Forty-seven WCU students had their project abstracts accepted by the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, an annual springtime gathering where students from across the nation present their best research. The 47 abstracts from WCU is the sixth-highest total among the 306 colleges and universities that will be participating in this year’s conference, which will be held April 10-12 at Salisbury University in Maryland.

WCU students have ranked in the top 10 at the conference for three straight years, and the students from Cullowhee continue to lead the University of North Carolina system with their participation, said Brian Railsback, dean of WCU’s Honors College. The college serves as the headquarters for undergraduate research on WCU’s campus.

Railsback said WCU’s success at the conference in an indicator of the students’ strong interest in conducting research, WCU’s commitment to involving those students in research work, and the willingness of faculty members to mentor the students in their research by serving as faculty sponsors.

John Whitmire, assistant professor in WCU’s department of philosophy and religion, is sponsoring seven students whose projects were accepted by the national conference. Undergraduate research is important because it gives students the “inside view of what it means to be a scholar,” Whitmire said.

“Very few students tend to understand what it means to be a scholar in one’s field until they see the sheer amount of research that has already been done in that field. Doing research of their own allows students to explore what is happening far more fully in the currents underneath the surface,” he said.

“Doing scholarly work also gives our students the opportunity to realize that, although it takes an immense amount of preparatory work just to join in the conversation, they might very well have something valuable to add to it, and that is important both in purely intellectual terms, as well as in terms of their growth as individuals,” he said.

Plus, the act of conducting research can change a student’s idea of education from one in which the teacher is the source of knowledge and the student is the passive listener to one in which the student is taking an active role in his or her education, and the faculty member becomes a guide, Whitmire said.

Railsback said other factors that have resulted in undergraduate research increasingly becoming a big part of the academic culture at WCU over the years are the Honors College’s expanded Undergraduate Projects Grant Program, WCU’s annual springtime Undergraduate Expo research exhibition, and the Honors College’s magazine, Imagine, which focuses on undergraduate research.

Undergraduate research will continue to be a major component of the curriculum at WCU in the future, as evidenced by its inclusion in the Quality Enhancement Plan, a comprehensive plan to improve student learning developed by the university as part of the process of gaining re-accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Railsback said.

The WCU contingent will be traveling by bus to the April conference, and aside from the cost of meals, the trip is provided free to the students. At the conference, the students will present their research in front of students and college faculty from across the nation.

As an example of the significance placed on undergraduate research at WCU, one student, Jenny V. Dowdle of Franklin, will be traveling to Maryland to attend the national conference all the way from the Central American country of Costa Rica, where she is currently studying Spanish as a Rotary Foundation Cultural Ambassadorial Scholar, Railsback said.

For more information about undergraduate research at WCU, contact Brian Railsback at (828) 227-2101.

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Last modified: Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008