UB Initiative To Provide Unique Experiences For Students, Research Services To WNY Companies And Not-For-Profits

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Deborah K. W. Walters, Ph.D., and Joseph A. Gardella, Jr., Ph.D., of the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) have been awarded a $150,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to develop a community-linked interdisciplinary research (CLIR) program for undergraduate students at UB.

Walters is associate professor of computer science at UB and associate dean for undergraduate education in the CAS. Gardella, professor of chemistry, is the associate dean for external affairs. They say UB will match the Hewlett Foundation grant, making a total of $300,000 available to fund the new initiative.

When fully implemented, the program will involve most UB undergraduates in multi-semester, interdisciplinary research activities.

Projects will be developed and conducted under the direction of both UB faculty members and the personnel of for-profit and not-for-profit corporations and agencies in Western New York. They will be designed to enhance undergraduate learning and benefit the research needs of a broad range of community groups.

Participating for-profit corporations that will benefit from the service will be charged a fee that will be used to cover the cost of the program.

The UB program is one of 10 being funded this year by the Hewlett Foundation through an initiative designed to enhance general-education programs at research universities. While UB offers a number of research-based courses on the undergraduate level, the Hewlett grant will permit the development of many more such programs and ultimately, the involvement of several thousand undergraduates.

Walters and Gardella say the UB program has other benefits as well. It will allow participating faculty members to spend more time supervising student research without increasing their own workload.

And it can serve is a recruitment tool.

"We know from past experience that active learning through real-world research has always enriched the education of participating students, regardless of which school or departments sponsor the project," Walters says.

While community-based research programs conducted through the UB professional schools, such as the Graduate School of Education and schools of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Social Work and Architecture and Planning, may be more familiar to the public, the humanities departments at UB also sponsor such projects, Walters points out.

For example, she cites environmental audits conducted on behalf of community entities by the CAS Interdisciplinary Program in the Social Sciences, as well as the history department's industrial heritage and oral-history projects that collect and catalogue primary historical research materials.

Moreover, programs in the areas of anthropology, geology and archaeology "have explored the physical and cultural history of our region, ascertained the importance of our physical artifacts, our geology and geography, and applied current science in ways that have assisted community entities from police departments and native tribal groups to preservationist and environmental organizations," she says.

"These programs deeply enrich the educational experience of many UB students and, we hope, will encourage more students to enroll in research universities like ours, which are the only institutions of higher education able to offer programs of this kind."

Gardella notes that one project already being planned involves UB students' assisting in the development of Buffalo.com, the Web site of The Buffalo News. Another idea that has been proposed, Walters says, involves a vast collection of stereotypical Civil War images held in the collection of the former Viewmaster Corp., now owned by Fisher Price.

"These need to be made available for use by historians, art historians and media artists, among others, and this offers our students an important object lesson in identifying and cataloguing primary historical research materials.

"The classics department," she adds, "is interested in its students helping to assess and catalogue the Roman art holdings of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society and the suggestions have just begun to come in.

"These research projects will not the same as internships, and we need to clarify that point," Walters stresses. "They will be supervised research programs attached to specific undergraduate courses."

Members of the community are invited to suggest projects to the CLIR team by email. Write "CLIR Project Proposal" in the subject line and send ideas to walters@buffalo.edu or gardella@acsu.buffalo.edu.