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  • Our faculty is well-known for its standing in the world of research. SIU is home to numerous successful research specialists.
  • REACH (Research-Enriched Academic Excellence Challenge) provides a competitive year-long grant for undergraduate students to work on an independent project with a faculty mentor.
  • Diverse programs allows for a wide variety of research and creative activities, opening up doors for students working in fields outside of the traditional research-oriented disciplines.

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Hi, I'm Alli Campbell, and I'm majoring in Computer Engineering. And I'm from Clarksville, Tennessee. So our CURCA Office, which is Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities-- they're like the hub for all the undergraduate research on campus.

And it's really great because if you don't really know what you want to research, but you really want to go with the professor and do some kind of work, you just go to them. And they really help you out and get you connected with a professor on campus who's doing some really neat research. And so a lot of students take part in that, even starting their Freshman year.

Hey, my name is Austin Weigle. I study Plant Biology, and I'm from Kennebunk, Maine. And REACH Grant is a competitive application process to receive school funding for an undergraduate research project. It's a year long. They give you around $1,500 for a project, and it's a great experience. I'd say that was my biggest step into research. And it was a big motivating factor for me to decide that I would like to pursue a research career.

So you do not necessarily have to be involved in research related to the hard sciences. You don't have to be in a laboratory to be doing research. And that goes back to the idea that there are other fields beyond hard science that need new ideas or even creative activities. So that can include something such as glass blowing or metal smithing that goes beyond your traditional idea of what research is. It's about involving the student in an activity that generates interest and connects them with the world and the systems that they're involved with.

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Research & Creative Activities