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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 contribute to the every 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 Utah, is very much an ongoing, creative 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 not to be passive learners but to become active participants in making their education a rich and ongoing endeavor. An obvious and important way to achieve that goal is to invite our undergraduates to work with our faculty. Our faculty are engaged in a wide range of research and creative endeavors that offer our students many ways in which they may contribute to understanding the world in which they live. There are many appealing qualities to this journal of undergraduate research. It's most appealing quality, in my judgment, is the solid evidence that it provides for how much 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 |