Taking the Easy Way In: Leveraging Applied Learning Into Scholarly Contributions

This paper presents a rationale, justification, and practical guidelines for working with select undergraduate students to efficiently leverage their applied experiences into scholarly contributions. A review of the literature indicates that a) graduate programs heavily weight undergraduate research in the selection process, but that b) research opportunities are not equitably distributed among students, and furthermore, c) traditional research experience is not a very good predictor of graduate school success anyway. By capitalizing on existing applied activities, faculty can help a more diverse range of students bolster their curriculum vita, without stretching the student (or ourselves) too thin. This paper offers practical guidelines that have been successfully implemented in an undergraduate university setting with a dedicated applied learning mission.