About

Purpose

Almost universally, literature tells us that participation in undergraduate research opportunities is profoundly, and positively impactful for students. Students who participate in research as undergraduates are more likely to graduate, pursue graduate studies, and include PhDs and other terminal degrees in their academic and career goals, even if they had not previously considered these possibilities before. The effects and impacts of these opportunities are even more pronounced for first-generation and students of color, impacting not just their academic aspirations, but their sense of belonging on campus as well. In brief, undergraduate research participation offers compelling positive impacts for students. Yet despite decades of research evidence supporting the value of undergraduate participation in research, accessing these opportunities remains difficult for many students, especially first-generation, transfer, and students of color.

In part, these discrepancies are a result of trends in schooling. For many students, the concept of research remains intangible—the current K-12 schooling curriculum, and lower-division university curriculum, regularly positions research as either the collection of others’ findings or an almost mythical task that occurs in labs and distant locales far removed from their academic and community lives. Though easy enough to counter, these impressions are rarely dispelled for students, and their persistence continues to distance students from the process of knowledge creation as an element of community engagement; students need to learn that research might be, or is, occurring in their communities and spaces of interest.

More concerningly, these discrepancies in access to undergraduate research opportunities also reflect the stubborn, malicious persistence of the same systemic barriers that have continued to reproduce inequality for generations. At SDSU, 57.4% of our students are students of color, 16.9% identify as first-generation students, and we welcome at least 3,000 transfer students each year (with this cohort being more likely to represent students of color, first-generation, and Pell recipient/low-income students). Yet despite these realities, and our institution’s commitment to our HSI status, the SDSU guide for prospective undergraduate researchers presents guidance and recommendations for finding mentorship and initiating research opportunities that continue to place the onus of responsibility heavily, and somewhat unreasonably, on students. While the personal initiative is certainly a valuable and admirable quality, such recommendations entail incredible assumptions about the cultural capital students have, their level of academic and social integration on campus and in their departments, and ignore the socioemotional and sociocultural realities that systemically discourage marginalized students from being able to take these first steps, such as racial battle fatigue and imposter syndrome. While directing students on how to approach the process is a first step in minimizing gatekeeping points, it does nothing to fundamentally change the systemic bias of the process itself: this approach continues to expect our diverse SDSU student population to know where and how to look for opportunities before they know or understand that the opportunity might even exist.

Such a singular approach to cultivating undergraduate researchers is not accessible, is not culturally responsive, and is not equitable. In short, we cannot expect this approach to radically change or improve students’ level of involvement in undergraduate research, and thus the depth and richness of students' academic experiences or their ability to see and connect their academic and research lives to their cultural and community commitments, unless the invitations to participate are themselves changed. We need multiple points of entry, complementary efforts, and a diverse array of invitations.

Why a Research Hub in the Cultural Centers?

Considering all this, we are steadfast in our belief that promoting academic excellence and research for ALL of our undergraduate students requires that we fundamentally remediate how the invitations to participate in research occur, are structured, and are messaged. Equity demands that we be responsive to the realities and cultural needs of our students; not that we expect them to navigate culturally alienating gatekeeping barriers without support, or accept a vision of research that diminishes community and cultural life. These remain unrealized imperatives as we consider how undergraduate research is present on campus.

We believe in a community-cultural wealth approach to supporting undergraduate research. This means creating new systems and networks for introducing historically underrepresented, first-generation, and students of color to research as an academic and community that builds from and resonates with their strengths and commitments. It means following the literature recommendation to relocate entry points for research to accessible, unconventional settings like our Cultural Identity centers. It means reshaping how we think about the relationality of research mentorship, and how invitations to mentoring relationships around research, both with faculty and with community partners, are cultivated. And it means thinking of undergraduate research not as a space of elitism or scarcity of opportunities, but as a process of opening up more possibilities for students to participate as creators of knowledge, and historical actors, creating positive, tangible impacts in their communities through their academic efforts.

Our central goal and purpose is to be an on-campus Hub that will foster an accessible culture of humanizing, community-based undergraduate research that is culturally responsive and inviting to all students. We are confident that this innovative addition to our students’ available resources will help to integrate research into undergraduates’ cultural and community life; bridging the unfortunate divide often constructed between the academic endeavors, and the cultural/community life of the university.

Goals and Functions

The Hub exists to provide a dedicated and unique space on campus that promotes, supports, and coordinates research opportunities among students and faculty, builds faculty-community organization-student networks, and uplifts community-based research opportunities for students. Our central goal is as follows:

We aim to foster an accessible culture of humanizing, community-based undergraduate research that is culturally responsive and inviting to all students

With this goal in mind, our Hub has the following four main functions:

 

Building a Different Kind of HSI

Research indicates that substantially promoting undergraduate research requires innovative thinking; connecting research and academics to community and cultural life in more active, tangible ways, and relocating where the entry points to undergraduate research are offered. The nature of the invitation, and the institutional home of the effort, matters. Thus, we see this endeavor as a true innovation that will positively impact the campus. It is a way to link and involve the Cultural Centers, and the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Diversity, in the promotion of academic excellence and research. Not only does this support the expanded role envisaged for these units, and Strategic Plan Priorities #4 and #5, but it also works to actively disrupt the unnecessary cartesian split that too often exists between academics and student life.

Moreover, as an action research hub, we have the potential to challenge what counts as research, allowing students to understand themselves as knowledge creators and leaders beyond the confines of the lab or classroom, and value research as an applied tool with meaning and relevance to their community interests and cultural commitments. By promoting not just excellence in undergraduate research, but research as an integral component of cultural and community life, we will be positioned to embody the President’s goal of being a new kind of R1 university (Priority #1), with an innovative and future-driven understanding of what research can be, and what the role of the university might become. Ultimately, we see this project as a way for the Latinx Resource Center to actively and intentionally support these strategic plan goals, innovate on campus, and ensure we are advocating for ALL our students to have transformative academic experiences that are embedded in and relatable to their community and cultural lives.