Research and the Undergraduate My topic today is "Research and the Undergraduate." I realize this title seems to p k s the spirit of the times and may peg me as just another one of thuse university scientists interested more in the products of the laboratory than understanding in the classroom. After dl, aren't we experiencing these days a reaction to research in general and a renewed emphasis upon teaching? (If you don't agree, just examine the federal science budgets over the past three years.) My colleagues and I refuse to be categorized in this manner. It's a simple world indeed that suggests a scientist must he either research-oriented or teaching-oriented. As you know so well, research and teaching are ideally two complimentary aspects of that process we call education. I chose my topic quite deliberately because it expresses a particular departure into my message to you. My thesis is simple: thst undergraduate science education can be a major lever in bringing about eduostionally sound change snd greater diversity in the total education experience of all undergraduates. Furthermore, one aspect of undergraduste science education which holds unusual promise for being at the cutting edge of this change is student participation in faculty projects of mutualinterest. It is in this sense that I use the word research. . . .To put my thesis as a question: Can the ideas and methods we have evolved in our undergraduate science progrsm--espeeially those relating to research-be extended and expanded to influence a far larger percentage of our undergraduates? If we can do this, I believe we would effect a quiet revolution in collegiate education, a revolution which would produce a quantum increase in the quality of American higher education. I propose to examine this point by asking four subsidiary questions, suggesting a few tentative answers for each. But before I ask my four questions, let me he clear as to what I believe to be at the heart of the Foundation's approach to undergraduate science education, in its simplest term. Our goal is threefold: 1. to involve students in the excitement of science 2. to improve the quality of science teaching 3. to foster experiment and innovation in science curricula.
Central to every aspect of this goal is the concept of research, which I define here as substantial individual involvement in a problem or discipline. Perhaps at times this goal is lost in the hurley-hurley of everyday activity, perhaps it is compromised by valid administrative problem and invalid redtape. But, despite these natural situations, we must keep our objectives in view. Now let me turnto my four questions.
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include mare undergraduate science majors?. 1) Can our college science concepts be broadened-expanded-to Can we use the concepts we have developed in undergraduate science education to improve science education for 'nou-science majors?. 3) Can we suggest to our academic colleagues that the approach suggested here to undergraduate science education may h w e applicationin other areas of our institutions, especially in the humanities and fine arts?. 4) Can we implement at least some of the answers to the three previous questions without increasing the cost of college education? Could we even reduce costs by moving in the indicated directions?. . . 2)
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...Taken from an address by W. D. McElroy, Director, National Science Foundation, before the U.E.S. Project DirictorsMeeting, February 13, 1970.
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Journal o f Chemical Education
