The Impact of a Neuro-Engineering Research Experience for Undergraduates Site on Students’ Attitudes toward and Pursuit of Graduate Studies

The benefits of undergraduate research programs have been well documented and are generally accepted within the engineering education community. Various survey instruments and metrics have been used to gauge the effectiveness of individual programs and undergraduate research programs in general. The current paper is a summary of an examination of the effectiveness of a three year NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates site focusing on Neuroengineering. Since one of the goals of this REU site, and all undergraduate research programs at our University, is to encourage students to continue their education at the graduate level, the Attitudes Toward Graduate Studies Survey (AGSS) was developed to measure changes in students’ opinions about graduate school and their plans to pursue or not pursue graduate studies as a result of participating in an undergraduate research program. The survey has been validated and used for several years, both at this university and several other universities. The survey is administered pre-post, at the beginning and end of each undergraduate research program. Pre-post responses from students who participated in the Neuro-Engineering REU site over the last three years are compared to other measures, including program follow-up with students after their research experience and the nationally-available Undergraduate Research Student SelfAssessment (URSSA) survey, to identify areas of similarity and difference of results. A followup version of the AGSS survey was used with all students who participated over the last three years to gauge the longer term impacts of the program; for example, do students get a job in industry right away? Do they go straight to graduate school? Do they consider returning to graduate school if they work in industry? Additional post-graduation tracking is implemented to supplement the results of the follow-up survey.