Carnegie-Mellon University has been selected as one of ten recipients of the National Science Foundation's Recognition Awards for the Integration of Research and Education. The university has made cross-disciplinary problem-solving a core activity in the undergraduate curriculum and has created many mechanisms that support institution-wide implementation. A Center for Teaching Excellence and a Center for Innovation in Learning encourage and support faculty efforts to use problem solving as a vehicle for learning. In addition to course-based problem solving, an increasing number of students pursue independent research throughout their undergraduate careers through formal courses, paid work-study, senior honors programs, internships, and independent study. The university provides significant support for undergraduate research projects and organizes a student research symposium at which 200 student projects were recently presented. The university's efforts to integrate research and education were designed with specific outcomes in mind: increasing student retention in science and engineering programs; increasing the proportion of students engaged in independent research; increasing student satisfaction with their science and engineering education; and enhancing the capabilities of graduates in the workplace. The university has documented significant success in achieving these goals. The university is being awarded $500,000 with the goal of expanding, documenting, and disseminating its exemplary practices over the coming three years. Plans for the use of the award funds include: establishing a freshman seminar that introduces students to the culture of interdisciplinary problem solving; expanding support for the undergraduate research program; engaging graduate students as research mentors for undergraduates; developing new courses that use interdisciplinary problem solving; developing outcome-based assessment tools for evaluating new courses using problem solving as a core activity; developing and documenting an exportable model for teaching through interdisciplinary problem solving; and disseminating the model through workshops, conferences, a handbook, and resources made available through the World Wide Web.
