University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 19, Feb. 13, 1997
NSF awards $500,000 for undergraduate research
Newark resident Monroe Hite III, a 1996 University graduate
who is a project engineer for the Delaware Department of
Transportation, said he believes that undergraduate research
projects boosted his self-confidence, and therefore, his chances
for success in a professional setting.
Supervised by award-winning teacher Ardeshir Faghri, an
associate professor of civil and environmental engineering,
Hite's UD research focused on intelligent transportation systems,
an array of technologies including "smart" route-guidance systems
inside vehicles and traffic sensors imbedded in roadways.
Though Hite has not yet developed these technologies for
DelDOT, he said his research experience allows him to communicate
more effectively with colleagues.
In fact, Hite's younger sister, Monique C. Hite, was so
impressed by his undergraduate experience that she's pursuing a
civil engineering degree, too. "I told her everything the
University had done for me and my career, and now she's following
in my footsteps," said Hite, a former Eagle Scout who also
credits the University's support services for African-American
students, such as Resources to Insure Successful Engineers
(RISE).
Hite was a model student, Faghri reported, but his
undergraduate experience was not unique. Every undergraduate at
the University of Delaware is invited to gain research
skills-either through advanced projects supervised by a faculty
mentor, or as part of discovery-based learning activities in
classrooms, University President David P. Roselle said.
Those efforts were applauded Feb. 11 by the National
Science Foundation (NSF), which announced that the University of
Delaware will be one of only 10 institutions nationwide, selected
from a pool of over 100 universities, to receive a three-year,
$500,000 award recognizing "bold leadership," producing
"meaningful results" in the integration of research and
education.
"We set out, several years ago, to change what it means to
get an education at our University," Roselle said. "That vision
has improved the entire learning environment, encompassing every
academic unit. The vast majority of our faculty- including about
90 percent of all engineering, biological and physical science
professors-now actively participate in providing research
opportunities for undergraduates."
On Feb. 21, Roselle and Undergraduate Research Program
Coordinator Joan S. Bennett will accept the 1997 Recognition
Award for the Integration of Research and Education (RAIRE) at
the NSF headquarters in Arlington, Va. As an award recipient, the
University will serve as a model for other U.S. institutions.
Consequently, it will document and disseminate program
information on the World Wide Web, and it will launch a three-
year assessment of its undergraduate research initiatives-problem-
based learning and undergraduate research apprenticeships.
GETTING REAL IN THE CLASSROOM
"If you want to evaluate a proposal to place a new
incinerator in New Castle County or whether to dam White Clay
Creek, you might find the task less daunting if you had some
research experience as an undergraduate," said Harold B. White
III, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
That's why White and many other UD faculty are pioneering
problem-based learning, or PBL, activities in general classrooms.
The PBL technique requires students to tackle specific real-life
problems, then discover how to solve them, with the teacher
working as a facilitator, White explained. In this way, all
undergraduates gain research experience. "Understanding such
complex scientific issues helps our students become more
productive, active citizens," White said.
In Chandra Reedy's art conservation classes, for example,
undergraduates will soon be investigating the authenticity of a
6th century B.C. sculpture. "Instead of lecturing to my students,
I plan to turn them into art detectives," said Reedy, an
associate professor. "They will learn about art history,
archaeology and chemistry. They will also talk about business
ethics, and whether they should buy a sculpture that might be a
fake."
Similarly, Deborah E. Allen, an assistant professor of
biology who recently received a teaching-excellence award, gets
students interested in photosynthesis by asking them to evaluate
a real proposal to counteract global warming by dumping iron into
the ocean off Antarctica. In theory, iron might boost the amount
of chlorophyll in the water, thereby increasing photosynthesis,
which would reduce excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But
efforts to test this theory have produced conflicting results,
Allen said, and students must therefore conduct their own
investigations.
The technique, initially developed in medical schools, "lets
students learn critical thinking and quantitative reasoning
skills," Allen said. "Because they work in teams, students are
also honing their verbal and written communication skills. And,
they're learning to tell good science from bad science. That's a
skill we all need in our everyday lives, when making decisions
about, for instance, health care or whether to use dietary
supplements."
