Research is no longer the exclusive domain of graduate education. A good undergraduate education at a research university like Ohio State must include a quality research component. Beginning next winter, we will offer our first year students 10 undergraduate research courses aimed initially at our honors and scholars students. This research component will be presented exclusively by faculty, most of them senior faculty. We will begin with 200 first-year students in the fall and grow the program from there.
Many undergraduates already participate in research activities.
For example, this year more than 1,200 undergraduate students worked in our research laboratories. These positions can range from necessary but mundane tasks to actual participation in research projects. For example, when junior Amy Stutz of Columbus agreed to help an astronomy professor analyze data for a research project, she had no idea she would end up publishing a paper in a prestigious astronomy journal. The research she published in the Astrophysical Journal with Andrew P. Gould, associate professor of astronomy, challenged whether a type of star that astronomers use as a standard is a standard after all. The Denmans are determined to make this the best undergraduate research forum in the nation, a goal that we, of course, share.