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Learning, Teaching and Scholarship: FundamentalTensions of Undergraduate ResearchSandra Laursen a , Elaine Seymour & Anne-Barrie Hunter aa University of Colorado BoulderPublished online: 26 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Sandra Laursen , Elaine Seymour & Anne-Barrie Hunter (2012) Learning, Teaching and Scholarship:Fundamental Tensions of Undergraduate Research, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 44:2, 30-37, DOI:10.1080/00091383.2012.655217

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30 Change • March/April 2012

LEARNING, TEACHINGAND SCHOLARSHIP:

Sandra Laursen and Anne-Barrie Hunter are the co-directors of Ethnography & Evaluation Research (E&ER) in the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; Laursen is a research associate and Hunter a senior professional research assistant there. E&ER conducts research and evaluation studies on educa-tion and career paths in science, engineer-ing, and mathematics. Elaine Seymour is the director emerita of E&ER.

The authors thank their book co-authors Heather Thiry and Ginger Melton, as well as colleagues Kris de Welde, Tracee DeAntoni, Rebecca Crane, and Tim Weston, for their contributions to this work; Sandra Laursen also thanks Tom Higgins for help-ful conversations.

Support for this work has been provided by the National Science Foundation Divisions of Chemistry, Biology, and Undergraduate Education; the Noyce, Spencer, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations; the Research Cor-poration for Science Advancement; and the National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute via grants to the Biological Sciences Initiative and NIH/HHMI Scholars Program, University of Colorado Boulder.

By Sandra Laursen,Elaine Seymour, andAnne-Barrie Hunter

Fundamental Tensions ofUndergraduate Research

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Each year, thousands of undergraduates in the sci-ence, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields conduct research in US university and college laboratories. Some choose structured

summer programs with a cohort of peers and a menu of academic, career, and social activities to complement the laboratory experience; others simply join a research group at the invitation of a faculty member.

Such undergraduate research (UR) experiences are com-mon practice in US higher education, with nearly a century of history at research universities and liberal arts colleges. And several indicators suggest that interest in UR is grow-ing, in part due to recent work by George Kuh and the American Association of Colleges and Universities that draws attention to UR as a “high-impact educational prac-tice” comparable to first-year seminars, learning communi-ties, service learning, and study abroad.

Among long-time practitioners, the benefits of UR to students are nearly a matter of faith. Indeed, many scientists retrospectively credit their own undergraduate research proj-ects with launching them on the path to a scientific career. Yet until recently, little evidence from educational research supported such beliefs. But for over a decade, our research team has studied the nature and outcomes of UR, as detailed in our recent book, Undergraduate Research in the Sciences: Engaging Students in Real Science. This work focuses on students and faculty, but it also elucidates issues for depart-ments and institutions.

While classroom-based inquiry is important for students’ growth as critical thinkers, here we focus on the traditional and most intensive model of undergraduate research, where students pursue a multi-week, open-ended scientific project outside of class. Summer is when this immersion is most readily—though not exclusively—accomplished.

Crucial in defining UR experiences is the apprenticeship of the novice researcher to an experienced scientist. As nov-ices learn the intellectual craft and social practices of science by doing it, they are guided by advice, help, and moral sup-port from more experienced colleagues.

A growing body of evidence indicates that apprentice-model undergraduate research does indeed offer many ben-efits to students in the short and longer term. Some of these benefits are much more effectively derived from research experiences than from other forms of experiential and class-room education; many transfer well to other courses, work,

and life experiences. Research experiences can thus power-fully shape students’ knowledge, confidence, and readiness for careers and graduate education, whether in science or another field.

These good outcomes for students are crafted by research advisors who supervise students’ work and guide their development. Investigating an authentic scientific problem using real disciplinary tools motivates and gives intellectual significance to the investigation; it also offers a limitless sup-ply of teachable moments that skilled advisors can exploit for their deep educational value.

But doing “real science” also exposes a fundamental tension inherent to undergraduate research: Is it at heart an educational endeavor for students or a scholarly endeavor for faculty?

