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.
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)
Students join with faculty in a research project, serving as research assistants via GUROP.
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).
Students use their undergraduate research projects as stepping stones to further research, creative projects, fellowships, jobs, graduate study, public service, etc.
Continue to ask questions and pursue deeper knowingas key activities in lives of purpose.
Sociology Major Wins Beinecke Scholarship
May 8th, 2019
Sociology major Orunima Chakraborti (C’20) has won a 2019 Beinecke Scholarship, a prestigious award given annually by The Sperry Fund to students who plan on enrolling in an arts, social sciences, or humanities-focused graduate program.
Three Students Present Research at ACLA Conference
April 18th, 2019
While many of their peers went home or took vacations, three College students stayed on campus to present original papers at the 2019 American Comparative Literature Conference, the country’s largest annual gathering of comparative literature scholars.
Senior Explores Jewish Identity in Ghana
January 14th, 2019
Corine Forward (C’19) has always been fascinated by the concept of identity, especially identities that seem mysterious or idiosyncratic to most of the world. This interest brought her to one of the most obscure and isolated communities in the world: the Jewish community of Sefwi-Wiaswo, Ghana, which she is studying for a senior thesis.
