Amazon.com description: Product Description: ''As someone who only decided to become a scientist because of an accidental encounter with undergraduate research, I can heartily recommend this book to all college science faculty. To help science thrive, we need to provide as many young people as possible with the opportunity to experience our wonderful discipline.'' --Bruce Alberts, University of California, San Francisco, Editor-in-Chief of Science

This is the first comprehensive, data-based study of the benefits to students who actively participate in authentic science research programs. The book features contributors from a variety of institutions who bring together studies of undergraduate research programs. They focus on identifying the successful elements of each program, and then draw valuable conclusions on the effects those programs have on the students. Providing much-needed information about the organization and administration of programs and the challenges to creating and sustaining viable research opportunities, this essential resource features a variety of perspectives, including those of external evaluators, longtime program directors, participants, and administrators, identifies the characteristics of effective programs and the kinds of gains that faculty and administrators can expect from them, examines the barriers to research opportunities, including lack of departmental and institutional resources and inadequate faculty compensation, and can be used as a primer for creating programs and for determining their effectiveness.