In this article, we explore this fundamental tension be-tween education and scholarship in undergraduate research and how it plays out for students, faculty, and institutions. Faculty’s dual roles as scholar and teacher distinguish apprentice-model undergraduate research from course-based inquiry and lend it much of its power as an educational experience. Yet this dual role also generates challenges that become increasingly apparent as a broader array of institu-tions attempts to initiate and develop undergraduate research programs on their campuses.

Investigating an authentic scientific problem using

real disciplinary tools motivates and gives intellectual

significance to the investigation.

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32 Change • March/April 2012

Studying undergraduate reSearch

When we began this line of investigation in the late 1990s, little previous work had been done on the nature and out-comes of undergraduate research. So we undertook a large interview study in which we examined apprentice-model UR as practiced at four liberal-arts colleges with long institu-tional experience of UR. These sites—like others we might have chosen —exemplify best-case scenarios of the common “grassroots” model of faculty-led UR, where faculty rou-tinely engage undergraduates in their laboratories.

In nearly 400 interviews, students, alumni, faculty and administrators offered thousands of individual observa-tions about the short- and longer-term benefits to students, the processes by which UR provides these benefits, and the advantages and costs to faculty and their institutions. Careful coding and classifying of the interview observations re-vealed strong patterns that are the basis of our analysis.

These study sites were not unique in offering signifi-cant learning to students and in revealing the practices of research advisors. But they offered the opportunity to examine the question, “What outcomes are possible from well-designed and well-implemented apprentice-model UR experiences, and by what means are these produced?” This is distinct from the question, also important, of what outcomes actually result from the broader set of practices encompassed by all the forms of UR practiced in diverse institutions and settings.

BenefitS to StudentS

Students’ gains from undergraduate research were remark-ably consistent. Among some 3400 distinct observations from 76 student researchers and 80 faculty research advi-sors, over 90 percent of observations were positive—report-ing gains made—while the rest described gains not made or only partially made. Figure 1 shows the classification of these gains into six types, three of which have an especially profound influence on students’ development as scientists.

Thinking and Working Like a Scientist Gains in “thinking and working like a scientist” reveal

students’ intellectual growth. As they worked with scientific ideas in the context of their research, students grew in their understanding of particular scientific concepts and how they connected. Doing research shed light on earlier course mate-rial and “made it really make sense,” while discussing ideas and presenting their work fostered students’ depth of knowl-edge. As one biology student put it, “I needed to actually know what I was talking about in order to communicate it.”

Students also grew in their abilities and in their un-derstanding of how scientific knowledge is built through research. Nearly all reported growth in their ability to do science: applying their critical thinking and problem-solving skills to a real problem. As a biology student put it, “You can read about how the whole process works, but until you actually do it, you don’t necessarily put it together.” Steady

figure 1diStriBution of Perceived Student gainS from undergraduate reSearchFIGURE 1 DISTRIBUTION OF PERCEIVED STUDENT GAINS FROM UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

0%

5%

10%

15%

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30%

Thinkin

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Becoming

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Person

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Career

clarif

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Skills

% of all positive gains observations

by students(N=1231)

by faculty(N=2243)

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practice honed skills and made students more aware of their developing abilities:

It really does help you learn to detect your own dumb mistakes. Like, it’s easy to think about something conceptually a little bit wrong, and go with that. … But then you look at what you’ve got, and your spectra don’t make any sense. ... Then you realize what the problem is. You learn to recognize things like that quicker and quicker the more you do it. (chemistry student)

Some students reported gains not just in carrying out their own projects but in learning how to design any investigation. As a mathematics student said, “You have to figure out the questions, first of all, and then figure out how to pursue those questions.” This step toward self-direction was intrinsically rewarding, as a chemistry student noted: “Getting directions from above and carrying [them] out... is not nearly as excit-ing as figuring out on your own.”

