Stories of Impact: The Transformative Power of Undergraduate Research

Abstract

We, along with being guest editors of this issue, are also active researchers in our respective disciplines and the scholarship of teaching and learning. We integrate undergraduate research (UGR) as High Impact Practice (HIP) in most of our research projects, and have personal experiences in which we see all the benefits come to life that have been outlined in the series of papers in this issue. As we read abstracts and considered the organization and content for this issue, we began to notice a pattern in some of the abstracts that aligned with our own work and discussions with colleagues, but is generally not present in a traditional scholarly article. That element is the personal narrative account of impact. We know from the extensive literature cited throughout this issue, as well as the work in this section, that providing high-quality undergraduate research projects has substantial impacts at many levels – for individual students, for cohorts, for departments, colleges, universities, and even systems. We, as scholars, see these impacts every day in our own work and the work of others. However, it is not often captured in peer-reviewed research outside of quotes to support evidence of assessment results (which of course, have their own important place in this work).