Contents

Notes from the Collaborative

A Note from the Collaborative Director

Defining Collaboration: Collaborative Undergraduate Research Across the Disciplines

Collaborative Opportunities

Research and Academic Travel Funding Opportunities

Academic Travel Award Recipients

Celebrating Student and Faculty/Staff Collaborations

Student Profiles

Important Dates

Mar. 25, 2011 Collaborative Summer-Fall Grant applications due

Mar. 31 - Apr. 2, 2011 National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR)

Apr. 18, 2011 Collaborative Continuation Grant applications due

May 2, 2011 Student Academic Travel Grant and Attendee Grant applications due

 A Note from the Collaborative Director

Welcome to the first issue of Connections, the e-newsletter from the St. Norbert Collaborative: The Center for Undergraduate Research. The Collaborative, now in its second year, provides a variety of funding sources for students and faculty as they undertake collaborative research projects. You will find in this e-newsletter, among many interesting things we hope, a description of our many programs and student profiles that highlight some of the exciting undergraduate research being done at St. Norbert College.

A recent study published by the University of Chicago Press has made headlines across the nation, including The Chronicle of Higher Education. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses conclude that colleges and universities are failing at teaching students. Their study suggests that

• 45% of first and second-year college students show no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex, reasoning, and writing skills
• 36% showed little improvement in these skills after four years
• 35% spend five or fewer hours per week studying
• 32% did not have to read more than 40 pages per week
• 50% reported that they never had to write more than 20 pages a semester

Arum and Roksa, basing their findings on the data found in the Collegiate Learning Assessment Test, conclude that colleges and universities place the learning of students near the bottom of the priority list.

That is a scathing assessment of higher education.

And an assessment that does not apply to St. Norbert College-for we certainly place learning at the top of our priorities. We just need to look at our academic programming.

We can also evoke some other key evidence. Jayne E. Brownell and Lynn E. Swaner, in Five High-Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality, focus on the following "purposeful pathways" that lead to a more productive educational experience. I've checked those programs that St. Norbert is actively engaged in.

• First-Year Seminars
• Learning Communities
• Service Learning
• Undergraduate Research
• Capstone Courses and Projects

This list is quite familiar to us, for St. Norbert has been focusing on these practices for many years, and we are now making them into a more formal structure on campus. The Collaborative, the literal center of undergraduate research, reflects the College's commitment to high-impact practices.

Brownell and Swaner conclude that undergraduate research, in particular, leads to

• Higher rate of persistence
• Higher rate of graduate school enrollment
• Improvement in research skills
• Increased interaction with faculty and peers
• Gains in problem solving and critical thinking
• Greater satisfaction with educational experience

Such research is also essential to recruiting and retaining underserved students.

The Collaborative asks you, "Is St. Norbert College academically adrift?" With undergraduate research at the core of our many high-impact practices on campus, the answer has to be that we are not adrift but academically centered in the most productive ways possible.

 John Pennington, Director