Why Should I Get Involved?

Good question. There are some major benefits to being involved in undergraduate research here at UMSL. Students have to carefully plan out their time in and around coursework. It can be difficult to add your own research project to your list of things to do. Here are a few reasons, including personal testimony, why research should be towards the top of your list:

• Undergraduate research will help you stand out to graduate programs
  • You will "gain technical and interpersonal skills, analytical, logic, synthesis, and independent learning skills, while improving their ability to gain entrance into competitive graduate programs" (Walment & Diskson, 2008)
  • "new graduate programs in computational social science are on the rise, and existing programs have begun to value skills [such as the ones in the previous quote] in both incoming students and faculty searches" (Eiler, 2020)
  • You might have a "nearly 100% success rate in student acceptance" due to your research (Wayment & Dickson, 2008)
• Conducting a research project will help improve your confidence
  • You might experience a specific increase in "confidence as problem solvers and team member, and viewed themselves as the owners of their real world problems" (Crowe & Brakke, 2019)
• You will gain skills outside of the classroom
  • your "experience [will help] understand [your field of study] much better" (Crowe & Brakke, 2019)
  • research helps improve "critical thinking/problem solving, communication, and teamwork/collaboration... [all corresponding] to what employers desire in their recruitment of recent college graduates" (McClure-Branchley, Picardo, & Overton-Healy, 2020)
  • "improvements were most consistently associated with themes of scientific collaboration, data merging and management, and data interpretation" (Anderson, et al., 2020)
  • "gains in critical thinking/problem solving, professionalism/work ethic, and oral/written communication correspond to three of the four most critical skill areas sought by employers" (Kistner, et al., 2021)
  • research provides "a platform... to practice integrative and applied learning" (McClure-Branchley, Picardo, & Overton-Healy, 2020)

In short, conducting your own undergraduate research project should provide you with the skills you need to continue your path in academia and beyond. 

References

Anderson, L. J., Dosch, J. J., Lindquist, E. S., McCay, T. S., Machado, J.-L., Kuers, K., . . .

Powell. (2020). Assessment of Student Learning in Undergraduate Courses with Collaborative Projects from the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN). Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 4(1), pp. 15-29 .

Crowe, M., & Brakke, D. (2019). Assessing Undergraduate Research Experiences: An

Annotative Bibliography. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 3(2), pp. 21-30.

Eiler, B. A. (2020). Teaching Computational Social Science Skills to Psychology Students: An

Undergraduate Research Lab Case Study. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 4(1), pp. 5-14.

Kistner, K., Sparck, E. M., Liu, A., Sayson, H. W., Levis-Fitzgerald, M., & Arnold, W. (2021).

Academic and Professional Preparedness: Outcomes of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 4(4), pp. 3-9.

McClure-Branchley, K. J., Picardo, K., & Overton-Healy, J. (2020). Beyond Learning:

Leveraging Undergraduate Research into Marketable Workforce Skills. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 3(3), pp. 28-35.

Wayment, H. A., & Dickson, K. L. (2008). Increasing Student Participation in Undergraduate

Research Benefits Students, Faculty, and Department. Teaching of Psychology, pp. 194-197.

The following is an interview with an UMSL student:

Name: Kaitlyn--Senior

Research Project Currently in-progress

When asked what side of research she was most interested she replied: Prior to starting research, she was more interested in the counseling and therapy aspect of psychology. After beginning her research project, she has found that she actually prefers the clinical and research side of psychology. She recommends everyone to find their own research project. It helps with getting into grad school, but it also allows you to immerse yourself in something you're passionate about. She wished that she had started her research sooner. However, she can't deny that she might not have had the drive and passion to pursue her project. Research open opportunities to build relationships with faculty at UMSL. Though she hasn't ironed out a title for her project yet, her project proposal is:

"The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the full range of social and psychological factors which motivate gun attitudes, behavior, and other forms of aggression. This comprehensive model includes attention to both macro level/political factors, neighborhood factors, trauma, and the intrapersonal factors that ensue. Our goal is to construct a comprehensive model that explains patterns of similarity and differences among varied gun-owning communities, including both conservative Whites and African-Americans in historically divested areas."