Building and Sustaining a Successful Undergraduate Research Program

The multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research (UR) program initiated about ten years ago continues to be one of the institutional priorities at the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse (UW-L). While, UR program has boosted overall student retention at UW-L, the physics program has very definitely experienced a phenomenal growth in the number of majors (from 5 to 130) and external grants (over a million dollars) in the last few years. In no uncertain terms, this kind of growth is attributed to the nurturing environment of the department and faculty mentored research with undergraduate students. This presentation will focus on various elements, shared responsibility, and resources that are critical to initiating and building a sustainable UR program in physics but even more importantly how to institutionalize it. We shall further discuss our overall experiences from the modest beginnings to our continuous growth.