Resources

The following may be of interest to participants in the Undergraduates Engaging In Inquiry group:

• Bruce Michelson mentioned IRIS as a mechanism for finding funding opportunities. IRIS has an alert service that allows faculty to establish parameters for searches. Searches can be run on demand or completed automatically with the results emailed to you. Here is a link to that site: http://iris.library.uiuc.edu/~iris/alert/
• The Spellings Commission was mentioned in discussions recently. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings established this commission to examine the future of higher education. The final report of the commission has the potential to influence higher ed policy for years to come. Basically, the Commission focused on undergraduate education determining that it should be more affordable, more accessible, more accountable, and of higher quality. That report is available for download at: http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html
• The Association of American Colleges and Universities has made their journal available on line. In the current issue an article called Why Teacher-Scholars Matter describes a study on the value of undergraduate research in higher education. Although it will come as no surprise to participants in UEI, the study finds that undergraduate research projects have a strong positive effect on student outcomes. The article is worth reading. Author George Kuh from Indiana University is very influential in the field of higher ed. My guess is that this article will probably renew the push for additional undergraduate research opportunities for students. The article is available at: http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-fa07/le_fa07_perspectives2.cfm