Resources for Student Participation in Faculty-led Research

This proposal recommends that we strengthen support for undergraduate research at Mills. It specifically highlights one area where we currently have little institutional support: Resources for student participation in faculty-led research.

Importance of Undergraduate Research: The benefits of undergraduate research are numerous. Undergraduate research fosters an active participation in the pursuit of knowledge. It deepens students’ understanding of a discipline, allows them to develop skills central to that discipline, and promotes creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking.

It fosters close mentoring relationships between faculty and students, and allows for opportunities to build self-esteem and leadership skills, develop professionalism, work as a collaborative team with others, and clarify career goals. Studies have shown that introducing students to undergraduate research early on and for an extended period of time aids in the retention and performance of undergraduate students, increases the likelihood that students will pursue careers in these areas, and may especially benefit underrerepresented minorities in the sciences.

Today, it is increasingly common for graduate and professional programs to require incoming students to have some undergraduate research experience outside of the classroom, and many fields increasingly expect research experience with a faculty member or in an established research setting.
Involvement in faculty-led research has many special benefits. Students gain experience working in real laboratories and professional settings, and thus they have an opportunity to develop more advanced skills in their discipline. A faculty member may spend many weeks and even many months training and supervising a student, and because most of our programs are strictly undergraduate, our students are in a unique opportunity to play a central role in faculty-led research compared to those at large research institutions (where graduate students take on these roles). With advanced training and supervision, undergraduate students at Mills often gain experience and accomplish skills that are at the graduate level, and such projects are more likely to yield opportunities for publishing and presenting research at professional conferences. This is a definite advantage for undergraduate students at Mills and is one of the qualities that makes us unique.
Faculty-led projects are often larger and students may come together across disciplines and majors to work collaboratively and gain perspectives from these other disciplines. Students are likely to be at different academic levels, and, thus serve as role models with each other. This is not only educational, but can build a sense of community for students. Because faculty-led projects are extensive and usually have a longer duration than student projects, they allow for a longer protracted research experience for students. Work on faculty-led projects fosters independent work as well as teamwork, and can still provide opportunities for students to develop smaller independent projects. For example, in some cases, students may have opportunities to attach independent projects to the larger project. In other instances, students may be able to take on a portion of the faculty-led project and develop this as an independent project.

Faculty also benefit from undergraduate involvement in their research and in some disciplines, student involvement may even be essential, as in the sciences, where a research team is necessary to complete a research project. Faculty also benefit from student ideas, creativity, and energy in their research. Thus, providing resources for student participation in faculty-led research not only benefits students, but also benefits faculty. It is a win-win situation.

Current Status: Currently, we have inadequate support for faculty-led research at Mills. The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) helps support small undergraduate research projects (and even these funds are limited). The Faculty Development fund is terribly insufficient and in many instances, award amounts are too little to support student participation, especially when the cost of the research project itself takes up (or exceeds) the funds awarded. Much faculty research takes place in the summer when faculty have more time to devote to research and projects and labs can operate on a regular or full-time basis. Many students must financially support themselves in the summer or need to move home to locations outside the Bay Area for living support. We have very limited summer research support at Mills, and a summer research program that would involve student stipends and summer housing would allow more students to be able to take advantage of research opportunities and ensure continuity (i.e., less disruptive turnover) of student involvement in faculty-led research. Such a program would also be more equitable for students, since it is often the more financially disadvantaged students who must to choose a paid job over a research experience in order to support themselves.

To support faculty-led research, we also need more support for the infrastructure of existing labs and equipment, computers, and research supplies, and physical space dedicated that is dedicated to this. Mentoring students in faculty-led research requires a very large time commitment and is often the equivalent of teaching an additional course, so support for faculty is important and essential. I believe that much of this mentoring takes place on Fridays and may reflect a greater amount of curricular activity on Fridays at Mills than is actually apparent on the books.

Host various Festivals and/or Summer Residencies

Mills, being located in the Bay Area, is a great magnet for residencies and/or festivals; the College’s image could truly benefit by sharing the expertise of various artists and scholars with the Oakland and Bay Area community. It is vital to open our doors to local, national and international artists in order to stay in touch with what is currently going on in the Arts. Mills College has already a strong history for its experimental work in the Arts but by 2027, it could have the reputation to be the “hot bed” for what is going on in the Arts!

The Dance department used to bring summer residencies such as Martha Graham, Paul Taylor and Limon Dance Company. However without the infrastructure, it became too difficult to produce such events. The College would benefit from having a person in charge of organizing such residencies as well as festivals, and find a way to integrate them into the curriculum of each department. For example, if students registered for a summer intensive/residence, they could receive course credits, which would lighten their schedule during the year. We could set up applications to support under privileged participants and offer full or partial scholarships, work-study grants etc.

One festival that we have already been approached to organize, is the prestigious American Dance Festival (ACDF); ACDF is the most popular and well-attended College dance festival in the country. It is a great marketing tool since it attracts a lot of high schools and undergraduate students. As of now Mills doesn't have enough facilities but, with a person in charge, we could easily partner with UC Berkeley or Holy Names College.

Examples

More Undergraduate Research (especially, but not only, in sciences)

Background

For the last decade or two their has been an increasing emphasis on research experiences for undergraduates, especially early experiences like projects in interdisciplinary labs.  It may well be something high school students ask about: will I have opportunity to participate in research at this school.

Status Quo

Actually, we aren't doing badly for early research experiences in the natural sciences.  But at present it's unsystematic: a "program" that is dependent on individual faculty members figuring out how to make it work.  And, it remains an uncompensated form of teaching.

In addition to the opportunities we CAN offer on-campus, we encourage them to go off campus for research, but that isn't exactly sustainable if enrollments keep increasing, and, insofar as sometimes funding follows students, it's giving away potential resources.

Capacities

At the moment, in the natural sciences, the limitation on research opportunities is largely a function of the number of research-active faculty (funding would be a limitation if the program grew considerably).In chemistry, for example, we have three people who are research active, and each could manage, say, two summer students. So at most we can host six summer students, or less than half of the declared chemistry majors.

A Scalable Plan

A first step would be to identify impediments to maximizing summer research capacity with existing faculty.  Perhaps next we look at resource constraints that limit number of interns per faculty member (noted above as 2 in chemistry, for example).  

A next step might be to develop some proposals (either by discipline or across several) and investigate funding for something along the lines of the REU programs at other institutions (the ones we send our students to).

It might also make sense to focus on infrastructure and on developing parallel programs in the social sciences and perhaps even the humanities.  Ultimately this could evolve into summer employment for faculty (both tenure track and non-tenure track), fuller facility utilization, a way for students to fit in credit hours without taking 5 courses, and be a boon to retention.