UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

Needed More Today Than Ever!

Delivered at the CUR 2006 National Meeting by: John Mateja Director, URSA/McNair Programs Murray State University

June 2006

Undergraduate Research

• • • • • • About Individual Students Doug Aaron John Jon Joe and …...

WHO WORRIED ABOUT …….

U.S. ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS?

The World Has Changed!

Yesterday

 United States Leader In:  Manufacturing (Steel, Automotive, Airplane)

Today

 “

World is Flat

” – Thomas Friedman  The Playing Field is Leveling

Competition is Intense

1.3 Billion – China

*

1.1 Billion – India 0.3 Billion – United States * Fastest growing economy the world has EVER seen!

Competition is Intense

Science and Engineering Indicators 2006

- National Science Board

• • •

Considerable Worldwide Growth in R&D Investments International Scientific Publications have Increased Number of

• •

Science and Engineering Degrees in Europe and Asia have Increased India, Japan, China, and South Korea DOUBLED NUMBER OF BACHELOR’S DEGREES IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES (since 1975)

•

QUADRUPLED NUMBER OF ENGINERING BACHELORS DEGREES

Engineering Degrees Awarded

United States: 75,000 India: China: 350,000 600,000

Foreign-Born Talent Pool

Important Source of Talent for Higher Education and Hi-Tech Companies

•

9/11 Yanked out the Welcome Mat

• International Competition Increasing • China – Initiative to Develop

100 New World Class Universities

• European Commission –

Doubled the Funding for Personnel in the Sixth Research Framework Programme (FP6)

Projected New Job Growth – U.S.

35 30 2004 - 2014 Physical Scientists Engineers 25 Social Scientists 20 Life Sciences 15 Physicians 10 Healthcare 5 0 Computer/Math Sciences Postsecondary Education Total Jobs (due to growth and net replacement): 6,200,000 BLS, Occupational employment projections to 2014, November 2005

Strategy

We Will Prosper by Building a

KNOWLEDGE-BASED

Workforce

Current Situation

Educational Attainment (2004) U.S. Census Bureau

50 40 Percent of Population 30 20 10 0 All Degrees (Census Data) CA NY PA NM NE NV MI TN ID OK LA IN MS WV Bachelors Degree or Higher (by State)

Educational Attainment (2004) U.S. Census Bureau

50 40 All Degrees (Census Data) Percent of Population 30 20 10 0 STEM Degrees (estimated) CA NY PA NM NE NV MI TN ID OK LA IN MS WV Bachelors Degree or Higher (by State)

Education in the United States



Precollege



Graduate



Undergraduate

520 500 480 460 440 420 400 560 Program for International Student Assessment (2003) 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Countries Math Literacy Scores of 15-Year-Olds 540

U.S. - 24

th

OUT OF 29 COUNTRIES

Program for International Student Assessment (2003) 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Countries 560 540 520 500 480 460 440 420 400 Science Literacy Scores of 15-Year-Olds

U. S. – 19

th

OUT OF 29 COUNTRIES

Precollege Education

Fungi, Slime Molds, Lichens, and Mosses

Passive Learning

Graduate Education

U.S. Graduate Education in Science and Engineering Considered to be the Best in the World Graduate Enrollments in S & E:

• U.S. –

10% Decline from 1994 to 2001

• Foreign Students –

25% Increase

• 40% of Total Full-time Graduate Students

Graduate Degrees (in Sciences):

• United States – 13% • Austria, Portugal – 40% • Japan, Korea, Sweden, Switzerland – 40% +

Undergraduate Education Bachelors Degrees Awarded in Sciences *

United States - 17% Finland, France, Korea, Germany – Over

30%

China –

52%

(Science and Engineering) * Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – 2000

To Recap:

1) Today’s Knowledge-based U.S. Workforce Is Not Sufficient to Meet Future Challenges 2) Foreign-born Talent Will Become Increasingly Difficult to Attract 3) U.S. is Not Educating the STEM Talent - At Any Level – U.S. Will Need to meet Tomorrow’s Challenges

What Matters in College?



Astin finds:

 The nature of students’

PEER GROUP

 Quality and quantity of student

INTERACTION WITH FACULTY OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM

 Level of

STUDENT INVOLVEMENT

 Amount of

TIME ON TASK

A. W. Astin, “

What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited

,” San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1993

What Works in College?

