UF Launches Journal Of Undergraduate Research

October 22, 1999

GAINESVILLE — Like a lot of researchers at the University of Florida, Chris Beach spent months in the lab on a project, then published the results in a academic journal.

But Beach is not a UF faculty member or graduate student. Instead, he’s a 20-year-old junior majoring in chemical engineering whose paper appears in the first issue of the University of Florida’s newly launched Journal of Undergraduate Research.

One of a number of undergraduate research publications launched nationwide this year as universities place new emphasis on undergraduate research, the online journal is intended to spotlight the quality and range of the research of UF’s youngest students.

“Undergraduate research here is really quite broad,” said UF physics Professor Henri Van Rinsvelt, editor of the monthly journal. “I have seen topics ranging from pure engineering to an investigation of voting trends in the European Parliament to an analysis of how well oysters survive at different temperatures.”

Undergraduates always have participated in research to some degree. But only in recent years have universities and colleges begun stressing the activity as an integral part of the educational experience, said Elaine Hoagland, national executive officer at the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Undergraduate Research. The trend is spurred in part by published reports highlighting the benefits of undergraduate research and in part by competitive pressures for graduate school-bound students to excel early, she said.

“What’s new is what we call an institutionalization of undergraduate research, which means we recognize it as a universitywide goal that crosses departments,” Hoagland said.

UF was on the leading edge of the trend when it launched the University Scholars Program this spring. A summer scholarship program aimed at introducing qualified undergraduates to leading research on campus, the program gives 250 undergraduates, mostly juniors, the opportunity to work one-on-one with faculty members on a variety of projects.

Hoagland said undergraduate research traditionally has centered in the hard sciences, but universities are branching out into the natural sciences and the humanities. UF’s University Scholars Program includes students from all three areas.

The new emphasis on undergraduate research has touched off numerous efforts to launch undergraduate research publications, Hoagland said. UF’s journal joins at least two other journals aimed at a national audience as well as publications at several universities, she said.

Van Rinsvelt said some UF undergraduates already are publishing in national academic journals and making presentations at conferences. UF’s journal supplements and highlights those efforts, providing a general-audience venue for the research, he said. The goal is for all papers to be peer-reviewed, faculty-reviewed and submitted in proper academic form.

“The papers will be written exactly as I or any other faculty member would write for a scientific journal,” he said.

Among other features, the Journal of Undergraduate Research includes short profiles of several students and descriptions of their research. The journal can be accessed at http://web.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/jur/.

Beach, the chemical engineering junior, said publishing his paper added to his research experience.

“There seems to be a little more closure — I show the university what I did,” he said. “I definitely think the journal is a good idea: I went through and I read some of the other students’ work out of curiosity, and it was neat to see what undergraduates are doing.”