Who We Are & What We're About
Our Mission
The Undergraduate Research (UR) Office at Michigan State University (MSU) seeks to foster a culture of engagement by:
- Advising students on how to find research and creative opportunities, prepare them to work effectively with mentors, and provide opportunities to present their scholarship
- Increasing faculty’s awareness of UR’s resources for their undergraduate research assistants and increasing faculty’s mentoring capacity
- Stewarding the Provost Undergraduate Research Funds to support undergraduate research to the campus community
- Communicating the impact of undergraduate research and creative activity within and beyond the MSU community
Our Vision
The vision of the MSU Undergraduate Research Office is to provide all undergraduate students opportunities to engage in research or creative activity throughout their education, regardless of their academic discipline or academic abilities. We aim to remove barriers that prohibit students from engaging in research and creative opportunities. We support students and mentors at various stages of the research experience to help them maximize the resources and opportunities available to them.
What do we mean by UR?
Undergraduate research (UR) is a mentored, process-centered scholarly, creative, or artistic endeavor, occurring within or beyond courses and in paid, volunteer, or credit bearing roles. Students conducting research pursue original questions (including meaningful replication of previous research) using discipline-appropriate methods involving reflection, iteration, and individual student contribution and accountability. Contributions to knowledge, interpretation, design, or performance produced by UR are shared with appropriate audiences, including peers, disciplinary scholars, or the public. UR may be student-initiated or part of a larger research enterprise or campus research unit and follows recognized research integrity and ethical practices.
1. Mentored: The student is supported by a qualified mentor (e.g. faculty, staff researcher, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, or trained peers as co-mentors). A mentor teaches students essential research skills, provides structure and feedback throughout the project, and models ethical, professional research and scholarly practices.
2. Originality: The work seeks to generate new knowledge, interpretation, design, or creative product (wholly or in part) through unique questions or meaningful replication of existing scholarship. Exploratory projects following established methods with intentional or minor modifications initiated by students typically are recognized as original efforts for UR, especially in classroom settings.
3. Discipline-appropriate: The experience involves iteration, skill development, and reflective learning using methods appropriate to the discipline and student experience level. Because of the diversity of UR topics and methodology, there is no universal standard for how long an undergraduate research project must last, but for consistency, we recommend the iterative research process extend over at least five weeks of work – roughly one‑third of a semester.
4. Shared: There is a plan or venue to share outcomes of the research or scholarly work through discipline-appropriate formats such as oral or poster presentations, journals, showcases, recitals/exhibitions, juried reviews, and repositories. Audiences will vary based on project goals but may include: peers not directly involved in the research (in classrooms or undergraduate-level symposiums), external constituencies and public communications, or disciplinary scholars and conferences.
Undergraduate Education
The Undergraduate Research Office at Michigan State University is nested within the Office of Undergraduate Education. We strive to support the work of faculty and students across the campus by collaborating to develop, promote, enhance, and assess undergraduate research and creative activities at MSU.
Research at Michigan State
Michigan State's mission statement commits the University to "conducting research of the highest caliber that seeks to answer questions and create solutions in order to expand human understanding and make a positive difference, both locally and globally." In keeping with its Land Grant heritage, research at MSU is often connected to broader issues facing Michigan, the nation, and the world, and is intended to make a contribution to society.
Michigan State is renowned nationally for its support for undergraduate researchers, with programs, funding, and support services available to assist students across the colleges.
