How can undergraduate students participate in UR at a regional campus university:

Abstract

IU East is a regional campus of Indiana University and is in Richmond Indiana; the campus’s physical service area is east-central Indiana and west-central Ohio. In the 1990’s online instruction began as an experiment and continues through today with over 50% of our students being enrolled in programs that are entirely online. Even students who are enrolled in face-to-face programs avail themselves of our deep offering of online courses. Indiana University prides itself in offering a full co-curricular experience to students, regardless of the student’s program modality. A recent call to research informs student research proponents that more information is needed about online student research opportunities and the comparability to traditional models, (Falconer, E. & Gruss, A., 2019) We therefore offer undergraduate research as a possible co-curricular activity. This case study explores models for offering undergraduate research opportunities to students in online programs. We will provide examples that demonstrate that the full range of undergraduate research engagement, from Honors program’s senior theses to faculty-mentored research projects.