CASTL Leadership Program for Undergraduate Research

The University of Notre Dame is pleased to have been selected as an Undergraduate Research Leadership Site affiliated with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Campus Program.

Participation in this national program is part of the University of Notre Dame’s multi-faceted effort to engage undergraduate students in research.

The National CASTL Program Promotes the “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (SoTL)

SoTL may be defined as faculty members, departments, or other groups, who are not necessarily education researchers, turning an inquiring and systematic gaze upon classroom and institutional learning environments, seeking to answer their own questions about student learning and then sharing their findings with others, either formally or informally, creating what Mary Huber and Pat Hutchings of the Foundation have called the “teaching commons.”

Find out more at carnegiefoundation.org and issotl.org.

h3. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Undergraduate Research

SoTL is the systematic collection of data about student learning and the factors that affect it, so as to help Notre Dame support undergraduate research in the most effective and efficient way. It means that we do not involve undergraduates in research just because it’s the fad or because we somehow surmise that certain ways of doing undergraduate research are effective, but that we gather information about what/how students are learning from undergraduate research and what factors influence their learning. SoTL helps answer questions such as:

  • Are our efforts in undergraduate research working as we hope?
  • What factors are most powerful in student learning from involvement in research?
  • What are best practices for guiding undergraduate research?

    h3. Mission of the CASTL Undergraduate Research Program at Notre Dame
  • Serve as liaison to the national CASTL program
  • Suggest how SoTL can be an integral and strong part of ND’s efforts to enhance undergraduate research

Notre Dame’s SoTL Steering Committee

  • Cecilia Lucero (chair), Assistant Director for Undergraduate Research, Office of Research
  • Mary Beckman, Associate Director of the Center for Social Concern
  • Jay Brockman, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
  • Mark Gunty, Assistant Director of the Office of Institutional Research
  • Agustin Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology
  • Michelle Whaley, Associate Professional Specialist, Biological Sciences

The committee reports to Dennis Jacobs, Vice President and Associate Provost