As UVM develops its campaign effort, it may find early support for the programs it wants to implement. As UVM develops this and other interdisciplinary programs, particularly those that draw on resources from several schools, it will need to provide a suitable administrative home. Initially, however, they simply need encouragement. We strongly recommend that UVM maintain its commitment to undergraduate research, and we suggest that the UVM increase opportunities for undergraduates to publish or disseminate their findings. Strategies might include sponsoring an undergraduate academic journal under the guidance of faculty and hosting research symposia to allow students to share their creative work or findings with the community.
Prizes work well.
They reward student researchers or creators and publicize opportunities for others. The use of undergraduate research programs helps redress the imbalances between those departments with and those without graduate programs by giving the latter faculty research partners. The Center for Teaching and Learning should lead in the University-wide enterprise of assessing student learning. Workshops on how to develop goals, measurements, and applications of findings are consistent with the Center's mission, and the Center may well serve also the need for a coherent mechanism to find efforts to improve learning and self-assessment. The Library is developing measures to assess students' information competency.