By CFC Faculty Fellow Chad Hallyburton, Environmental Health Sciences
I absolutely hated high school.
As an undergraduate student, I spent some semesters just “phoning it in.”
But when I arrived at WCU as a graduate student, the creativity and independence of original research ignited my passion for learning, and I haven’t looked back since. I sometimes wonder what my academic career would have looked like if I’d discovered research earlier, and that makes me want to give my students an early start with scholarship.
This is important, because early involvement in undergrad research is a high-impact practice that improves scientific skills, critical thinking, and problem solving, and makes students more employable by fostering their time management, teamwork, and communication skills.
Undergrad research students are better prepared for their degree work, for graduate school, for their future careers, and for life.
But too few students get involved. I see my own Undergraduate Research Student Partners grow and flourish, but often only the “best and brightest” show up at my door looking for opportunities, and often only later in their undergraduate careers.
So, during the Fall 2025 semester I developed and evaluated a curriculum engaging first-year seminar students who conducted an applied Public Health project.
They collected and analyzed data on low flu vaccination rates among our first-year WCU students, described barriers to vaccination in this population, and worked with the Division of Student Affairs to share social media and print messaging encouraging student vaccination. They described the reach and impact of their messages and developed poster presentations with their suggestions for how WCU could more effectively support students’ vaccine decision-making.
After completing this Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience, or CURE for short, science process confidence grew in over 80% of the class, many identified as potential future scientists, and about two-thirds said they were more interested in finding future undergrad research opportunities.
Was this project perfect? Did it include all the elements of undergraduate research that students might experience working in an advanced research lab? Absolutely not. But it was a first step towards showing the newest members of our WCU community that scholarship is within their reach.
Many of you already support undergraduate research. If you try to engage more students earlier in their careers, will your efforts be perfect? Nope. But you can surely do something good.
If you need some inspiration, here are a few good resources to get you going: