Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research Issue Features Nontraditional Approaches to Research

The winter 2020 issue of Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research (SPUR), the academic journal of the Council on Undergraduate Research, focuses on unusual approaches to undergraduate research. Said SPUR Editor-in-Chief James T. LaPlant (Valdosta State University):

We are excited about the winter 2020 SPUR issue, which highlights the ever-expanding landscape of undergraduate research initiatives. These include:

• engaging culinary students in research through a Japanese food and culture focus (by Zhen, Culinary Institute of America),
• developing an interdisciplinary video game for biology majors (by Sperano et al., MacEwan University)
   
• involving underserved rural students in course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs, by Allen et al., Concord University/Virginia Tech), and
   
• integrating distance education psychology students into undergraduate research (by Levin and Grewe, Utah State University). 
   

The vignettes from the running theme on “Undergraduate Research during Times of Disruption” also reveal the impressive innovations underway with undergraduate research during the pandemic, including the revamping of a nanomaterials experiment (by Barstis, Saint Mary’s College) and transitioning a computational research lab to a virtual environment (by Briganti and Brown, Virginia Tech).

Other topics of interest range from organizing and airing a student podcast on sports (by Johannesen, University of Minnesota Crookston) to developing a CURE for first-year students featuring oral histories in a writing course (by McConnell Parsons et al, University of Kentucky).

View the table of contents for the winter 2020 SPUR, or visit the SPUR Volumes and Issues webpage. Questions or comments about the issue may be addressed to SPUR Editor-in-Chief James T. LaPlant or SPUR Technical Editor Elizabeth Foxwell.