Many institutions run summer research schools for undergraduates where they help those studying science get their hands dirty and sample life at the bench. But on the whole, "real" research is left to the professors, postdocs, and graduate students. There are, however, some centers of education that have more than a passing interest in undergraduate research and provide their students with the opportunity to participate fully in scientific endeavor.

Undergraduate institutions across the country have for years emphasized research in their science curricula and actively encouraged students not only to carry out leading-edge research, but also to present their findings at conferences and in journals. For instance, undergraduate students Chad Williams and Matt Marvin at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, are undertaking forensic studies under Rick Dujay's supervision on samples from the fabled Alferd Packer murder scene, to figure out whether Colorado's most famous cannibal was a murderer.

Other students at Mesa are investigating the link between deer mice and the lethal hantavirus, while undergraduates at Grinnell College in Iowa are documenting archeological finds from an early Stone Age site in Namibia, West Africa.

At Davidson College in North Carolina, one student is studying how white rats find their way around a maze, while another is looking for clues about Alzheimer's disease in slices of rat brain. Undertaking such research helps put the students' studies into a scientific context and adds a real-world perspective.

Neuroscientist Julio Ramirez of Davidson College has mentored more than 85 students in the last fifteen years, with many of them assisting in his neuroscience work on the recovery of memory following brain damage. "I think that conducting research is the best vehicle by which we can educate our students and introduce them to the research world," Ramirez says.

There are several predominantly undergraduate colleges and universities from which good undergraduate research emerges. The Department of Chemistry at Furman University in South Carolina, for instance, has an undergraduate research program that dates back to 1968 and has inspired many other departments. Others institutions, such as Hope College in Michigan, the College of Wooster in Ohio, and Williams College in Massachusetts have active undergraduate researchers in departments such as chemistry and biology.

Chemist Merle Schuh of Davidson has spent his entire career at liberal arts colleges and says he has not had the luxury of graduate students to work on his research ideas. "Yet," he says, "my students and I have been sufficiently successful for nearly 40 of them to coauthor research publications." Many other faculties at colleges and universities that do not have graduate programs have had similar success with undergraduates. "The point is that good undergraduates, with close supervision, can do significant research and, as a result, become interested in pursuing a career in science," Schuh reasons.

Of course, many professors supervise both undergraduate and graduate student research. David Durkheim (name changed) points out that while graduate students at the doctoral level come to universities prepared to do research, undergraduates are "lucky if they can find a professor willing to take them on in a research capacity." However, in his experience, "those students with significant research experience as undergraduates are better prospects for graduate education and a career in science or another academic discipline."

Certainly, those partaking of undergraduate research can go on to achieve greater things. For instance, University of Colorado at Boulder chemist Thomas Cech, the 1989 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry and medicine and president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is a Grinnell graduate.

Cech is not the only one. Thomas Chang's undergraduate project at McGill University in Montreal was aimed at creating an "artificial cell." From this seed, a whole area of research has grown with more than 70 groups worldwide, with Chang now director of the Artificial Cells and Organ Research Center at McGill.

More students are opting for smaller schools with the option to develop research much sooner than they might at a larger university. "Each year more and more institutions adopt undergraduate research as a model," says Ronald Dotterer, chair of the board of governors of the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR), founded in 1987. "The extraordinarily steep increase in the numbers of NCUR participants is our most impressive statistic; we grew in 12 years from 388 submissions from 130 colleges/universities (1987) to more than 2,253 submissions (1999) from 288 institutions; we anticipate 2,200 submissions in 2001 from approximately 300 institutions," he adds.

Mina Bissell of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in California has mentored many undergraduate students through research projects and has watched as they put themselves on public display through the Internet-only Journal of Young Investigators. The JYI covers the biological and physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering.

According to Scott Kemp of the University of California at Santa Barbara, JYI's current CEO, the journal has grown tremendously over the last four years, with some 1,500 new readers each month. "More exciting," he says, "has been the realization that JYI has become an instrument to reform undergraduate education," he told HMS Beagle. "Not only has JYI created awareness of undergraduate research and its value to participating students, but JYI is bringing to light a harsh reality regarding education - many young scientists are unable to effectively communicate their research either to the public or their peers. Undergraduate science education has focused so strongly on analytical skill that we have neglected to teach our students the value of writing and the skill of distilling complex research into palatable layman's terms."

When it comes to participation in that other branch of scientific dissemination, the conference circuit, the NCUR provides undergraduate researchers with just that opportunity. The organization's mission statement pledges to promote undergraduate research scholarship and creative activity done in partnership with faculty or other mentors as a vital component of higher education. To this end, the association supports college and university faculty, students, and administrators by providing opportunities for students to experience the academic process of taking part in a scientific conference.

