Research
A commitment to undergraduate research
Passion for research: It's the defining factor of a UNH education and it is exactly what you will see at the Undergraduate Research Conference. The URC is an annual reflection of the remarkable work taking place each day between motivated undergraduates and active faculty researchers here at UNH.
This student-faculty collaboration is the backbone of the UNH experience. It begins in the classroom with research-intensive coursework, but exists everywhere across campus and beyond. Look around and you’ll find undergraduates in faculty labs, teaming up with their teachers to find solutions that benefit society. You’ll see them in UNH’s many living labs such as the greenhouses, the farms, and the New England Center; or at one of more than 40 centers and institutes dedicated to studying a wide range of issues, where undergraduates conduct research alongside experts in their fields.
One way these undergraduate-faculty relationships are developed is through UNH’s Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research, which provides students with the opportunity to make research and creative explorations a more formal part of their academic experience. Each semester, dozens of students from varied academic disciplines apply for grants and fellowships from the center's Undergraduate and International Research Opportunities Programs (UROP and IROP). The funds enable them to embark on their own projects, just as professional researchers do, and requires the same elements, from proposal to budget to research to report. Many of the students presenting here this week conducted their research using UROP and IROP grants.
The students you will meet at URC are searching for rare frogs in New Zealand rainforests, composing their own music, building a hovercraft, and growing fluorescent flowers. This direct participation in meaningful research is one of the unique characteristics of a UNH education, where students, together with faculty, are pushing back the frontiers of knowledge.
