SMU Undergraduate Research program described at:



SMU Undergraduate Research program described at:



This includes or links to several different programs and disciplines.

Comments on individual programs:

The availability of undergraduate research opportunities helps to guarantee that no gap forms for the student in the classroom, and professors in research. It acquaints students with the environment and practices of an educated career and, I believe, amplifies and strengthens the classroom work.

I very much like the idea of Tulane’s database for specific research opportunities. This would significantly extend the basic function of the web-page to navigate to broad programs.

In relation to the comments about U. of Arkansas, several SMU students have gotten their work into refereed publications. This something that would be very useful to develop further for more departments. It may be that SMU’s existing Research Fair, which included undergraduates this last year, serves the purpose of making other research visible. The symposium organized by Northwestern seems to be like this. I know that this was among things cited for the 2010 undergraduate awardee for admission to graduate school.

To my knowledge, there has not been a strong effort to connect with the Career Center to make sure they are aware of the opportunities in the undergraduate research category. This should definitely be improved.

In response to Subcommittee Duties:

1) What is Research/Discovery?

This is any activity which has a relevance for professional experience and which is outside the normal classroom. This might include library research projects, internships, research in the laboratory, field work, or work study. In general, these opportunities should provide deeper experience with particulars of a disciplines methods, material and standards. An important goal should involve the regular dissemination of the results of this work in fora or publications.

2) What Research/Discovery activities already exist at SMU?

There are several types of opportunities. Dedman honors students can win external Richter awards for research proposals (see D. Doyle). Dedman students can also win donor awarded Hamilton Scholar awards for research proposals. Across SMU, undergraduates can participate in the Undergraduate Research Assistantships (URA) program. The latter two fund research during semesters, as well as during winter and summer periods. Other programs include the Big iDeas program which has a local emphasis, and the Weil research award which supports literature research.

The SMU undergraduate research web-page () attempts to summarize and link to what exists. This includes several different programs (Richter, Hamilton, Big ideas, URA). For URA, the represented departments currently include Chemistry, Psychology, Physics, Anthropology, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Economics, Math. Some have dedicated web-pages of their own, which are linked at the above web-site. We hope to broaden the Departments that pursue these efforts.

Aside from Engineering, SMU appears to lack REU opportunities. Relevant disciplines at SMU should apply for becoming REU Sites.

3) Identify student outcomes.

Important student outcomes from undergraduate research involve public discussion, publication and organizational aspects. In any discipline, the ability to pursue a reasoned discussion of a topic is very important. One result of undergraduate research should be to provide such opportunities to students in conferences held at SMU or externally. The SMU Research Fair is an important element of this. Some students have given external talks as well, and this should be encouraged.

A final summary of the result of research provided in paper form, either refereed or not, provides an important evidence of the student’s work. It also provides an excellent experience that is relevant to the need to communicate in a professional context after SMU. Some students at SMU are doing this, including in Chemistry, Anthropology, Economics and Physics. This should also be improved.

There is a social or organizational side of many professional activities that can be best exercised via research outside the classroom. This includes developing and convincing others of your ideas, organizing the work, and perhaps leadership opportunities. I believe these goals are already met in SMU opportunities now.

4) Outcome Monitoring.

Quantification of the public discussion and publication aspects of research is straightforward. This relies on faculty mentors to make these items a goal in the research and to assist the student in finding the appropriate fora to provide them. The students primary responsibility is their academic performance while at SMU, so research must work around this constraint. Nevertheless, at least one public presentation or discussion, and one paper seem very reasonable in the course of one undergraduate tenure at SMU. The paper need not be refereed, but a well written description or presentation of the material is important.

In terms of percentages that will do this, my estimation is that this will be very discipline-specific. However, if the discussion and paper requirements are taken together, at least one of them should be achievable by most majors for which undergraduate research is asensible pursuit. Perhaps this would entail making such projects part of the degree granting criteria.

5) How research goals will be implemented.

The Research Fair already exists. More support for summer undergraduate research is needed, as that is a key time for progress by students. REU opportunities at SMU should be applied for and encouraged. Aside from this, SMU has a wide array of resources and programs to support undergraduate research. A primary difficulty right now involves just letting faculty and students know of these opportunities and how to make use of them. This is improving, but needs a good deal of work still.

Organizationally, there is currently a person or persons responsible for each of the research programs at SMU. For the URA program, there is also a Steering Committee that was inactive the last year but is being reconstituted starting in April. For URA, this will hold discussions of departmental practices, queries about how to manage the URA program, and other elements related to running and tracking this program. Meetings historically have been held once per semester and were sufficient.

It would be useful for a person to serve as a link between the different programs, as well as a coordinator with general responsibilities relevant to one or more of the programs. For instance, questions about summer research funding (i.e. payroll) and enrollment (registrar) at the university have come up with URA students. These questions are not specific to URA, however, but there is no clear way to disseminate this information beyond word-of-mouth. The web-page cited above is managed by this same informal arrangement, but it is hard to document and act on common agreements of how to make it better. The organizational shortcomings at least slow down the ability to propagate undergraduate research at SMU. I do not believe a separate administrator position needs to be funded for this work, but rather feel strongly that it should reside with a dedicated faculty member tasked with the job but is unabated in their teaching and research efforts.