At the same time, a few students developed a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of scientific knowl-edge. Pursuing their own discoveries, they came to recognize that similar processes of human discovery had generated the facts in today’s textbooks. They became more skeptical and less accepting of authority, but at the same time they felt empowered by seeing that they too could contribute to the accumulation of knowledge over time. As one chemistry major said,

Your professor is not God, and does not know every-thing. ... He’s more experienced in this field. But I still have a lot to contribute to this, because I am capable of my own thought.

Reaching these higher levels of abstraction, where they ex-trapolated from the design of their own projects to the design of any study and to the strengths and limitations of the knowl-edge thus acquired, was not typical for first-time researchers. But alumni commonly reported these gains, suggesting that further exposure to research helped students interpret their initial experiences and consolidate these intellectual gains.

Doing research shed light on

earlier course material and

“made it really make sense,”

while discussing ideas and

presenting their work fostered

depth of knowledge.

Personal and Professional Growth Students often described their internal, emotional re-

sponses to the research experience in ways that also reflected their growing sense of themselves as professionals capable of doing real science. Three-quarters of these observations reflected students’ confidence in their capacity to carry out a project, learn new skills, solve problems, and make decisions.

They learned “to get in there and try it and mess up—and if it doesn’t work, try it a different way.” Both failures and small successes made them hungry for more. “When they approach a new piece of equipment, it’s ‘Well, where’s the manual? Just tell me how to turn it on and I’ll figure it out,’” noted a chemistry professor of his students.

Other personal/professional gains included new collegial relationships with their mentors. Speaking of his advisor, a chemistry student said, “I feel like I’m a partner. ... We’ve got this project and we’re both using our minds and our tools to figure it out.” Students were gratified to be taken seriously by their professors and relied upon to accomplish a job.

They also came to value support from a community of peers, learning to bounce ideas off each other and seek help. A physics student noted, “When someone’s just across the bench and you can help solve their problem for them, then you see that it’s worthwhile to ask somebody when some-thing comes up.”

Becoming a Scientist Students expressed a growing sense of identity with their

disciplines and the scientific profession—“feeling like a sci-entist,” in their phrase. Faculty, more familiar with the norms and behaviors of scientists, recognized that students began to take on the behaviors and traits of budding professionals and validated their claims to the status as well as the identity of scientist.

For example, students increasingly took initiative and claimed ownership of their projects:

There comes a point where you say, I checked my experiment, and I know I did things correctly. ... I’m coming back with different numbers, but I will stand by these [results] and support them: This is my data, this is what I got. And I know that this means we need to push our project in this direction. (biology student)

They learned to cope with te-dium, setbacks, and uncertainty as normal features of everyday scien-tific work: “You never think Einstein ran into a dead end, but he did,” mused a physics student.

Skills, Career Preparation, and Career Clarification

Other types of gains were commonly reported: skills in writing and

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speaking, laboratory and computer techniques, reading and information-seeking, and data analysis and interpretation. Gains in career preparation reflected students’ readiness to undertake work in their field as employees or gradu-ate students, while increased career clarification addressed students’ better understanding of whether or not they wished to pursue a research career or attend graduate school. Even students who discovered that “research is not for me” wel-comed the way that research experience had settled that open question about their future direction.

While first elucidated in the study of four liberal-arts col-leges, these student outcomes also align with those from UR done at research universities and government labs, as well as from structured UR programs targeted at students from groups underrepresented in STEM. Further insight into how UR works for different students and at different institutions comes from a growing body of survey data from the Under-graduate Research Student Self-Assessment, or URSSA—a free online instrument for use in assessing student outcomes of UR. For example, we detect differences in the gains made by first-time researchers and those who have had multiple UR experiences, particularly in their understanding of the nature and practice of science.

the Pedagogy of undergraduate reSearch

The gains that students valued are by no means accidental. Faculty articulated their work with students as “very much a teaching thing—I’m always thinking of what I want them to come away with and how I can get them there.” They described specific teaching strategies in detail.

First, research advisors put much thought into creating carefully scaffolded but authentic scientific projects for their undergraduates. They selected disciplinary tools and ap-proaches to address a question of real interest to the field: “It’s gotta be answering a question that the scientific com-munity—my little subset—really wants to know the answer to, and wants to know it now,” said one. They then adjusted the scope or theoretical depth to make the project accessible to young researchers and set goals that could be achieved in a summer or semester of work.

