After nursing a 50-page history thesis for a year, no student wants his or her final project to end up collecting dust.
Still, "most undergrad research ends up on bookshelves," 2005 College graduate Blair Kaminsky said.
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dennis DeTurck is setting out to change that.
As part of his commitment to enhancing undergraduate research opportunities, DeTurck is planning the release of the "College Undergraduate Research Journal" this spring. He hopes that the electronic journal will serve as an informative resource for students, as well as prompting faculty members to mentor young researchers and to include undergraduates in their work.
The journal will be available online and will feature a variety of research, mostly done by seniors. Department chairs and program directors will be in charge of selecting the work included.
The journal will be updated yearly with more than 200 works. It is not yet clear how much the project will cost, but DeTurck is hoping to solicit donations to help fund the journal.
DeTurck decided to create the journal after learning of the amount of unknown undergraduate research on Penn's campus.
Although the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships and the Kelly Writers House already sponsor a printed undergraduate research journal, Res, many feel that undergraduate research is often overlooked.
"You spend a really long time working on these things," Kaminsky said. In her senior year, she wrote a thesis through the History Department. Her work is currently displayed on the "demo" version of the new college journal.
"It's nice to know my teachers won't be the only ones who have read it," she said.
DeTurck feels that displaying the best in undergraduate research will make faculty more eager to advise undergraduates in their work.
However, many feel that it is more beneficial for undergraduates to work on projects conducted by faculty members, rather than conducting their own separate research.
"When we think of undergraduate research, we should be thinking of mentorship experience," CURF Director Art Casciato said.
Casciato feels that students need to learn about the research process by working under faculty members and graduate students.
Like Casciato, Political Science professor Henry Teune thinks that undergraduates benefit greatly from participating in faculty research.
Not only is the experience salutary for the student, but it is also vital to the research, he said.
"We have so few graduate students, it's not a question if we want to [include undergraduates]; we have to," Teune said.
A strong mentoring and undergraduate research program could distinguish Penn from its peer schools, he said.
DeTurck hopes to represent Penn's many undergraduate departments by including a wide array of works from the sciences, humanities and fine arts.
"There will be photography, musical performances and compositions, video animation as well as computer simulations," DeTurck said.
He hopes this will encourage research in the humanities, an area that does not see as much undergraduate research as the sciences do.