Making a 5 year plan is difficult for me without a more complete picture of SMU undergraduate research. I do believe that well before that point, some requirements on what student’s should achieve can be laid out and implemented. I also believe the organizational improvements mentioned above can be enacted relatively quickly. Broadening REU availability will take time, but a major improvement in 5 years should be possible.

6) Ensuring faculty participation.

Where appropriate, undergraduate research should be considered an expected part of faculty teaching responsibilities. This should be communicated during hiring and recruitment. Beyond this, SMU will benefit from faculty providing regular contributions along these lines. This is what is very important, and if it becomes regular will penetrate further into the culture of teaching at SMU. To encourage this, one solution might be to set up a modest award that a faculty member can obtain if they support more than 1 student per year over some number of years (say 3 or 5 years). The award could just be an award, but it could also have a small fund, say $100. Another approach might be to allow work with a substantial number of undergraduates to count toward teaching. For instance, guiding 10 students successfully (i.e. to presentation or publication) or more over 3 years might equate to one of their teaching courses. Guiding undergraduate research is not the same as course teaching by any means, and this threshold should therefore be very high. There should also be a limit to how much a particular faculty member can use such an opportunity.

Another way to encourage this might be to help alleviate the cost to their research funds (if they have any) for the costs of presentations or publication by students. A fund that faculty could apply to, specifically to fund student travel or publication charges (if relevant) would remove a potential stumbling block to faculty pushing for these accomplishments.

7) Undergraduate Research Day.

The current undergraduate element of the SMU Research Fair seems to accomplish this well for students. A larger involvement would be very useful.

It would be very useful, and support several points above, if a half-day or day could also be organized for the benefit of the faculty. The programs and progress could be reviewed, and it would provide a efficient way to motivate faculty and disseminate information to them.

8) Undergraduate Research grants program.

SMU has such a program in the URA. This program is currently focused on hourly pay as an efficient way to let students pace themselves without misusing funds. Discussions have started about whether a stipend-based approach (like REU) could be useful in the summer, and will be discussed in the URA steering group this Fall.

The URA program is currently not proposal-based. This has allowed an important flexibility to invite the widest student and faculty participation. However, as participation continues to improve, a proposal mechanism should be implemented by which faculty, with a student, request and are granted URA funds. This also should be evaluated by the URA steering committee this Fall.

9) Departmental Distinction

A successful publication coming out of undergraduate research should be a source of departmental distinction. I am not aware of what departments have decided in this direction.

Undergraduate Research Reports:

This page is designed to archive the research reports written by SMU undergraduates. It also includes reports written by graduate students for isolated research courses (e.g. PHY 8600) which do not result in a Masters thesis. In the undergraduate case, these reports are also meant to fulfill the goals of the SMU Undergraduate Research Assistants Program (URAP). At the very bottom of this page are also materials for faculty guiding or recruiting for undergraduate research. A list of journals dedicated to undergraduates is given. The Department brochure on undergraduate research is also provided.

• URAP Reports: For many students, the URAP program provides a focused way to participate in research while obtaining additional funds in return. Various projects have been supported in the Physics Dept., and these are documented at the link . The reports we have had so far are the following:

• Courtney Fagg, Jieun Park, Kelly Pearson Search for Stars with Rapid Optical Variations: Test Fields (2008-2009)

• Joseph Hashem Picoammeter with and without Shield (2008)

• Alex Weckiewicz Measurement of the Muon G-Factor (2006-2007)

• Brad Stanley Missing Et Resolution in Z+jets Events (2006-2007)

• Rozmin Daya, Andrew Peppard Time Resolution of GPS Technology (2005-2006)

• Senior Theses: The senior thesis is a valuable way to supplement an academic study with experience on research. These projects may be funded by URAP, or they may be thru research coursework (e.g. PHY 4190) in several semesters. Recent reports are the following

• Kelvin Varghese Radio Astronomy and the Galactic Rotation Curve (2008)

• Robert Nordsell Analysis of Higgs Boson Backgrounds (2006)

• PHY 8*00 Reports: In some cases, graduate students who do not continue to a Masters thesis or to a Ph.D. nevertheless perform some research in the 8*00 series of courses. These reports are useful statements of work done and are archived here:

• Franz Farro Top Quark and Backgrounds (PHY 8600, 2006)

• Refereed Journals for Undergraduate Research in Science & Math: In some cases, undergraduate research may achieve the level which is novel and valuable to communicate to the wider community. A refereed journal would be a natural place for such work. A category of journals exists for undergraduate research which is not necessarily destined for inclusion in publications with the major research journals (e.g. Physical Review). We can encourage these students to write for this set of publications:

• Caltech Undergraduate Research Journal

• American Journal of Undergraduate Research

• Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics

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