One
by one, the imposing metal doors whirred to life, slid open, then
clicked shut behind him. Opening . . . then closing. Opening .
. . then closing. Twenty doors. The process seemed to go on forever.
With each step, Drew Haase was moving farther away from life
as he knew it and inching closer to the innermost core of Virginia's
death row.
He'd already been processed, questioned, patted down and thoroughly
searched. Guards eyed him carefully as he made his way past the
exercise yards amid the curious, hardened stares of inmates to
the concrete slab that housed the cells of the state's condemned
prisoners.
What on earth was a nice guy from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, doing
there?
"It was a very nontraditional Notre Dame experience for sure,"
Haase says. "I had never been to a jail or anything like that,
and now I was going to what they call a super-max facility."
A senior majoring in political science and philosophy, Haase
found himself on the business side of those prison doors last
fall through his participation in Notre Dame's Washington Program,
which takes students to the nation's capital for coursework and
extensive internships in a variety of political and cultural fields.
He's one of some 40 undergraduates who, over the course of five-and-a-half
years, opted to work for the Washington law firm that handled
the post-conviction case of death row inmate Robin Lovitt, sentenced
in 1999 to die for murdering a man with a pair of scissors.
Program director Tom Kellenberg initiated the collaboration
by contacting the firm's managing partner, who happens to be a
Notre Dame alum. The students "interviewed witnesses and jurors,
monitored news reports and drafted various statements," he says.
"Later they worked on legal issues, actually doing research on
evidence destruction and DNA testing, as well as Virginia's death
penalty system and problems with Lovitt's original trial."
Haase was one of four students working with attorneys on the
case when their efforts culminated in Lovitt receiving clemency
from then Govenor Mark R. Warner. The Virginia governor, who was
uneasy about the destruction of DNA evidence, commuted Lovitt's
death sentence to life in prison without parole.
For senior Ryan Finlen, who also was on board that fateful semester,
the gravity of the experience remains. "In a small way, I helped
get a guy off death row."
And he couldn't have done that in a classroom.
A University priority
Exactly the point of engaging undergraduates in research, according
to University leaders, who are making it a top priority to get
more students involved. The latest figures indicate roughly 10
percent of Notre Dame undergraduates are participating in research
for academic credit. Numbers compiled by the Provost's Office
reflect a slight increase between the 2004 and 2005 fall semesters,
from around 850 to just over 900 students, which is a hopeful
start, according to Dennis Jacobs, vice president and associate
provost.
"We have a growing enterprise on this campus," he says. "As
a research university, we have opportunities to offer a very distinctive
kind of educational experience to our undergraduates. More specifically,
as a Catholic research university we do, and we ought to take
full advantage of what those opportunities are."
Jacobs says it's time to shed some light on the serious research
students are conducting before collecting their diplomas. His
definition of research? Students "independently studying and pursuing
a line of inquiry at the frontier of a discipline." In other words,
making their own discoveries.
"We want our students to be creators of knowledge and not just
consumers of knowledge," he says. "Students say their studies
come to life when they are pursuing a question that's their own
and not something that was laid out in a textbook or presented
by a faculty member, but something that they are truly engaged
in and interested in and want to understand."
Cultivating intellectual curiosity is hardly a new concept in
higher education, even on the undergraduate level. What is emerging
as a relatively new trend, however, is the big push for such efforts
at Notre Dame and elsewhere.
In fact, in his September 2005 inaugural address, Father John
Jenkins, CSC, laid out his expectation that participation in this
type of experiential learning should "double, and double again,"
and that "students should stand on the edge of what is known and
push forward into the unknown."
Many academics cite as a main catalyst for the movement the
1998 release of a national study known as the Boyer Report that
urged universities to "make research-based learning the standard."
Not everyone warmed up to the idea right away, however, according
to Mark Roche, dean of the College of Arts and Letters.
"I have spoken with peers at other universities who have had
a difficult time getting some of their most senior scholars to
really work with undergrads in research," Roche says. "That is
not a problem at Notre Dame because we've always
had this culture and ethos of investing in student learning, and
we've never given that up even as we've added the research component."
Roche doesn't have to look far for an example of how the University
is embracing the idea. His college boasts what many consider the
crown jewel of Notre Dame's endeavors in the area -- the Undergraduate
Research Opportunity Program (UROP), which provides individual
and team grants and summer fellowships for student-initiated projects.
Topics run the gamut -- Panamanian ecotourism, Indian child serfs,
mating habits of cotton-top tamarin monkeys and Irish music are
a few recent highlights.
Student projects
Senior Anna Nussbaum was one of some 20 students who embarked
on UROP projects last summer. With her grant she researched and
wrote The Primrose Path, a play she created as an alternative
to the controversial The Vagina Monologues, performances
of which have stirred great debate on campus in recent years.
Nussbaum's research involved interviews with more than 80 people
about sexuality and faith, "Everyone from my parish priest to
ex-boyfriends to a transsexual I met at a movie theater," she
says. The Primrose Path made its campus debut in February.
"I don't think I would have had the courage to write a play
unless I had that kind of structure and academic support," says
Nussbaum, who now plans to pursue writing as a career.
Senior Peter Quaranto used his UROP grant to investigate and
illuminate the plight of child soldiers in war-torn Uganda.