LEARN BY DOING!

What Should We DO?

Fix What We Are Responsible For!

• Redouble Efforts to

Provide Undergraduates with Mentored Experiences in ALL DISCIPLINARY AREAS

• Work to

Get Students into Graduate School

• Work to

Change Teacher Education Programs

NOT Good Enough!

NEED Revolutionary Change NOT Evolutionary Change

Change Undergraduate Education to be RESEARCH Focused, Not LECTURE Focused

• First College Class –

RESEARCH METHODS

• All Subsequent Classes -

RESEARCH FOCUSED

• When classes meet, the students should discuss

THEIR findings, with guided input from the faculty

The New Education Formula

Must: MINIMIZE SEAT TIME MAXIMIZE DOING INVOLVE TEAMWORK SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS BE INTERDISCIPLINARY BE FOR ALL STUDENTS

Education Funding

What has Happened to Education and Human Resource (EHR) funding at the NSF since 2004?

DECREASED BY 20%

Funding Rates for Important NSF Programs: 2003 2004 2005 CCLI 19% 14% 13% RUI REU (sites) 53% 32% 27% C-RUI 33% 30% 28% Suspended

Next Assignment

Write the White House, Your Congressmen, and the Director of the National Science Foundation White House: Senate: House: NSF: www.whitehouse.gov

www.senate.gov

www.house.gov

Dr. Arden Bement The National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22230, USA

References

1 World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, ISBN: 0-374-29279-5.

2 Science and Engineering Indicators 2006, National Science Board (NSB 06-01) 3 Employment by occupation, 2004 and Projected to 2014, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monthly Labor Review (Nov. 2005). http://www.bls.gov/emp/mlrappendix.pdf 4 A Commitment to America’s Future: Responding to the Crisis in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education, Christopher Roe. The Renaissance Group Fall Conference, Washington DC, (October 6, 2005) 5 Sixth European Union Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development (FP6), European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/research. 6 Educational Attainment of the Population 25 Years and Over, by State, Including Confidence Intervals of Estimates: 2004, U.S. Census Bureau. http:// www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2004/tab13.pdf

References

7 U.S. Student and Adult Performance on International Assessments of Education Achievement: Findings from The Condition of Education 2006, Lemke, M. and Gonzales, P. (2006). U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES 2006-073). Also PISA: http://www.pisa.oecd.org

and http://nces.ed.gov/survey/pisa be found at http://oecd.org

.

8 Information on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development can . Member countries include, in addition to those listed in Figure 3, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

9 U.S. Student and Adult Performance on International Assessments of Education Achievement: Findings from The Condition of Education 2006, Lemke, M. and Gonzales, P. (2006). U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES 2006-073). Also TIMSS: http://nces.ed.gov/timss or http://www.timss.org

10 Graduate Education Report, Committee on Graduate Education, Association of American University (October 1998). http://www.aau.edu/reports/CradEdTpr.html

References

11 Graduate Science and Engineering enrollment, by status and sex, and postdocs in science and engineering fields: 1993-2003. National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resource Statistics, Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf05317 12 Education at a Glance 2005 (Indicator A3: Current Tertiary graduation rates), Education and Training Publications and Documents, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2005). http://www.oecd.org/document Hersh and John Merrow. .

13 Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk (2005). Edited by Richard 14 “What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited,” A. W. Astin.

San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1993 15 The relationship of undergraduate research participation to graduate and professional education pursuit: an empirical study. Hathaway, R.S., Nagda, B.A., and Gregerman, S.R. (2002). Journal of College Student Development, 43, 614 631.

References

16 Measuring the impact of the undergraduate research experience on student intellectual development. Rauckhorst, W.H., Czaja, J.A., and Baxter Magolda, M. (2001, July). Paper presented at Project Kaleidoscope Summer Institute, Snowbird, UT.

17 The essential features of undergraduate research. Lopatto, D. (2003). Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, 24, 139-142.

18 Boehlert, S., Business Higher Education Forum (June 8, 2006). http://www.house.gov/science/press/109/109-275.htm

19 Arden Bement, Testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Science and Space Hearing on the National Science Foundation and Science Priorities, May 2, 2006.

20 Private Communication 21 Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for American’s Research Universities, Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University – 1998; Boyer Revisited – 2002 http://naples.cc.suny.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf/ 22 Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine. The National Academies Press. ISBN 0-309-10045-3