Far beyond readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic, here’s the newest ticket to career success after college.

By Christine Suh

Every year across the country, thousands of students in caps and gowns march down aisles amid throngs of cheering family and friends to collect a piece of paper that exclaims, in essence, “I did it!”

They hunkered down for three or four or more years, crammed for tests and pulled all-nighters. They deserve that diploma that proves they accomplished something and they’re ready to move on.

But to what? When the celebrating crowds dissipate, how prepared are these new graduates for work, relocation or advanced training? Increasingly, that depends on how much time and effort they invested in their undergraduate education—and if a national trend holds, increasingly that very well could mean how much time these students spent doing research.

Yes, research—the kind of extracurricular activity typically associated with academics armed with advanced degrees. In the past 20 years, the numbers of undergraduate students involved in serious, campus-based research in fields ranging from biomedicine to economics have steadily climbed as opportunities for such have steadily opened up on campuses nationwide.

It’s all part of an awakening by national leaders in government, industry and higher education that the United States is losing its once vaunted position as the global leader in science and technological innovation. Getting undergraduates exposed to science, math and other disciplines beyond the dusty confines of classroom lectures and textbooks is the key, leaders say, to creating a larger and stronger corps of U.S. scientists, engineers and advanced specialists for tomorrow’s challenges.

This opinion, not surprisingly, has a basis in research. The National Science Foundation has conducted studies in recent years that underscore the merits of beefing up research opportunities for the nation’s youngest college students.

“The number of students who complete a chemistry REU (the NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates) program is almost the same number of students who enter Ph.D. programs in chemistry every fall,” says Richard Foust, program director of NSF’s new Undergraduate Research Centers initiative.

Foust says universities are increasingly appointing deans or provosts of undergraduate research, and they’re organizing forums for undergrads to present original research. For the past three years, U.S. News & World Report, which annually publishes the “bible” of university rankings, has highlighted “Undergraduate research/creative activity” as a “program to look for.”

“That shows the public is aware of the role undergraduate research plays in a quality education,” Foust says.

A more recent NSF study looked at 2,200 researchers and their involvement with more than 4,500 undergraduates. More than 90 percent of students said their experience in science research was a confidence builder, and helped them understand how research works. Almost nine out of 10 faculty surveyed felt that the experience for undergrads was positive regardless of their students’ career goals.

Finding the Research Route

But as with almost any new educational trend, no matter at what level, it’s not easy to get reliable statistics on just how well the new effort is paying off. Counting heads is a problem because so far, there’s no nationwide campus standard for developing research programs tailored for undergrads. And then there’s the ubiquitous problem of defining the word “research.” What’s considered a “researcher” by one school may be considered simply a lab tech at another, and the two often get counted as the same thing.

Still, there’s little debate that the initiative is having a positive effect, as the NSF and other studies have shown, says Paul Cottle of Florida State. Cottle heads FSU’s honors program, which strives to make available bona fide research opportunities for students.

“The vast majority of students think their undergraduate education is a series of classes they should get A’s in,” says Cottle. “What we’re doing is trying to change their expectations… Doing your own research is the best way to learn.”

Doing real research has the potential to completely transform a student’s future. Research experience can be the ticket to gaining skills that can make a bachelor’s degree eminently more valuable both in the marketplace and in competition for grad school. As students are beginning to realize this fact, campuses are scrambling to build more and better ways for students to take the research route, and, of course, to promote them.

Nearly every university has its own way of going about this, Cottle said. Some have formed offices specifically dedicated to connecting students with faculty who are willing to take on the responsibility of supervising undergrads in their labs. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 became one of the first to create a formal undergraduate research program. The late Margaret MacVicar, who was a science professor and Dean for Undergraduate Education at the time, founded the program.

“MIT is deeply committed to the premise that undergraduates should inhabit a very special world—that of a moral and intellectual universe with certain fixed stars, but also with wide spaces in between where students can find room to wander and to make their own paths,” MacVicar is quoted as saying.

Other universities have stayed with a decentralized approach but ramped up incentives, including college credit or funds, and they expanded opportunities.

FSU falls into this camp, offering undergrads a variety of ways to gain real-world experience in their fields. Last spring, the university established the Office of National Fellowships to help students obtain prestigious scholarships and fellowships, many of which involve a research component. Administrators are also stepping up efforts to lure students into the honors thesis program, Cottle said.

More options for students to apply their knowledge include taking on internships or Directed Independent Study (DIS) courses. Students opting for the DIS route work with a faculty mentor to design and carry out an original project from creating Web sites to writing poetry to analyzing DNA.

Of course, for generations, practical experience—if not designated as “research”—has been a requirement for bachelor’s degrees in a number of disciplines. For example, students who want to become teachers have to teach in real classroom settings, notes Kirby Kemper, FSU vice president for research. Engineering majors have to design projects. Actors are expected to act.

But the idea for practical experience in research should be more pervasive, Kemper believes.

“I think everybody in all areas should do some sort of research project,” he says. “That’s the key: Make it a culture.”

Seizing Success

But for now, the onus largely remains on students to take the initiative. It’s the students that must seek out the research opportunities and faculty mentors. And once they’re on board, they’ll face a world of new and unfamiliar challenges.

Student researchers invest anywhere from five to 20 hours per week in the lab, library or office crunching numbers, staring through microscopes or reading research papers. And that’s on top of their other studies, activities and jobs. Many students ultimately find the challenge too demanding and stressful. Others, like Kat Phipps of St. Petersburg, Florida, see their worlds transformed.

When Phipps entered FSU more than five years ago, lured to campus by the school’s internationally acclaimed School of Music, she dreamed of majoring in music and emerging as a singing superstar. But a whimsical encounter with chemistry research her freshman year changed everything.

Taking an elective honors chemistry class her freshman year, Phipps landed in the lab of Prof. Jack Saltiel, a trailblazer in the field of photochemistry. As a music major, Phipps hardly expected to embrace chemistry, but when she went from washing laboratory glassware to chemically poking and prodding a molecule called benzophenone, she was hooked. Within a couple of years, she co-authored a research article in a well-respected science journal.

“At first, you do it because it’s exciting,” she says. “Later, it’s like, ‘Oh, I can get a job doing this.’ With singing, I didn’t know where I was headed.”

Phipps’ success in research is hardly isolated. Cottle says the majority (64 percent) of undergrads at FSU who wrote honors theses in 2004-05 published their work in an academic journal. The trend is also not reserved just for science majors. FSU students, either through the honors thesis program or other route, produce original work in everything from music to business to English.

The tradition of ambition continues in a number of outstanding FSU undergrads. This year, economics major Cara Castellana received a Truman Scholarship, one of the most coveted academic awards in the country (see Cara Castellana).

As for Phipps, she graduated in the spring with degrees in music and biochemistry and spent her summer continuing her research. She then packed up five years of life and studies in Tallahassee, and the singer-turned-scientist hauled her belongings to Yale University on her way to a Ph.D. in biophysics and biochemistry. She’s not sure where her passion for research will take her, but neither did she predict her switch to science as a career in the first place.

“I was not always driven to succeed in science,” she says, “but I always had the drive to succeed.”