Initial Publication Date: October 11, 2013

Strategies to Involve Undergraduates in Research:
Upper Division Courses, Independent Study, and REU's

The materials in this module were developed as part of a collaborative project of the Council on Undergraduate Research ( This site may be offline. ) (CUR) and the On the Cutting Edge program for geoscience faculty development with funding from the National Science Foundation. Workshop participants were asked to create a set of web-based modules that aggregate the community knowledge, experience and resources that can encourage and support undergraduate research across the geoscience curriculum.

For more information on undergraduate as a pedagogy, see the Undergraduate Research module from Pedagogy in Action, which details why and how to use undergraduate research in your course as well as hosts a collection of example activities and resources related to undergraduate research.

Essays of community knowledge, experiences, and resources supporting undergraduate research written by the participants of the 2011 CUR-Cutting Edge Writing Retreat (learn more about this project)

Resources from CUR

There is a wealth of information in the articles of the CUR Quarterly (more info) . Take some time to browse through back issues!

There is also a very rich collection of Special Publications from CUR ( This site may be offline. ) that cover a broad range of topics related to undergraduate research. Check out these informative and useful publications!

Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (Acrobat (PDF) 1.2MB Sep17 13)--Council on Undergraduate Research (2012)

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The On the Cutting Edge program is sponsored by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. Please consider joining!

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The mission of the Council on Undergraduate Research is to support and promote high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship. Join today!

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This project was funded through the National Science Foundation, grant DUE-0618533. All content is the responsibility of the authors.