Towards a true community of scholars: undergraduate research in the modern university

Abstract

A research intensive university should not divorce the function of teaching undergraduates from the imperative to do innovative research. The two responsibilities are in many ways complementary and the ability of the researcher to integrate his or her students into the collective enterprise of research adds an important dynamic to the best schools. The University of Toronto has for 7 years practiced this principle through its Research Opportunity Program in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Each year up to 180 carefully selected, gifted second year students are permitted to work in the research projects of professors for course credit. The teams vary according to discipline but all recognize that the role of the undergraduates is to contribute fundamentally to the progress of the project. The results have been remarkable, as is evident from the posters displayed at this conference. Students have co-authored papers, participated in important international meetings and continued to do outstanding graduate work later in their academic careers. Undergraduate research, then, provides an instrument for mentoring and modelling; it also permits the best among our students to sample the vivid excitement of cutting edge investigation, to travel into the scientific unknown. Undergraduate research can constitute one of the glues that cements the academy together, by linking in a great intellectual chain of knowledge every element of the human potential of the institution. It is an opportunity, which can help define a great research school and can simultaneously add lustre to the enterprise of research by involving every constituency.