Preparing Undergraduates for Scholarship: Small Steps You Can Take in Your Classes

New faculty members may be overloaded and stressed trying to meet expectations for teaching and scholarship and looking for ways to make their workload more manageable. One resource for scholarship is undergraduates, however some may have little experience in scholarship but would enjoy working with a faculty member on research and publications. There are small steps that new faculty can take in their classes that will help students be better prepared for scholarship. For example, conversion of a class project report from a generic format to a journal paper format introduces students to a logical and structured way of presenting information coupled with a process of multiple revisions. Results of using such an approach in a third year technical class are presented. The students’ efforts resulted in a professional-looking paper and a sense of pride in the final product.