"I was in shock, blown away by how victimized these children
were," he recalls. "While I was conducting interviews, doing research
and experiencing the war-torn area, I sensed a need for international
advocacy to bring the situation to the attention of the world
community."
When Quaranto returned to Notre Dame, he and another student
created just such a vehicle, the Uganda Conflict Action Network,
an advocacy and lobbying organization that works toward an end
to the country's nearly two-decades old war.
Freedom to blaze their own trails and topics that inspire creativity
are major draws of UROP, according to Gretchen Reydams-Schils,
director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts,
which facilitates the program. "It's very much about empowering
undergraduates as responsible, intellectual, moral agents," she
says.
UROP's popularity has skyrocketed since its inception in 1993;
last academic year, 103 students participated and more than $145,000
in grants was awarded. Reydams-Schils credits the surge in large
part to word-of-mouth advertising from students who are encouraging
their peers to catch the research wave.
Beyond the desire to produce a more enlightened, culturally
aware student, Notre Dame's move toward undergraduate research
also is strongly rooted in the desire for more students to pursue
doctoral degrees, to put a "Notre Dame stamp on higher education,"
say Roche, who laments a "more modest number" of students going
on for their Ph.D.s here than at other institutions.
"Teaching is a noble profession in a way that our undergraduates
tend to underestimate," he says. "We think our students have the
right moral formation, and they should be faculty members at other
universities. It adds to the prestige and standing of Notre Dame."
Administrators say the benefits don't stop there. In theory,
undergrads who participate in research also are more likely and
stronger candidates for prestigious fellowships, such as the Fulbright.
Leaders also see research opportunities as recruiting tools for
bright, inquisitive potential students.
UROP is a prime example of what many consider a new wave of
creativity-driven research, largely in the humanities -- a step
away from the more traditional, scientific discoveries that might
take place in a lab. That, however, does not mean those enterprises
are anything less than flourishing at Notre Dame.
Mitchell Wayne, associate dean of the College of Science, says
he was thrilled to hear Jenkins' call to step up undergraduate
research. The college already offers research opportunities to
"any student who wants one," he says, and the majority of traditional
majors do participate on some level, with enthusiastic support
from the faculty.
"Many of us got our start that way, so we're more than happy
to help our students get their start as well," Wayne says, adding
that the college will seek ways to maximize its efforts in light
of the directive from the top.
Mendoza's challenge
While the University's aim is to promote undergraduate research
in all academic disciplines, the Mendoza College of Business does
present a particular challenge. With no Ph.D. program and the
overwhelming majority of students dead-set on professional careers
and maybe an MBA, Associate Dean William Nichols says
the college faces substantial obstacles in furthering the administration's
agenda.
"If motivation for undergraduate research is to improve critical
thinking and discovery skills, we do that," he says. "But if the
motivation is to get students to go on to pursue an academic career,
we don't do that as much."
Mendoza is far from alone in this regard among business colleges,
and Nichols predicts a "huge shortfall" of faculty in business
in coming years as a result.
A handful of Mendoza faculty members, including Elizabeth Moore,
an associate marketing professor, do engage undergraduates in
hands-on research. Her experiences, including co-authoring a paper
with one student, have been largely positive, she says, but the
complexity of many topics brings limitations.
"If I were doing a quantitative model, for example, I don't
know how much undergraduates could do," Moore says. "But there
are pieces of the project that I can give to them, and they'll
do a terrific job."
The research movement, however, does raise eyebrows among some
Notre Dame constituents, who have long questioned the compatibility
of the University's quest to become a top research institution
and its mission to educate undergraduates. Jacobs, however, says
the experience of undergraduate research itself is the strongest
argument to counter that point.
"For the hundreds and hundreds of students who are engaged in
this, I think we'll all agree that it wouldn't have happened if
Notre Dame didn't have serious research taking place, if it weren't
a part of our mission and our campus life," he says.
Roche also points out that Teacher and Course Evaluations are
higher now than 10 years ago, before Notre Dame began its major
drive into research. "That's clear, empirical evidence that, at
least from the students' perspective, the quality of teaching
has not been diminished, it's improved," he says.
Notre Dame still has a ways to go before it can join the ranks
of leading institutions such as Princeton, which requires every
student to complete a research project for a senior thesis, and
Duke, which has a research course requirement built into its curriculum.
But campus leaders believe Notre Dame is poised to become a serious
player.
The first step in that direction consists largely of exploring
ways to best measure, showcase and boost student involvement,
with a short-term goal of doubling the current level of participation
to around 20 percent. Jacobs' office is developing a student survey
to get a handle on exactly what projects are taking place. A new
University website (undergradresearch.nd.edu) is already on-line,
listing opportunities for internships and fellowships by academic
department. A web-based repository to display the end results
of undergraduate projects -- from papers and presentations to
artwork, film and video -- is set to launch this spring, the same
time an on-campus Research and Creativity Fair also is planned.
For students who have taken the research path, the appreciation
of the experience is invariably similar, whether their projects
took them to the library, the zoo, Africa or maximum security.
"It was the most hands-on experience that anyone's ever offered,"
says Ryan Finlen of his death-case work. "It's amazing the opportunities
that were afforded me through Notre Dame."
* * *
Julie Flory is an assistant director in the Notre Dame Office
of News and Information.
(April 2006)
