{"id":1371,"date":"2007-04-30T11:30:48","date_gmt":"2007-04-30T11:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/30\/its-the-research-that-matters\/"},"modified":"2007-04-30T11:30:48","modified_gmt":"2007-04-30T11:30:48","slug":"its-the-research-that-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/04\/30\/its-the-research-that-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s the Research that Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake notes an article in Science<\/cite><\/a> about a survey of undergraduate research. The actual article<\/a> is behind a paywall, but you can get access to the survey reports from SRI<\/a> directly, which is even better.<\/p>\n

The study finds a large number of benefits from undergraduate research, from increased confidence to improved knowledge of graduate school. Students who have done research are about twice as likely to pursue a Ph.D. as those who haven’t, and the more research they do, the more likely they are to pursue careers in science.<\/p>\n

The conclusion is strikingly simple, and I’ll copy it wholesale from the Science<\/cite> article:<\/p>\n

\n

The large number and variety of students surveyed represented a variety of colleges and universities. Many types of undergraduate research experience fuel interest in STEM careers and higher degrees. No formulaic combination of activities optimizes the URO [Undergraduate Research Opportunity], nor should providers structure their programs differently for unique racial\/ethnic minorities or women. Rather, it seems that the inculcation of enthusiasm is the key element–and the earlier the better. Thus, greater attention should be given to fostering STEM interests of elementary and high school students and providing UROs for college freshmen and sophomores.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The key thing is just getting students involved in research– nothing else that they looked at is particularly correlated with the outcomes (at least not in a statistically significant way– they say that “having a mix of mentors (in terms of their sex and race\/ethnicity) is likely to have a mildly beneficial effect for all students, not just women and minorities”). Just the act of getting involved in a research project seems to produce beneficial effects, completely independent of any special additional efforts to encourage students from particular demographic groups. I think that’s a really interesting and encouraging result.<\/p>\n

So, if you know students who you’d like to see go into a career in science, get them involved in doing research. The sooner the better.<\/p>\n

(Granted, that’s easier said than done, from the faculty perspective, and I’ll have more to say about that in a future post…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake notes an article in Science about a survey of undergraduate research. The actual article is behind a paywall, but you can get access to the survey reports from SRI directly, which is even better. The study finds a large number of benefits from undergraduate research, from increased confidence to improved… Continue reading It’s the Research that Matters<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}