Equalizing Access to Research Experiences: How Three Community Colleges Beat the Odds to Build Large, Successful, and Sustainable Undergraduate Research Programs

A raft of research has affirmed the efficacy of undergraduate research as a best practice for improving student outcomes at community colleges (Hensel, 2021; Nerio et al., 2019; Swanik et al., 2023). Yet in spite of these impressive outcomes, UR remains rare at community colleges. A small number of institutions, however, have implemented UR successfully (Awong-Taylor et al., 2016; Hensel, 2021; Petersen, 2021), but few studies have examined how and why these programs have grown to become so successful. This presentation will report the results of a qualitative multiple case study that explored the implementation processes of successful UR programs at three geographically diverse community colleges. Findings indicated that these three institutions sustained their UR programs through faculty-led administration, support from system-level administrators, and cost-containment strategies specific to the community college context. Participants will hear a brief synopsis of the study’s findings. Then, drawing on participatory action research, attendees will be led through an engaging interactive exploration of the study’s anonymized data set, with attendees drawing their own insights from the data collection to inform future studies.