Spreading Their Wings

Undergraduate Research in the School of Arts and Sciences

Every year, Penn undergraduates carry out research projects in fields and subjects across the arts and sciences. Research takes students beyond the classroom and teaches them how to engage multi-disciplinary perspectives or how to consult archives, plumb databases and conduct interviews to find answers to important or nagging questions. “Research makes them active learners,” says Janet Tighe, dean of freshmen. It can show undergraduates how to use critical self-awareness as a research tool in participant-observer studies, or it can help socialize them into the working world of laboratory scientists. “Graduating seniors tell us over and over again that these are the most profound and meaningful experiences of their undergraduate days,” reports College dean Dennis DeTurck. Professor Ponzy Lu takes pleasure in watching undergraduates sign on for research in the cocoon of his lab and then emerge at graduation with the wings of scientists and scholars. “Every year it’s reproducible,” he says, “but amazing.”