Student Research by Department
Many departments have their own vision of student research. If a department has a student research page on its website, then the department name links to that page.
Art and Design
Biology
Student-faculty
research in Biology seeks to answer questions about organisms or their
environments using scientific inquiry and to model scientific curiosity for
motivated and capable students. Research entails reading and synthesis of
literature, thoughtful reflection and discussion of problems and questions,
trial and error to learn and to teach techniques, large blocks of time to
accomplish these things, and adequate facilities and equipment to pursue
technical questions with modern approaches. Ideally it results in new knowledge
that is shared with the scientific community and society.
Chemistry
Research in the
Department of Chemistry typically entails undergraduate chemistry and
biochemistry majors working alongside faculty in their respective laboratories
for at least one calendar year, including extensive summer research funded
through available grants. Students choose a project within the various
sub-disciplines of chemistry (biochemistry, analytical, physical/computational,
inorganic, organic) that aligns with their interests and talents and students
are welcome to participate in more than one project during their studies.
Students present the results of their work at national meetings for the
American Chemical Society and their travel is funded via university sources.
Communication/Journalism
Computer Science
Our department
considers the following things as undergraduate "research."
- Every student does a senior research project
and these also reflect "research" we do with undergraduates
outside of this requirement. These projects fall into three categories:
- confirmation research (reproducing a published experiment)
- discovery research (traditional research)
- development (producing a product for a customer)
- BROADSIDE - a center that allows us to
partner with local industry to develop a software/hardware solution for
that business
- extra-curricular activities. We have a
number of extra-curricular groups that
develop innovative projects that we would also consider as undergraduate
research. Our Women in Computer Science builds something for
Maker Faires each year. Our Software Engineering Team has built
software applications for competitions and works with our Computer
Engineering Team to develop interesting projects like our upcoming laser
harp.
Criminal Justice
Over the past thirty years, criminal justice has steadily
become an evidence-based discipline.
From computerized crime analysis, to developing principles of effective
intervention and standards of best practice in corrections, practitioners are
increasingly required to understand and conduct empirical research to augment
these activities. To build on these
competencies in our undergraduates, the Department of Criminal Justice requires
its students to complete in-class research activities and encourages participation
in extended and extracurricular student-centered and student-faculty research
opportunities. These include, but are
not limited to:
- Empirical literature reviews to analyze,
interpret, and apply scholarly research to contemporary issues facing criminal
justice (e.g., trends, policy, practice);
- Collaboration with faculty on innovative
research projects;
- Submission of individual and group projects for
presentation at local, regional, and national conferences (e.g., Ship’s Celebration
of Student Research Conference; Annual Meeting of the American Society of
Criminology); and,
- Submission of individual and co-authored evidence-based
theses for consideration in University and discipline-related publications.
Economics
English
Research in
English involves the study of primary cultural texts (written, oral, visual,
virtual). Scholars in literary studies formulate original arguments about
the social, historical, political, artistic, or cultural significance of such
texts, informed by the work of other established scholars within our
discipline; they produce original creative work; and they develop materials and
approaches for use by other scholars and teachers of English and cultural
studies.
Ethnic Studies
Geography/Earth Science
Research
in the field of Geography and Earth Science provides students the opportunity
to learn through direct experience. Students who become engaged in a
facet of this discipline discover a problem or an unanswered question in the
literature with a faculty mentor who assists the student off-load. Together,
student and professor devise a question and develop a method of study.
The answer comes through collection of original data in the field or in the
lab, analysis of these data, and the preparation of a plausible conclusion.
History/Philosophy
Historical
research is an interpretation of the past in a meaningful, original way, based
on the author's use of a variety of primary sources (first-hand accounts such
as government and other archival documents, newspapers, personal effects,
music, works of art, interviews, and participant observation, among others) as
well as secondary sources (scholarly accounts by individuals who did not
witness the events being described). The author reviews the source
material to construct an original argument that interprets the past in a new
way and to analyze the material's significance in the realm of politics,
economics, religion, gender, or a number of other categories. The
finished product may take a variety of forms, including books, journal
articles, poster presentations, or museum exhibits. Because historians
typically, though not always, work alone, student historical research is rarely
done alongside a faculty member. Rather the faculty member serves as a
mentor who potentially helps the student select a topic, find source material,
or sharpen his or her analysis.
