1. Integrated Research Components: Undergraduate Research for All Ellen Walker Hiram College

2. Institutionalized Undergraduate Research Integrated Research Components (IRCs) –Individual semester-long projects Attached to specific courses –Separate 2-credit course with co-requisite Required of all computer science majors –Meets college-wide “capstone experience” requirement Two IRC’s required to graduate –Generally, junior and senior year

3. Why Attach to Courses? Reduced intellectual load for faculty advisor (who is also teaching the course) “Research group” experience for students Synergy between course and research experiences Interactions among pre-IRC and current-IRC students

4. Courses Offered with IRC’s Artificial Intelligence Bioinformatics Computer Vision Database Graphics Networks Parallel and Distributed Systems Simulation Systems Administration

5. Formal Structure Helps Proposal - within first two weeks –Sets scope and evaluation criteria for the project; negotiated with faculty member Implementation - semester-long –Must include significant original code Poster - 1 week before presentation Presentation and Paper (as for a research conference) - end of semester –20 minute oral presentations grouped into sessions on the last 1-3 evenings of the semester.

6. Can All Students do Research? Projects tailored to students’ abilities –“R”esearch vs. “r”esearch Projects are staged –Develop complete simple version before adding complexity (list versions in proposal) –When time is up, submit latest complete version -- not necessarily the final version listed in the proposal

7. Example Projects “R”esearch –Locating, Tracking, and Interpreting Ean- 13 Bar Code Waveforms in a Two- Dimensional Video Stream, Jeffrey Adair (2006 SRC Grand Finals 3rd place) –BLAST Organism Cross-Comparison as a Tool for Genomic Sequencing, Luke Chaney (poster at 25th annual Crown Gall Conference)

8. Example Projects “r”esearch –A Walk Around Jacobs Field (Graphics) –Gin Rummy (Artificial Intelligence) –Using Shell Scripts to Back Up Various Unix Systems (Systems Administration)

9. Building Community Semi-annual research conference –Open to all; highly encouraged for CS students, especially in early courses –Generates excitement about the field Posters decorate our hall –Sense of “CS Pride” –Conversation-starters with prospective students

10. Why Senior Year is Too Late If the project is poor… –Pressure on faculty to pass vs. prevent graduation –No opportunity to learn from mistakes If the project is wonderful… –No chance to present externally (e.g. SRC) –Too late to apply for fall admission to graduate school (if newly excited about research)

11. Advantage of a Second Project Feedback from first IRC applied to the second one, so more students end with a positive experience –Grades support this (next 2 slides) “Second-IRC” students help “First-IRC” students, so quality improves overall

12. Questions? Our website has additional information –http://cs.hiram.edu/~walkerel/IRC.html