Wabash’s summer calendar stays busy this week with another national conference coming to campus. Members of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) come to Crawfordsville this week for their 27th annual business meeting.
"CUR is an organization that supports faculty in their efforts to include undergraduate students in their scholarly and creative work," said Scott Feller, a Wabash College Associate Professor of Chemistry. CUR has 3,000 members representing 870 institutions.
"CUR lobbies organizations such as the National Science Foundation to consider the needs of undergraduate institutions when developing programs, they organize workshops and meetings to discuss issues of interest to faculty, and they work especially hard at creating visibility for undergraduate research," Feller said.
Dean of the College Mauri Ditzler has been involved in CUR for several years. CUR works in faculty and institutional development.
Feller has seen the results of CUR’s programs on the Wabash campus.
"The organization brings together people with a shared interest in quality undergraduate education and active scholarship in their field, people who eel that research should be a form of teaching. For example, the Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship and Creative Work was motivated by experiences we heard about from other schools at a CUR meeting back in 1999."
Wabash won the right to host this year’s campus through a bidding process. The conference was award 18 months ago.
"I’ve always wanted to do something like this for the past several years, ever since our new buildings began coming on line (Hays, Goodrich, Trippet, Allen, MXI)," Feller said. "I always find I learn a lot about a college when I go to a conference there."
Hewitt is Wabash College's Director of New Media/Web Editor.
In photos:
On homepage: At far right, Kyle Coffey '07 assists registrants Wednesday afternoon.
Above: Coffey finds registration materials for Kenneth Rumstay, of Valdosta State University.
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