critical masses of scientists from PUI’s, research universities, and government labs. CUR also supports undergraduate fellowships with a faculty mentor for research at the home campus and, perhaps in the future, at a federal lab or research university as well. We hope that programs of this type can be institutionalized to give them greater visibility among both federal agency scientists and faculty in undergraduate institutions.

We suggest that faculty members at PUI’s and especially those in fields that nurture independence and interdisciplinary thinking in graduate students be used as resources to reform graduate education in general. Graduate programs should recognize that many PhD’s will seek employment at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions or other settings apart from the large research labs. These scholars need skills in building laboratories from scratch without relying on close colleagues in the same discipline in their departments. They must carry on independent research apart from major infrastructure support in their field. Not the least of their needs are pedagogical skills that allow them to transmit knowledge of research to their undergraduate students. This kind of graduate training does exist in at least one discipline: environmental biology. Here, it is common for a graduate student to pursue research ideas quite independently of his or her major professor. The reason this is possible is that research infrastructure is relatively simple in this field. Also, the training of the faculty mentor is usually quite broad.

In summary, faculty at PUI’s can and do contribute to science policy that will benefit all the nation’s research efforts. We at the Council on Undergraduate Research look forward to continuing a dialogue with the House Science Committee and policymakers in the Executive Branch and the private sector on the role of the undergraduate institutions in the nation’s science effort.