Problem-based learning initiatives at the University have
earned a number of national awards, according to Barbara Duch,
interim associate director of the Mathematics and Science
Education Resource Center. Most recently, Duch, White and Allen
received grants from the FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Post-
Secondary Education) as well as the NSF to expand a program that
helps undergraduates become faculty-supervised peer tutors,
facilitating PBL activities. Several years ago, another $240,000
NSF grant made it possible to incorporate PBL activities into
introductory science courses. "Nationally," Duch said, "the
University has gotten a reputation for being at the cutting edge
of undergraduate reform based on PBL principles." Currently,
George H. Watson, an associate professor of physics and
astronomy, is leading efforts to integrate and expand the broad
array of PBL activities throughout campus.
INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH PROJECTS
Marijka Grey, a 22-year-old junior, plans to become a
physician, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. Currently,
she's investigating whether light/dark cycles play a role in
regulating the production of prolactin, a key reproductive
hormone in mammalian females. Grey, a native of St. Kitts Island
in the Caribbean, works closely with associate biology professor
Richard S. Donham. But, she emphasized, "I make my own
conclusions."
Grey is among the hundreds of students served each year by
the University's Undergraduate Research Program, or URP.
Initially established with a three-year grant from the FIPSE,
"the URP is perhaps the most comprehensive undergraduate research
program at a state university in the United States," Bennett
said.
Across the campus, 63 percent of the entire faculty,
including many representing the humanities, regularly offer
undergraduate research opportunities, Bennett noted. Ellen Yurek
of Newark, Leonard Stark of Wilmington and Mike Nagle of
Frankfort, Ill., are also typical of students who complete URP
projects.
One of White's former students, Yurek conducted evolutionary
biology and analytical biochemistry research, including two
summers in a clinical pathology laboratory at ICI (now Zeneca)
before graduating in 1984. She then worked in a laboratory at the
University of Bordeaux in France and earned a master's degree
from Michigan State University. Zeneca quickly hired the young
graduate to work as a bioanalytical chemist. Later, she joined
IBRD-Rostrum Global, Inc., a contract pharmaceutical company in
Blue Bell, Pa., where she interprets regulatory guidelines and
practices. "Part of the reason I got my first job at Zeneca was
because of my undergraduate lab experience," she said. "Now, as
an employer, I look for the same type of experience among job
applicants."
Nagle, now a refining specialist for Amoco's chemical
division, conducted an undergraduate study of the surface
chemistry of catalysts, which transform raw materials into useful
products such as gasoline. After graduation, he immediately went
to work as a researcher, while also earning a business degree.
"My undergraduate research helped me investigate key principles
of interest to industry," he said. "It also gave me the technical
background I needed to move forward in my career."
Stark, who holds a law degree from Yale University and is
currently a law clerk for a federal judge, attended Oxford
University as a Rhodes Scholar after graduating from UD. His
Oxford research, focusing on leadership in the British political
system, was recently published in Britain and the United States
by MacMillan/St. Martin's Press. Stark said his undergraduate
research experience gave him the skills and confidence he needed
to undertake this project.
Most URP projects involve intensive summer apprenticeships
with a faculty mentor and up to two years of increasingly
independent research, Bennett said. Students may earn academic
credit. They may also receive University stipends, paid through
faculty research grants or through internships with 75 industrial
and government organizations participating the Delaware Research
Partnership. A summer exchange program lets other students study
abroad. A variety of UD initiatives, such as RISE, help draw
minority students into the research arena.
A MODEL FOR OTHER U.S. INSTITUTIONS
Now, as a RAIRE winner, UD "will set the pace for other
universities, by providing guidelines for expanding undergraduate
research opportunities and incorporating discovery activities in
every classroom," Bennett said.
Program information will soon be available via UD's World
Wide Web home page (http://www.udel.edu), under "learning and
research." The site will be linked with the NSF home page
(http://www.nsf.gov). In addition, the University has launched an
ambitious three-year study of its undergraduate research
initiatives, supervised by Karen Bauer, assistant director of the
Office of Institutional Research and Planning.
Bauer's team will compare a sample of UD students who
participate in discovery learning, either through undergraduate
research or PBL activities, with non-participating students. The
study will include a variety of qualitative and quantitative
measures to examine the cognitive and social skills that students
gain through research experience. Among other items, the study
will examine retention rates, employment or graduate-school
placement, and the extent to which students become more critical
and flexible thinkers, Bauer said.
It will also examine faculty attitudes toward undergraduate
research and the experience of UD alumni. "We want to document
the impact the University is having on students' lives after they
graduate," she said. "We believe that the integration of research
in education helps students become more mature, independent and
self-confident. Abilities such as these enable our students to
become highly valued scholars and employees and, ultimately,
better citizens in our society."
-Ginger Pinholster