Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 1547

Undergraduate Research Program in the Basic and Applied Sciences at Middle Tennessee State University

B. S. Sridhara

Middle Tennessee State University

Abstract

The college of Basic and Applied Sciences at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) has ten departments including Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering Technology and Industrial Studies, Mathematics, and Physics and Astronomy. In the fall of 1993, our college dean initiated the Basic and Applied Sciences undergraduate research program at MTSU. The author was nominated to serve on the college undergraduate research committee (URC). The committee members had the privilege of attending a national conference on undergraduate research in June 1994 held in Lewiston, Maine. This helped us a lot in developing guidelines for our undergraduate research activity. Typically we invite research proposals from students in the fall semester. URC members contact students directly, and through colleagues and department chairs. Students are required to write proposals with the help of their faculty mentors and submit them in the first week of November. Committee members review the proposals, rank them and meet to decide on awards in December. Awardees are notified in the second week of December and they are required to complete their research before the end of the next summer and submit a report in the fall. We started with a budget of $3000 to award five grants in 1995 and this year we have $10,000 to award twelve deserving students. In the spring of every year we hold the college undergraduate research symposium at which all grant recipients and other students present their research at the poster session. We invite the local engineering and science community and high school students to this event. Faculty members from different departments in the college judge the presentations and the top three will receive cash prizes. The grant recipients also get a chance to publish their research in “Scientia”, the college electronic journal for student research. We have worked with our Engineering Technology students and submitted several proposals and some of them have received grants. Two of the author’s advisees not only received the undergraduate research award, but also won the first and second prizes at the college research symposium. One student published his research in Scientia and made a presentation at the MTSU Founders Day and later served as the editor of Scientia. The other student extended his research to solve a manufacturing problem for some local industry and also got a chance to make a presentation at the MTSU Administrative Retreat.

“Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education”

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Sridhara, B. (2004, June), Undergraduate Research Program At Middle Tennessee State University Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13918