Advisors made good use of the many teachable moments that naturally arise out of a real research problem. “Throw-ing students straight in,” said some faculty members, forced them to “apply what they already knew” and to “make connections that can make the pieces fit.” As the inevitable blockages and false starts cropped up, advisors modeled how to solve problems by giving students responsibility for taking the initial trouble-shooting steps, thinking out loud with them, and normalizing the risks and uncertainties of real science—always demonstrating collegial approaches to

increasingly independent problem-solving. While research advisors took pains to be approachable,

they encouraged students to see them as problem-solving partners rather than sources of ready answers. Yet they stood ready to intervene when a student floundered or when they diagnosed a problem as being beyond a student’s capacity to resolve. They also made effective use of the research group to establish a safe space in which to try out tentative ideas and practice presentations and a source of collegiality, fun, and training from more experienced peers. “I don’t know the answers, they don’t know the answers,” said one advisor. “We’re a bunch of smart people sitting in a room trying to figure some things out.”

Authenticity was the overarching principle of the research advisors’ teaching approach. Because the research prob-lems stem from faculty scholarship, remarked one advisor, “we have a shared investment in the project questions and outcomes.” And because the methods and modes of work are disciplinary, the forms and standards for the research products also derive from the field. Advisors tempered but did not relax students’ exposure to these disciplinary norms; students were expected to meet high standards even as they were helped to do so. Similar practices described by scien-tists in national labs highlight that the basis of effective ad-vising of undergraduate researchers is the apprentice-mentor relationship rather than the formal faculty role.

This close, collaborative work on an authentic project in which both student and advisor have a vested interest goes beyond what is typically labeled “authentic inquiry” or “investigation.” Apprentice-model UR provides profes-sional education, skills, and socialization into the norms and behaviors of the profession, where novice researchers can learn whether the work of science is a good fit with their own interests and temperaments. Research advisors in turn can assess their apprentices’ aptitude before investing further in their training. As they progress, students undergo shifts in both identity and status—they feel like scientists and act like them too.

Faculty Costs and Benefits: Juggling Teaching and Scholarship

Faculty and administrators at the four colleges made over 2500 observations about the costs and benefits of partici-pating in undergraduate research, which are categorized in Figure 2.

Both failures and small successes

made them hungry for more.

We’re a bunch of smart people

sitting in a room trying to figure

some things out.

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For faculty, finding a proper balance between their educational objectives for students and their own needs for scholarly productivity was not a straightforward matter. Un-dergraduate research was a key dimension of their work and a hallmark of their institutions—“a passion,” “a real plus to my job,” “our mission”—on a par with teaching.

We feel that it is the best way for students to learn about science. … If they really do science, they are also going to learn science. It’s more interesting, it’s more exciting, it creates a bond between students and faculty. ... Faculty who want to be in this environment want to present papers and publish papers, but they know they’re doing it with a different kind of student support structure than at a graduate school—but it’s still of value to them. We think it keeps us alive as an institution.

But over half of faculty observations on costs and benefits of UR address the inherent challenges of working with un-dergraduates in their research programs: issues of time and effort; lowered productivity; the inexperience and turnover of student lab workers; the limitations of campus research resources; and the demands and opportunities of the summer research season as juggled against time for other intellectual work, family, and relaxation.

Moreover, many normal challenges of managing a re-search program were exacerbated when students joined as

“short-term helpers in a long-term enterprise.” “By the time they get up to speed, the summer is almost over,” noted one faculty member.

Advisors were thus constantly adjusting their choices of projects, approaches to training, and methods of select-ing students in hopes of getting a few who would stay on for multiple summers or semesters and become productive contributors. When they did, faculty noted, progress could be “dazzling”—but the demands of supervising students some-times prevented them from finding the concentrated time to finish and write up results. “I refuse to elbow students out of the way. ... The down side has been literally dozens of lost publications, which counts against me despite the rhetoric” about tenure and promotion, said one.

