This SGER award to the College of Engineering (CoE) and the Division of Professional Practice (DPP) at the University of Cincinnati (UC) will to establish an Undergraduate Research Cooperative Education program modeled on their highly ranked industrial co-op program. This program will demonstrate the benefit of adapting the existing industrial co-operative education model as a way to incorporate research into undergraduate education. (intellectual merit). The result will be an increase in the number of students who are knowledgeable about research and have completed an active research experience, 6 to 18 months in duration, prior to receiving their bachelor's degree. The long term result of this effort will be an increase in the number of individuals pursuing graduate research studies and a more informed electorate. This will contribute to building a stronger cadre of research engineers and increase the global competitiveness of the US work force. The effort will have three goals. These are to: 1) increase the interest and number of undergraduate students pursuing research careers, 2) develop co-op positions in laboratories that do cutting edge peer reviewed research that provide training to undergraduates and further develop their interest in research careers, and 3) assess the impact of our program on choices made by participating students.
