At universities around the country, students and faculty have positive stories to tell of how their involvement in undergraduate research has enhanced their teaching and learning, providing educational and professional benefits.

The University of Delaware has something more. In addition to operating an Undergraduate Research Program that has won national attention as a model for other institutions, UD has statistics that demonstrate the worth of that program.

"We did a very ambitious assessment of our program, and we learned a lot," says Karen Bauer, assistant director of UD's Office of Institutional Research and Planning. "The students who participate in undergraduate research report so many benefits, and we now have hard data to back that up--to show that there's a real value added to the undergraduate education."

The University's ability to do a substantial evaluation of its program resulted from a $500,000 award in 1997 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). UD was one of 10 institutions, from a pool of more than 100, to receive an NSF Recognition Award for the Integration of Research and Education that year. In awarding the three-year grant, the NSF applauded the University's "bold leadership" and "meaningful results" in integrating research into the undergraduate experience.

Bauer says the grant money allowed her in the Office of Institutional Research and Planning, working with a faculty advisory board, to design a complex study that would examine the Undergraduate Research Program from several different perspectives.

"One thing I've learned in doing educational research is that no one single measure can tell you everything," she says, "so we wanted to do an extensive and multifaceted study."

The study had four main components:

• A content analysis of a decade's worth of essays that student participants had written evaluating their undergraduate research experience;
  
  
• A survey of 2,200 alumni, half who had taken part in research as undergraduates and half who had not, asking about skills and abilities they believed they had acquired in their UD education;
  
  
• A survey of science and engineering faculty, asking their views of the program's benefits to students and its advantages and challenges for faculty; and
  
  
• A longitudinal study that followed about 200 students through their four years of undergraduate education. Those students were interviewed, surveyed and tested annually in order to compare those who did undergraduate research with those who did not.

While results of the longitudinal study continue to be analyzed, the alumni survey found that those who did undergraduate research "reported greater enhancement of important cognitive and personal skills, as well as higher satisfaction with their undergraduate education," Bauer and Undergraduate Research Program Coordinator Joan Bennett wrote in a Journal of Higher Education article about the assessment.

Those alumni who did research as undergraduates also were more likely to go to graduate school and twice as likely to pursue doctoral degrees. Compared with alumni of similar interests and abilities who had not done undergraduate research, those who had participated in the program reported significantly higher skills in many areas. Those included speaking effectively, acquiring information independently, understanding scientific findings, exercising leadership, developing intellectual curiosity and possessing clear career goals.

The University's research findings are helpful to other institutions, says Wendy Katkin, director of The Reinvention Center at Stony Brook, a national center established to improve undergraduate education at research universities. She says UD has produced "highly significant scholarly assessments of the learning achieved through the undergraduate research experience" and that Bauer's and Bennett's published papers "are fast becoming a major national resource."

Within the University, the assessment of the Undergraduate Research Program has helped administrators expand the program and has won it increasingly wide support, says President David P. Roselle. The bottom line, he says, is: "Assessment gives visibility to the University's efforts by demonstrating their effectiveness."