Bridging the Intellectual Divide: Integrating Research and Education via the Vertically-Integrated Projects Program

Let's be honest… most faculty join research universities to pursue fame and fortune in research; not to teach undergraduates. Most undergraduates rarely get to know any faculty and typically have little awareness of what they and their graduate students do besides deliver boring lectures and reluctantly hold office hours. A great opportunity for bright, energetic and creative students to contribute in a meaningful way to faculty members' research projects is thus wasted. This intellectual divide thus prevents faculty and undergraduates from truly benefitting from each other. The goal of the Vertically-Integrated Projects (VIP) program is to bridge this divide. Its innovative curricular structure overcomes the atomization of education into disciplines, semesters, and courses by enabling the creation and perpetual renewal of large, multidisciplinary teams of undergraduates. Its unique project selection process results in design projects that excite and challenge undergraduates and have sufficient depth to benefit a faculty member's research effort. Two VIP projects – the eStadium and eDemocracy projects – will be used to illustrate the breadth and depth of the program. They also demonstrate the many ways that VIP projects achieve significant outcomes in: project-based learning; development, deployment and commercialization of research ideas; service learning; attraction and retention of under-represented minorities; teaching professional skills; multi-disciplinary education; curriculum integration; and encouraging undergraduates to attend graduate school.