Special Projects
In addition to our ongoing projects, CUR also has a number of special projects and partnerships. Currently, we have a couple of initiatives funded by the National Science Foundation which are listed in this section of the website. Additionally, when special interest projects are announced, they are posted on this page.
Workshop Program on Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research for Systems and Consortia
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) has recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (NSF-CCLI) program for a comprehensive expansion of the successful model of CUR’s annual, national-level Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research workshop. The NSF grant will focus on improving the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at state colleges and universities systems and public and private consortia with similar or closely related missions.
Community colleges provide educational opportunities for students to earn pre-baccalaureate certificates or degrees, transfer to four-year institutions, or complete workforce and skill development programs. Each of these respective types of students would be better prepared for the next step in their careers if they were able to participate in quality undergraduate research experiences.
Over the past few years, CUR has reviewed the needs of community college faculty and administrators and has developed resources to broadly disseminate best-practices and models of undergraduate research to encourage research opportunities for students at two-year institutions.
Transformative research is a term used by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF's National Science Board defined transformative research as "research that has the capacity to revolutionize existing fields, create new subfields, cause paradigm shifts, support discovery, and lead to radically new technologies."
CUR believes that it should be a goal of faculty members at PUIs to conduct high-quality, original research and that the outcome of research at a PUI should constitute a contribution to the discipline, ideally in the form of peer-reviewed publications in recognized disciplinary journals and that PUIs should encourage their faculty members to pursue transformative research.