Colorado State University Students Produce Internationally Recognized Undergraduate Research Journal; Spring Issue Coming May 4

Note to Reporters: Photos of Jessica Egner and Mark Brown and the cover of the latest journal are available with the news release at http://news.colostate.edu.

Colorado State University students produce one of the very few student-run undergraduate research journals in the country.

The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Excellence, now on its fourth issue with a projected May 4 release, receives international submissions as well as research articles from students at other universities throughout the country.

More than half of the submissions are from outside CSU – from out-of-state universities and even some from England, Canada and Chile. The journal also sponsors a design contest for the front cover to entice students to display their artwork in the magazine.

“We all were very surprised at how fast JUR would spread,” said JUR editor-in-chief and CSU chemistry major, Jessica Egner, who is graduating in May. “The majority of undergraduate publications only accept submissions from within the home university. They usually have a faculty person that is the editor-in-chief.

“The spring issue features undergraduate work from four different countries covering topics from Hemingway to fire regimes in South Africa, and radical art to cancer virotherapeutics,” Egner said.

The first journal, issued in fall 2010, totaled about 30 pages, including work from undergraduate students in every discipline from art to chemistry and creative writing to engineering. Since the spring 2011 issue, the journal has doubled in size.

The journal is only one small piece of the Office for Undergraduate Research and Artistry, which offers 23 formal programs for undergraduates. The office, part of The Institute for Learning and Teaching, or TILT, is meant to serve as a resource for faculty and students as well as a retention tool. The overarching goal is to provide students with real-world applications to get them more engaged in their academic curriculum and, ultimately, to make them more competitive in the workplace.

Mark Brown, director for the Office of Undergraduate Research and Artistry at CSU, helped develop JUR and now acts as an advisor and supervisor to the journal.

“It has been great working with the JUR undergraduate team,” Brown said. “JUR is one of the only student-run organizations like this in the country. They’re even registered with the Library of Congress.”

Besides the guidance of graduate and faculty advisors, JUR is an entirely student-run journal welcoming any and all submissions. Graduate students and faculty members evaluate the research.

The spring issue includes work from undergraduates at CSU and others including Emory University, Georgia; Institute of American Indian Arts, New Mexico; University of Chile, Chile; Cornell College, Iowa; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile; University of Glasgow, Scotland; and the University of Exeter, United Kingdom.

To learn more about JUR, go to http://jur.colostate.edu/index.cfm.

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