OCR Text |
Show Message from John Francis: A university education is, of course, more than an unchanging body of knowledge passed on from the faculty to the students. Education is about how we think, how we understand and interpret our changing world. An education at a research university is best understood as a shared endeavor between the faculty and the students in the pursuit of knowledge. 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. An important goal is preparing students to participate in a world that may offer challenges and opportunities very different from the ones we see today. 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 who are engaged in an impressive range of research and creative endeavors. 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 |