Compiled by Jacob Smith

Ronald Burns

Professor and Chair in the Department of Criminal Justice, AddRan College of Liberal Arts

They learn how to conduct research and begin to gain an appreciation for it while developing skills to critically analyze and interpret. Especially in our field, research prepares them for jobs.

Morgan Swink

Eunice and James L. West Chair of Supply Chain Management, Executive Director of the Supply and Value Chain Center, Neeley School of Business

It gives them the chance to dig deep into a specific topic or question. There is no course that is going to go into that kind of depth on a particular issue, so students get a much deeper and fuller understanding of the issue.

Nick Bontrager

Assistant Professor of Art, College of Fine Arts

Research takes some different paths in the arts. We really encourage our students to explore outside of our programs, like in open galleries or at art exhibits. We encourage them to participate in the professional culture by going to shows, participating at shows or applying to exhibitions or publications with their artwork.

Kyle Walker

Associate Professor of Geography, AddRan College of Liberal Arts

It allows them to demonstrate independent leadership, where they have to come up with an idea on their own or figure out how to solve a problem without detailed instructions from their professors, which is what they are going to need to do when they get a job.

Blaise Ferrandino

Professor of Music Theory and Composition, Division Chair, Music Theory and Composition, College of Fine Arts

In music, I think it is really built into the program because all of the students are doing applied work from the very beginning. Research allows students to take abstraction and turn it into application. And also, it provides them with a new knowledge, an applicable understanding.

Magnus Rittby

Professor of Physics and Senior Associate Dean, College of Science & Engineering

There is one reality, and in academics we want to split this up into all of our different subdisciplines: math, social science, history, physics, engineering, etc. We don’t typically teach how all of this relates to anything else. The benefit of undergraduate research is to synthesize the learning and experience that you have had in all of your coursework and apply it to solve a specific problem, and that gives meaning to what you are doing.