Weighing against these concerns about managing research students were the benefits to faculty. While undergraduates’ slow pace and variable output sometimes compromised their productivity, over time most faculty had met research goals, published or presented work with student collaborators, and benefited from the contributions of their “mini-colleagues.”

They were happy to work with “some damn smart peo-ple,” to see what students could do when they “took informa-tion and ran with it,” and took pride in their students’ suc-cesses: “When these kids get up on their feet and talk, when they deal with the questions and deflect the arrows, then I know I’ve done it right.”

Many faculty also described the intrinsic rewards of work-ing with students: the camaraderie of everyday encounters in

Everyday balancing act between scholarlyproductivity & educational aims

Lowered productivity

Time & effort

Lack of experience

Limited resources

Balancing UR work & life

Conflict between faculty & institutionalgoals for UR

Difficulties of requiring UR

Unresolved issues of institutional value

Research productivity

Satisfactions in student outcomes

Intrinsic benefits

Benefits

Inherent challenges

Situationalstrains

figure 2 coStS and BenefitS to faculty of conducting reSearch

with undergraduateS

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by formalizing the UR experience, perhaps shortening or constraining it while raising their workload and encroaching on their professional autonomy.

Although they had heretofore conducted UR as a vol-untary activity, many faculty members resented the notion that participation might be required. Some withdrew from UR work; others considered withdrawing but felt torn by their moral commitment to educating students and guilty at increasing the workload of colleagues who would have to “take up the slack” to provide research spaces for students. Further, the prospect of formalizing UR raised issues of status, recognition, and salary for summer work.

Thus institutional efforts to produce more of a good thing perturbed the sensitive balance between costs and benefits and educational and research objectives that faculty had struck in their own work. In the summer, faculty attention has traditionally shifted from institutionally defined educa-tional goals to those defined by their own scholarly agendas and commitments: They work for themselves rather than the college. When institutions sought to formalize this work by requiring student participation, faculty protested what they saw as co-optation of their intellectual work and the lack of compensation for what amounted to full-time, year-round teaching.

Feelings on both sides ran high; department chairs worried about the sustainability of their programs and administra-tors were understandably bemused by faculty opposition to what they had understood as a shared value. In some places, this conflict led to the opposite of the desired effect: Some faculty chose to take a break or stop participating in UR, and student opportunities were therefore reduced.

imPlicationS for the growth of urClearly undergraduate research experiences are powerful

for students who have them. While there is little data on the supply and demand for UR opportunities, it is likely that many students who would enjoy and benefit from UR may well not have the opportunity to do it. Kuh’s work shows, for instance, that some groups of histori-cally underserved students are less likely to participate in UR and other high-impact activities—even though these students tend to benefit more. Thus, for educational reasons, institutional inter-est in expanding UR is not misplaced.

But because UR is also deeply embedded in faculty scholarship, expanding or initiat-ing UR on campuses must be carefully considered. It cannot be treated as equivalent to other high-impact experiences

The intrinsic rewards of working

with students: the camaraderie

of everyday encounters in the lab

and the opportunity for “the nicest

kind” of one-on-one teaching.

the lab and the opportunity for “the nicest kind” of one-on-one teaching.

There’s as much joy in discovering the solution to a problem through a student as by yourself. ... The most satisfying moments are when you send a student off with a hard problem, and not only does she come back with the problem done, but has come up with a more elegant solution. It’s rare ... but immensely rewarding.

Doing research—in this form as in any other—kept faculty intellectually sharp and plugged into the field and helped them maintain their own scientific identities. Their “deep-down” enjoyment and curiosity drove and sustained their research activity. As one said, “Any one of us could spend the summer going fishing. But we don’t. ... Research is just kinda what we do, you know. We can’t help going into the lab.”

