Pushing students to attack common wisdom through their research, the keynote speaker at the April 28 kickoff dinner also expressed the importance of undergraduate research.
“If you address and attack the common wisdom it makes people uncomfortable, and research is one of the ways to do that,” said Julio Rivera, a professor of management and marketing, and geology and earth science at Carthage College, and the keynote speaker. “It makes people uncomfortable, and that’s why you get the ‘yeah buts.’ ”
Magaly Rincón-Zachary, director of undergraduate research, organized the event and asked Rivera to speak in hopes of gaining insight into undergraduate research. The university paid for Rivera’s travel and an honorarium of $1,000.
“He has a lot of experience with undergraduate research within his own institution,” Zachary said. “It’s basically a learning experience for all of us. His presence here is going to leave us with something that we can use in the future.”
Rivera, a former president of the national Council on Undergraduate Research, spoke on the importance of undergraduate research and how it benefits students.
“It’s students learning about subject matter. It’s students learning about themselves. It’s students learning new skills,” Rivera said. “Undergraduate research is one of those things that is even better for students, so you grow intellectually, and you grow personally in terms of skills and personal development.”
His message and experience with undergraduate research resonated with students out of the 140 people in the audience.
“The speaker was spot on. His definition of research was pretty apt,” Dareem Antoine, economics and math senior, said. “Some of the things that he spoke about we’ve actually experienced it.”
Although undergraduate research has been proven as a beneficial tool for undergraduates, according to Rivera people are still reluctant to change teaching styles to incorporate more research, expressing their doubts with “yeah buts.”
“It’s not in our mode of teaching,” Rivera said. “Our mode of teaching for centuries has been lecturing, but one thing we’ve had learned is that students learn better when they’re actively involved in the learning process.”
According to Rivera, undergraduate research is not going away; instead it will gain more importance as time progresses.
“In the past 20 years it’s picked up speed nationwide,” Rivera said. “It’s going to be imperative that students do undergraduate research in the future.”
He added that college is supposed to help students solve problems and become better thinkers.
“Research is one of the ways to do it,” Rivera said.
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