Undergraduate research in American higher education is one of the fastest growing phenomena among scholars. In this context, David Lopatto’s book Science in Solution: The Impact of Undergraduate Research on Student Learning (2010) is an important resource in undergraduate research literature for students, faculty, and researchers in the field. Lopatto offers research-based evidence of personal and professional value of undergraduate research, and he explains ways in which he has engaged his students in scientific activities.

The book is organized into seven chapters, each chapter entwining elements and themes of undergraduate research in a liner consequence with past literature, research frameworks, and results of current research. Each chapter includes data and findings from the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience survey that the author administered to more than 10,000 student participants from 150 American colleges and universities. He also presents several illustrations of research findings that come from his 2003 summer undergraduate research and teaching.

Chapter 1 deals with the historical context of undergraduate research from the early 1990s to 2010 in American colleges and universities. Lopatto lists a number of restraining forces in undergraduate science research such as elite groups of society controlling mass education, shortage of scientist in research, scientific surplus, and emphasis on teaching instead of research. The author also examines a shift in the undergraduate research paradigm in which educators now acknowledge the value of conducting cutting-edge research in their institutions. In this book, Lopatto mentions that “an undergraduate research experience contains the potential for a rich and multifaceted interaction between student scholar and faculty mentor” (p. 8). Along with the establishments of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) and the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), the author sees a shift in the traditional dichotomy between the professional roles of teaching and research not only in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce but also in other disciplines.

http://blogs.elon.edu/purm/2012/04/02/book-review-purm-1-2/