Thus, most of the time the everyday costs traded off against the everyday benefits of UR: frustration against fun, risk against payoff, the ups and downs of productivity. Research advisors tolerated these difficulties and developed, over time and with colleagues’ advice, a toolkit of teach-ing strategies adapted to their scholarly subjects and work-ing styles. And because these benefits and costs accrued to faculty members in the context of their research groups, the locus of control over these issues remained largely individu-al, with minor impact on departmental colleagues.

the Shifting inStitutional context However, a second layer of situational stresses emerged

when institutions sought to expand the number of UR op-portunities available to students. Ironically, the very success of faculty’s UR work prompted institutions to offer these experiences to more students. Yet conflict arose when faculty saw these efforts as undermining their control over the con-tent and methods of their UR work.

These stresses became apparent when faculty felt pres-sured to accept “weaker” students or numbers of students beyond their capacity to mentor. This became an issue particularly when institutions sought to make UR a gradu-ation requirement. To faculty, authenticity was “diluted”

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case, the active participation of faculty as teachers and scholars—in ways that further their own agendas as well as student learning—will be essential if undergraduate research is to flourish on these campuses.

Given these challenges, it is crucial not to neglect class-room-based inquiry—projects and pedagogies that engage students directly in constructing knowledge using disciplin-ary methods and tools. While classroom-based inquiry may not generate knowledge new to the field, students benefit powerfully from constructing knowledge that is new to them, using approaches authentic to their disciplines. Undergradu-ate research should not substitute for but rather augment a rich menu of well-designed, investigative experiences that are scaffolded throughout the curriculum, from first to senior year, that develop students’ ability to think and work like sci-entists, and that reach all students—biologist, artist, or econ major—whether or not they ever pursue research. C

that are more squarely curricular in nature. Undergraduate research is one of many educational innovations that are good for students but hard on faculty. Simply adding more to already-full faculty plates will not produce thriving UR programs.

In institutions where research is already central to the mission and faculty already run research labs where under-graduates can join in, nurturing UR is to some extent a mat-ter of support and logistics: offering incentives to students and faculty to work together, helping them find appropriate matches, encouraging faculty to adopt good advising and teaching practices that balance student learning with accom-plishing the research tasks, and so forth. Many institutions now carry out these functions through institutionally funded undergraduate research offices.

But there are also issues of institutional culture: Faculty at research institutions, especially those who are untenured, are strongly concerned about how UR’s student-centered educational objectives conflict with publish-or-perish models of professional success. These tradeoffs are even more real and direct when graduate students and postdocs offer more capable research assistance. Such challenges require deliber-ate attention to the faculty reward system so that UR work becomes valued in promotion and tenure decisions and in departmental reviews.

In institutions where science faculty are not already car-rying out active scholarly work, establishing UR poses other opportunities and challenges. Expecting faculty to pursue disciplinary research may conflict with deep commitments to teaching that are grounded in an institution’s roots as a teachers college or its identity as an open-door institution.

For example, anecdotal evidence suggests that community college faculty are motivated by the same scholarly desire to connect with their discipline as those at liberal-arts colleges, and they report the same intrinsic benefits to themselves and their students when they take on undergraduate research-ers. But funding may be especially important in developing UR at teaching-focused institutions—whether as an add-on activity for individual faculty or as a real adjustment to the institutional mission, as manifested in research-active departments.

Just as concerns shared by university faculty raise ques-tions about the educational mission of research institutions, those of community college faculty raise questions about the role of scholarship in their institutions’ mission. In either

n Council on Undergraduate Research. http://www.cur.org/index.html

n Kuh, G. (2008). High-impact educational practic-es: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

n Laursen, S., Hunter, A.-B., Seymour, E., Thiry, H., & Melton, G. (2010). Undergraduate research in the sciences: Engaging students in real science. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

n Thiry, H. & Laursen, S. L. (2011). The role of student-advisor interactions in apprenticing under-graduate researchers into a scientific community of practice. Journal of Science Education and Technol-ogy 20(6), 771–784.

n URSSA, Undergraduate research student self-assessment (2009). Ethnography & Evaluation Research. University of Colorado Boulder: Boulder, CO. Retrieved from http://www.colorado.edu/eer/research/undergradfaqs.html

Resources

Undergraduate research is one

of many educational innovations

that are good for students but

hard on faculty.

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