Human Communication Studies
The
Department of Human Communication defines research as the systemic, rigorous
qualitative, quantitative or interpretive assessment of communication processes
and messages, which may include verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual cues. As a
discipline, Communication Studies values basic and applied research that
produces knowledge which furthers the understanding
and advances the efficacious practice of human communication.
Interdisciplinary Arts Program
International Studies
Mathematics
In the
mathematics department, we view undergraduate research as a collaborative
effort on a problem whose solution is unknown (even to the faculty
mentor!). Ideally, the research process involves literature review,
significant discoveries by the student, and ultimately, the public communication
of results.
Modern Languages
In
the languages, undergraduate research is a process
that includes the reinterpretation
or rediscovery of known artifacts
(texts and other cultural products) from a critical
or creative perspective to generate new analyses (scholarly research: literary studies, cultural
studies, linguistics) or innovative art
(literary authorship: creative writing, translation), under the close
mentorship and guidance of faculty.
Undergraduate researchers are expected to make
cross-cultural comparisons and connections between their first language
and the target language, focusing on linguistic (speech patterns at the
lexical, phonological and syntactical levels), cultural, artistic and/or
literary aspects, in order to answer questions about, and gain a
deeper understanding of, the target language, cultures, practices
and perspectives. It is also interdisciplinary,
and involves the coordination of historical-socio-political knowledge with
textual analysis or creativity (textual being broadly defined and being applied
to any artifact from the target language/culture).
Research in the languages is conducted individually,
is student-centered and focused on the process rather than on the
outcome. It entails identifying and acquiring a discipline-specific or
inter-disciplinary methodology, defining a concrete investigative issue,
carrying out the actual project through literature review (reading, analyzing,
interpreting and synthesizing) in the target language, articulating and
discussing the issues, and finally sharing
findings (which do not have to be
entirely new, other than to the student) with a paper or a poster in the target language.
Music and Theater Arts
For most musicians and theater artists, “scholarly
activity” means performance and/or composition and “research”
represents:
MUSIC- music history, musicology, music theory,
composition; performance - exploration of literature, suitability for student
ensembles, score study; all require countless hours of study, practice and
listening within the confines of a library, practice room/studio.
THEATRE- clothing and architecture, cultural
history and etiquette, dramatic literature and styles of performance and voice
and movement.
Performers in each discipline spend months,
sometimes years in preparation before stepping on stage for a solo or ensemble
performance, lecture recital, recording session, or play.
Physics
Political Science
Psychology
“Undergraduate
research in the Department of Psychology is an intensive faculty-student
collaboration. Following the formal scientific method and using both
experimental and non-experimental methodologies, students generate testable,
novel hypotheses about human behavior, design and conduct both animal and human
studies, analyze study results using professional statistical software, present
their results at state, regional, national, and international professional
conferences, and participate in the writing and submission of resulting
manuscripts for publication. Research topics explored by undergraduate
researchers are as broad as their and their faculty mentor’s interests, ranging
from dating behavior, high-risk drinking, the development of wisdom, resilience
of children, parent-child attachment, cellphone use and thinking, women’s
self-defense behaviors, attitudes of sports fans, subliminal perception,
workplace behaviors, extinction of behavior, ego depletion, food preferences,
personality disorders, shunning behavior, health-related choices, optimism, and
death attitudes of extreme sports participants, to name a few.
Sociology/Anthropology
Research involves
the collection of primary and/or secondary DATA to find patterns and
correlations among variables. Research is a systematic collection of data to
answer a research question. Sociology is the study of human behavior,
especially in the context of social groups. Sociologists gather and
analyze to ask questions and find answers about human behavior. Our
questions may be exploratory, such as, “ What is this new practice called ‘butt
chugging’ on college campuses?” Sometimes we ask questions that are
descriptive, such as, “What type of romantic couple is most likely to break
up?” And finally, we may ask questions that are meant to explain a
behavior. Explanatory questions are posed with cause and effect
relationships between independent and dependent variables. An example of
an explanatory question is “Does the education of women influence the fertility
rate of a country?” We can use the scientific method with explanatory
questions, especially once we state the question as an hypothesis: “Countries
with low rates of education among women have high fertility rates.”
Women’s Studies