The status of undergraduate research - Journal of Chemical Education

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The Status of Undergraduate Research An Update Claude H. Yoder and James N. Spencer Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604 Research a t nredominantlv underaraduite institutions has recently received considelable attention. The National Science Foundation has created the RUI propram, the Oberlin Science Conference focused on the scatus and impact of undergraduate research, while the Colgate Conference, sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research, concentrated on funding alternatives. We have previously publisheda survey of avariety of measures of productivity a t 174 undergraduate institutions for the period 1970-1979 ( I ) . In view of the increased emphasis on undergraduate research, we thought it would be of interest to determine the recent productivity of the top-ranked institutions in our previous survey. Table 1contains those institutions that produced 10 or more nuhlications over the decade 1970-79 and gives the nurnl,erbf publications produced by earh institution for the oeriod 1980 to November 1986. The number of puhlications bas determined by computer search of the literature by

Table 1. Number of Publlcatlons and Average Per Yeara Institution

1970-79

1980-11185

AmherstIMA HopeIMI LafayeltelPA PomonaICA Harvey MUddICA Franklin 8 MarshailIPA WilliamsIMA WoosterIOH BowdoinIME GrinnellIlA ColgateINY PranINY CalvinIMI SwarthmoreIPA CarletonlMN CanisiuslNY BarnardINY St. OlsfIMN NIagaralNY HaverfordIPA EarlhamllN GeltysburgIPA FairfieldICT RedlandsICA OccidentalICA LawrenceIWI WheatonIlL Lebanon ValleyIPA JuniataIPA Gustavus AdolphusIMN WagnerINY Pacific LutheranlWA WinenbergIOH SauthwesternITN MaristlNY MacalesterIMN CornellIlA lnclraes onhl t b a e publications for whichms inntilvtim isms home innnution of me principalauthor. me number in psremheses IS the averago nvmbsr d pubilcations per year for 1970-79 and 1980-85.

institution name and includes only those publications for which the institution is the home institution of the principal author. Thus, articles resulting from collaborative, doctoral, or oostdoctoral work done a t another institution are usually noi included in the data base. The numbers in parentheses in the table give the average number of puhlications per year for the periods 1970-79 and 1980-85. For most of the institutions with large numbers of puhlications the current rate of publication is greater than that of the 70-79 decade. For the other institutions, however, the publication rate has decreased. At some institutions this is a result of the departure of one or more prolific researchers. The lower rate of oublication of some of the institutions may be a result of a number of factors, including short-term variations that mav be of no sienificance in the lone - run. One fartor that seems increasingly significant to us is the amount ot "underrraduate research" beinr done off-campusor without undergraduates. As indicatedabove, publicaiions resulting from this work off-rampus generally will not list the . . author and the unhergraduate researcher as the article therefore will not be included in the data base. In order to obtain some measure of the amount of research done on-campus with undergraduates, the leading 11 institutions in nuhlications for 1980-85 in Table 1were selected andexamined more carefully in the Third Edition of Research in Chemistrv a t Underzraduate Institutions published by the ~ounc;lon undergraduate Research. able 2 shows the total number of ~ublicationslisted in thisdirectory for the years 1981-1984:the number of those publications that can he readily identified as doctoral or postdoctoral publications, and the number of publications that are identi-

' Spencer, J. N.; Yoder, C. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1981,58,780.

Table 2.

institution Amherst Bowdoin Colgate Franklin and Marshall Grinnall Harvey Mw?d Hope Lafayelte PO~OM Williams Wooster

Student Coauthored Publlcationsa

Tmal Publ. 198184

Publ. w/Student Coauthors

Publ. from Doctorall Postdoc. Work

45 30 39 27

13 7 7 14

5 11 7 11

10 15 25 31

33 37 22 88

30 49 51 20 40 46 29

6 12 34 9 2 13 11

15 28 4 3

9 23 25

40

% Publ. No. of wiMb Student Student Coauihars Coauthors

6

6 4

21 0

22 18

57 72 53 6 52 38

a Campilea lmm Research in Chemlsl~yst OndngmdueIe I n ~ I l ~ l m3rC s , ed..Councll on Undergraduatedesearch, Brian Andreen. Ed.. 1985. aAs percentage of "anzampus" publications (total publ. - doctmallportdoc. MI.

Volume 64 Number 2

February 1987

163

fied in the directory as publications with student coauthors. After subtracting doctoral/postdoctora1 publications from the total number, the average percentage of student-coauthored publications is 45. The remainder of the puhlications are either produced on-campus with only one author, oncampus with research assistants or postdoctoral assistants, or in off-campus collaborations (including sabbaticals). Thus, of the total publications done at these undergraduate institutions, less than half, on the average, involve undergraduate student coauthors. Student coauthored papers ranged from a high of 88%of the total publications to a low of 6%. A total of 188 students coauthored 128 published papers from these 11institutions from 1981-84.

164

Journal of Chemical Education

The conclusions seem to be that the most prolific institutions produce the bulk of their publications by utilizing either collaborators off-campus, postdoctoral assistants, or author papers individually. The number of individually authored papers is not large, so off-campus collaborations and postdoctoral assistants account for about 50% on the average of the publications of some of the most prolific undergraduate institutions. Acknowledgment

The authors are indebted to Jocelyn Clark, Suzanne Coley, Jennifer Gery, and Carol Strausser for assistance with portions of this work.