The Role of Undergraduate Research in CS: Great Beginnings Mark Guzdial Associate Professor College of Computing/GVU Georgia Institute of Technology

Story The American University system was designed for an integration of research and education. Over 100+ years, these have become more separate. Undergraduate research today serves to re- integrate education and research. With all the benefits originally imagined. Undergraduate research provides Great Beginnings To launch graduate careers To launch new research directions

Larry Cuban, “How the Scholars Trumped the Teachers” History of Stanford (with references to other land-grant universities) from Describes how the American University model was created and evolved (and got stuck)

British + German = American The American University system was designed to be a merger. The British College, focusing on undergraduate education The German Research University, focusing on development and innovation.

1890’s: Starting the Experiment No standardized curricula Each department offered the courses that they wished Courses of study developed individually Each student had an advisor for weekly meetings To integrate and understand Research was meant to inspire and contextualize studies For both students and faculty

Then came students Then came more and more students Student:faculty ratios reached 24:1 University explored ways of forcing interaction Note: Tenure was based on research accomplishment By 1920’s: Standardized curricula

Role of Undergraduate Research To improve learning for the student Just as envisioned: Inspiration and motivation Experience, not just memorization Access to faculty To create Great Beginnings For the student For the research

Example 1: James Hays Started undergraduate research with Irfan Essa on non-photorealistic rendering, applied to movies

James Hays, Ph.D. student Studying at CMU SIGGRAPH publications (multiple)

Example 2: Adam Wilson Loved Squeak ( Wanted to do more, so worked on media tools for our Introduction to Media Computation class

Adam Wilson, MS Student Developing collaborative music library for music researchers Library stores metadata Description URL to source Collaborators add index terms of their interest Anyone can search on anyone else’s terms

Example 3: JES In January 2003, we were to teach a new kind of introductory Computing course to 120 students in Jython (Java implementation of Python). In June 2002, there was no existing IDE for Jython.

Developing JES JES (Jython Environment for Students) was originally written by a team of four students as part of their Senior Design project. In a summer semester: Only 11 weeks long. Delivered the first prototype in only six weeks! The basic design has remained the same for the last two years.

Building on the Initial JES Several other students have worked on JES as part of senior research or design projects. Integrating MediaTools into JES Supporting all WAV formats Improving error messages Adding support for MIDI Current team incorporating Bugzilla and CVS It is literally the heart of the course, and we wouldn’t have been able to do the course development without it.

Conclusion: Undergraduate Research is a Huge Win Students gain insight into their learning and understand why it’s important. As the integration of research and teaching was meant to be. It can launch graduate careers. Faculty gain leverage on hard problems, and can launch new research directions.