Supporting Undergraduate Research

The 2020 Supporting Undergraduate Research Conference has been cancelled.

Questions? sur@groups.reed.edu.

2020 Supporting Undergraduate Research Conference

March 26-27, 2020
Reed College
Portland, Oregon

Students must master discipline-specific context, methods, and tools to succeed as scholars, a complex endeavor that requires multifaceted support throughout their undergraduate education. This conference will bring together librarians, instructional technologists, students, and faculty to share collaborative strategies for cultivating student engagement with data, digital resources, and research methods.

Plenary Speaker - Paul Roback

Paul Roback

I am in my 17th year teaching at St. Olaf College, a liberal arts school in Minnesota with a vibrant math and statistics program. One defining feature of the statistics program has been the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (CIR), started 15 years ago and supported by two consecutive NSF grants during that time. The CIR has been featured in The American Statistician, among other outlets, as a model program in interdisciplinary undergraduate research.  Students accepted into the CIR learn skills necessary for collaborative research, and they work with domain experts from disciplines all over campus on research questions with a quantitative component.  After this experience, many CIR students have gone on to graduate school in statistics and biostatistics.  I have had the privilege of working with nearly 100 students since I arrived at St. Olaf, publishing co-authored papers in health economics, genetics, ecology, political science, and sports analytics.  I have also been involved with curriculum development efforts, such as incorporating data science into the curriculum, using academic civic engagement, and co-authoring an open source textbook for undergraduates on generalized linear models and multilevel methods.