Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Publication Title

ACS Omega

Abstract

Scholarly activities in primarily undergraduate institutions involve very different challenges from those in major research universities. In this essay, the author discusses how he initiated a research program involving undergraduates at Illinois State University following a number of missteps and false starts. Although undergraduate researchers have much to learn, and the levels of commitment vary considerably, they can nevertheless often make important contributions.

Funding Source

This work has been supported virtually continuously over the last 34 years by the National Science Foundation under the RUI program, most recently under grant CHE-2247214. NSF is also acknowledged for providing funding for the departmental NMR spectrometers (CHE-0722385), X-ray diffractometer (CHE-2407904) and high-resolution mass spectrometer (CHE-1337497) under the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program. This article was published Open Access thanks to a transformative agreement between Milner Library and ACS.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.1021/acsomega.5c04501

Comments

First published in a special issue of ACS Omega, "Undergraduate Research as the Stimulus for Scientific Progress in the USA": https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.5c04501

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