Dive Brief:
- The University of Maryland wants to get more undergraduate students involved in complex research projects — and much earlier in their collegiate careers. The main campus admits roughly 600 freshmen each year into its First-Year Innovation and Research Experience (FIRE) program with the hopes of providing intense, high-quality research opportunities to students who may not have otherwise gotten involved because of their disciplines or simply not knowing how to seek out such opportunities.
- Students opt-in to the program and select from a range of study areas that span topics in the softer sciences and humanities, like addiction science, animal and human relationships, African-American digital humanities, as well as the harder sciences, like engineering biosensors, deep brain neurotech and antibiotic resistance. Director Patrick Killion and his team do not seek out the top incoming students, but rather hope to promote the opportunity for all learners to conduct multi-disciplinary research, especially those from diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds.
- Each research stream is led by one faculty leader and one research educator, the latter being an individual who often has advanced degrees, but whose full-time responsibility is to the program. Students are permitted to schedule lab time in between their other commitments and obligations, rather than the traditional structure that requires a set lab period.
Dive Insight:
Mentorship is a key component of the program, which goes for the first three semesters of a student's time on campus. Many students who finish the program return as peer mentors for the next cohort; this not only helps the new group by having students who might be more relatable than the professor to ask questions and seek guidance, but also reinforces the lessons the mentors learned and gives them an opportunity to stay connected to the ongoing research they began.
One program at UMD, the Capital One Machine Learning program, comes with the corporate backing and involvement of Capital One as a corporate partner, which not only helps provide additional funds for the program, but promotes a closer relationship between the bank and the institution. For Capital One, the primary objective is to get involved early with students it may want to hire and make sure those students have the skills and capabilities the company needs, a trend that is growing as many large companies take a more hands-on approach to the development of future employees.
For Killion and the university, there is an additional value-add to being able to tout such relationships to prospective students, and he hopes the model of sponsored research streams and close interaction with corporate partners is one the department is able to grow.