Undergraduate research programs build skills for diverse students

While many professional societies, colleges, and universities offer undergraduate summer research experience (URE) programs for students, few have systematically evaluated their impacts on the fellows. The American Physiological Society (APS) developed administered multiple UREs with varying target groups: students without prior experiences from disadvantaged groups, including underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities (URM), persons disabilities, first generation college financial or social disadvantages. Each program had specific goals measurable objectives. To assess impact of these programs, APS both documented student completion tasks (e.g., designing experiments, analyzing data, writing abstracts) reliable valid survey instruments to quantify students’ self-ratings a variety career planning skills related Results indicate that fellows as whole most individual gained knowledge in numerous areas: experimental design, data management, lab safety, statistical analysis, presentation, scientific writing, networking, networking at meetings, authorship attribution, animal use research, human subjects roles mates mentors, training planning. Furthermore, there were differences within diversity comparison groups (women vs. men, URM non-URM fellows, etc.). Suggestions improvement URE are proposed.