A case for centralizing undergraduate summer research programs: the DeBakey Research-Intensive Community
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We identify three problems with the standard undergraduate research program model. 1) Students fit into an existing research program rather than designing one; 2) Students suffer from anemic mentoring; 3) Students are isolated from their peers as they develop into practicing scientists. The fundamental reason for these problems is that effective mentoring is resource intensive, and single faculty cannot mentor more than a very few students at once. We address the underlying problem of this inefficiency and radically increase the number of novices that participate in authentic research by bringing together faculty with active research programs, graduate students seeking experience in research management, and multidisciplinary teams of novices eager to participate in original research. Teams attend regular workshops and use a common online communication portal to develop their research, and are directed by a graduate student, who is in turn advised by faculty members. This model has been used successfully since 2004 to enable over 200 novices to coauthor original research. The resulting ResearchIntensive Community model may be used as a resource in developing curricula, publications, and future graduate students. This model was employed to integrate four independent summer programs funded by NSF and NIH, resulting in decreased cost and increased research productivity.
