“Engage students in discipline-specific research that promotes active learning and contributes to discussion, collaboration, presentations, and possibly publications”

Peters, Tisdale, & Swinton, 2019

Undergraduate research opportunities have a positive effect on STEM major retention, likely via various processes inherent to student participation in research (see Jones, Barlow & Villarejo, 2010). Research projects can increase undergraduates’ scientific self-efficacy/confidence and academic curiosity, along with enhancing oral communication skills. Indeed, student participation in undergraduate research projects improves retention, graduation rates, and GPA in STEM fields (Bahr & Norton, 2006). Further, experiences with undergraduate research also carries positive benefits to student skill development and career goals (Hackett, Croissant & Schneider, 1992). Notably, undergraduate research participation has been shown to strongly predict greater retention of underrepresented students in the sciences (Vieyra, Gilmore & Timmerman, 2011). Moreover, undergraduate research experiences have also been shown to promote skills that are necessary in STEM graduate programs (Gilmore et al., 2015).

References and additional resources:

Bahr, D. F., & Norton, M. G. (2006). The effectiveness of active undergraduate research in materials science and engineering. Journal of Materials Education, 28(1/2), 127.

Bowling, B., Bullen, H., Doyle, M., & Filaseta, J. (2013, March). Retention of STEM majors using early undergraduate research experiences. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (pp. 171-176).

Estrada, M., Burnett, M., Campbell, A. G., Campbell, P. B., Denetclaw, W. F., Gutiérrez, C. G., … & Okpodu, C. M. (2016). Improving underrepresented minority student persistence in STEM. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(3), es5.

Gilmore, J., Vieyra, M., Timmerman, B., Feldon, D., & Maher, M. (2015). The relationship between undergraduate research participation and subsequent research performance of early career STEM graduate students. The Journal of Higher Education, 86(6), 834-863.

Hackett, E. J., Croissant, J., & Schneider, B. (1992). Industry, academe, and the values of undergraduate engineers. Research in Higher Education, 33(3), 275-295.

Jones, M. T., Barlow, A. E., & Villarejo, M. (2010). Importance of undergraduate research for minority persistence and achievement in biology. The Journal of Higher Education, 81(1), 82-115.

Peters, A. W., Tisdale, V. A., & Swinton, D. J. (2019). High-impact educational practices that promote student achievement in STEM. Broadening Participation in STEM (Diversity in Higher Education) 22, 183-196.

Schneider, K. R., Bickel, A., & Morrison-Shetlar, A. (2015). Planning and implementing a comprehensive student-centered research program for first-year STEM undergraduates. Journal of College Science Teaching, 44(3), 37-43.

Stanford, J. S., Rocheleau, S. E., Smith, K. P., & Mohan, J. (2017). Early undergraduate research experiences lead to similar learning gains for STEM and Non-STEM undergraduates. Studies in Higher Education, 42(1), 115-129.

Vieyra, M., Gilmore, J., & Timmerman, B. (2011). Requiring research may improve retention in STEM fields for underrepresented women. Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, 32(1), 13-20.

Wilson, Z. S., Holmes, L., Degravelles, K., Sylvain, M. R., Batiste, L., Johnson, M., … & Warner, I. M. (2012). Hierarchical mentoring: A transformative strategy for improving diversity and retention in undergraduate STEM disciplines. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 21(1), 148-156.