"For an NCUR submission, we require a faculty mentor to have been involved in the project," says Dotterer. "Joint authorship by faculty member and student is a natural by-product of such a collaborative investigative project. Institutions that value undergraduate research include supervision of an undergraduate research project and joint publications with students as factors that they specifically include in portfolios for tenure and promotion."

Undergraduates who actively seek out the chance to do real research are often the more highly motivated students. Durkheim points out that the ride is not easy: "In terms of science outcomes - publications and advances - the doctoral-level students, of course, produce the best work on average, and this only makes sense in that they have much less to learn," he explains.

Encouraging students to conduct scientific research is much like what those in the performing arts encourage their students to do. "It would be a tad inaccurate to claim that you are a pianist if you've never played the instrument," Ramirez points out. "So, too, it would be inaccurate to claim that you've been properly educated as a scientist if you've never conducted a scientific investigation."

Jeff Buzby, an immunity researcher at the Children's Hospital of Orange County, California and a part-time biotech consultant, agrees with Durkheim that the most obvious difference between graduates and undergraduates is that graduate researchers are more knowledgeable and generally more experienced, which usually translates into greater productivity. However, there are certainly exceptions to this rule - overachieving undergraduates, as well as underachieving graduates. "Much depends upon the principal investigator's needs and expectations, as well," he points out. "An inexperienced undergraduate who works their tail off on less technically demanding tasks can be an enormous benefit."

"An undergraduate facing his or her first research project must learn a tremendous amount of very basic things just to get off the ground," says Durkheim. Having said that, many undergraduates do accomplish far more than some master's-level students. "I am a strong advocate of research opportunities for undergraduates," he adds. "Indeed, if such opportunities were made available to secondary school students, we would all be better off." Schuh would not go quite so far, but still sees value in early exposure to research. "Secondary school students know so little about science that they cannot, in general, make much of a contribution to science," he argues. "However, by getting such students interested in research at their young age, we might attract some of them to research as a career."

"There are research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students in most major university labs, but there are many smaller college research departments without graduate students, and they are often very productive, though generally not as much as those with graduate programs," points out Buzby.

It is important that federal and private agencies continue to provide strong support for exclusively undergraduate research programs. "In order to merit such programs," says Schuh, "it is important for faculty at predominantly undergraduate institutions to realize that we must maintain productive undergraduate research programs that have verifiable records of success. Such success generally requires very hard work beyond the normal expectations of our teaching and institutional responsibilities." According to Schuh, the importance of organizations such as the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), founded 1979, and NCUR cannot be overstated, and such organizations deserve strong support by individual faculty as well as funding agencies.

CUR, not to be confused with NCUR (although they share a common origin and motivation), is a dues-paying organization for science, engineering, and mathematics faculty members at primarily undergraduate institutions. "As a volunteer organization, we draw our energy from the many faculty who believe so deeply in the importance of [conducting] research and remaining student-centered at the same time," says Mitch Malachowski, CUR's president-elect. CUR's mission statement suggests that education is best served by faculty-student collaborative research combined with investigative teaching strategies, and as such it provides avenues for faculty development and helps administrators to improve and assess the research environments of their institutions.

Dotterer, who sits on the CUR council as well as chairing the NCUR board, notes two major themes in education that are relevant to undergraduate research: first, active learning is the key to effective learning, and second, the historical missions of universities and colleges to teach and research have too often become separated. "Teaching colleges are practicing less research than they might, and research universities sometimes neglect teaching their undergraduates well," he says. "The undergraduate research movement attempts to address both of these issues simultaneously by heightening the quality and practice of all forms of inquiry-based education at the undergraduate level - undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity."

NCUR's annual conference and the annual NCUR-Lancy grants for institutional interdisciplinary summer research programs are two endeavors aimed at adjusting the balance on both sides. "We believe that undergraduate research and inquiry-based education are the pedagogies for the 21st century," Dotterer explains.

"Our goal, obviously, is not to decrease the commitment to research at research institutions but to heighten higher education's commitment to mentoring students who do their own investigations at all types and sizes of colleges and universities," adds Dotterer. "The goal of research at predominately undergraduate institutions is similar to that found at doctoral universities," adds Malachowski, "but in addition, we believe that student learning should be one of the explicit outcomes of faculty research."

"Discoveries not communicated are lost and fail to advance science; and progress not communicated to the masses only serves to injure future science funding as well as further the science literacy problem so prevalent in today's society," says Kemp. "I have strong concerns that research programs for undergraduates be continued," says Schuh. "It is important that strong funding of undergraduate research programs be continued by governmental and private agencies."

Having undergraduates enter the world of real research and disseminate their results benefits them considerably by broadening their education and teaching them directly that science is not just about learning through lectures and tutorial but also about working at the bench and making observations. And with increasingly motivated undergraduates, more scientific innovation can begin to emerge from the bottom up.