The purpose of our university is not the acquisition of knowledge, but the search for deeper knowing. Rather than imagine your education as downloading information or facts, reimagine your education as a process of seeking, questioning, probing, arguing, and creating. The primary responsibilities of faculty are to research, teach, and guide students. The primary responsibilities of students are to learn how to learn and to continue this quest for the rest of their lives. Faculty are primarily involved in the search for and creation of new knowledge, but faculty invite students to join with them to learn methods and approaches. After engaging in research with faculty supervision, students may dream up their own questions and create their own projects. In these ways, students chart their own paths toward original questions and deeper knowing. To find out ways that you can participate in undergraduate research, please refer to the following chart.
Explore Methods
Students explore research methods through an introductory course to a field of knowledge (for example, ENGL-090, FMST-100, JUPS-202, PSYC-002, or SOCI-201)
Join a Project
Students join with faculty in a research project, serving as research assistants via GUROP.
Start your Own
Students propose their own original research projects, seeking summer fellowship funding via Davis, Kalorama, Raines, Andretta, GUROP, etc.
Present your Findings
Students bring back their summer research and develop this material into a thesis, capstone, or independent project in the senior year. Students present their research via on-campus symposia (including the College Academic Council Research Colloquium in the spring) and off-campus conferences (supported by PURPAS grants).
Expand on the Experience
Students use their undergraduate research projects as stepping stones to further research, creative projects, fellowships, jobs, graduate study, public service, etc.
Keep Asking Questions
Continue to ask questions and pursue deeper knowing as key activities in lives of purpose.
The Colloquium for Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (CRSSH) is an annual conference that allows students from across the university to present their research findings to their peers and professors. This year, three undergraduates presented their research virtually through video and powerpoint in the panel presentation moderated by Tommaso Astarita, a professor in the Department of History.
Caroline Jaipaul (C’21) is submitting a proposal to start a legal clinic at George Washington Law that will serve DC youth who are currently court-involved through oral and written advocacy and will strive to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline in Washington. Jaipaul is completing this as part of her capstone project for her Education, Inquiry and Justice (EDIJ) minor.
Psychology major Denzell Brown’s (C’21) research aims to provide aid to Black mothers who have lost children to gun violence in Washington, DC. The senior will continue to develop this project while he earns his PhD in counseling from Howard University so that he may improve the lives of Black mothers in the district.
Biological physics major Victoria Boatwright (C’22) has always been fascinated by the ocean. In a recent publication through the Georgetown Scientific Research Journal (GSR), the junior examined how biology and physics interact to affect the ocean, which she hopes will help contribute to climate change research.
