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Show A MESSAGE FROM JOHN FRANCIS An education is far more than the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another. A university education is built on the expectation that faculty and students both contribute to the constantly changing and expanding body of knowledge. An education at a research university is best understood as a shared endeavor between the faculty and the students in learning more about ourselves and the world around us. It is an education that builds on the foundations of past scholarship in preparing students to contribute to future knowledge. Education, at the University of Utah, is very much an ongoing, active process that integrates research and creative endeavors within and outside the classroom. Over the course of a program of study at our university, we want our students to be not passive learners but active participants in making their education a rich and continually engaging enterprise. An obvious and important way to achieve this goal is to invite our undergraduates to work with our faculty. Our faculty engage in a wide range of research and creative projects that offer our students many ways in which they may contribute to our understanding of the world in which they live. Similarly, the students themselves pursue many projects which can benefit from faculty guidance to become valuable additions to our body of knowledge. There are many appealing qualities to this journal of undergraduate research. Its most appealing quality, in my judgment, is the solid evidence that it provides of the great amount our undergraduates can achieve when we invite them to join the community of scholars. This scholarly community is, after all, the very essence of a research university. John Francis Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Studies |