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What Undergraduate Research Means

Faculty discussing a project with students

Our working framework for undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity.

Undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity (URSCA) at Boise State can take many forms. It may happen in a lab, studio, archive, classroom, field site, workplace, or community setting, and it is not limited to one discipline or one kind of project.

At Boise State, URSCA refers to a mentored teaching and learning approach in which undergraduate students take part in meaningful intellectual or creative work. Students explore questions, investigate problems and root causes, create or interpret work, and share what they learn or produce with others beyond a classroom audience.

Below is Boise State’s working framework for identifying URSCA experiences across disciplines and contexts. If you are a student looking for a simpler overview, see What counts as undergraduate research?.

 

Boise State’s working definition

A Boise State URSCA experience is a mentored learning experience in which an undergraduate student:

  • Makes an original intellectual or creative contribution appropriate to the student’s level and the context of the work;
  • Uses methods, practices, or forms of inquiry appropriate to a field, profession, discipline, or community setting;
  • Receives guidance, feedback, and support from a mentor;
  • Shares the work with audiences beyond an instructor or classroom;
  • Reflects in a structured way on the process, decisions, challenges, learning, ethics, or next steps related to the experience.

These features matter more than the label attached to the experience. As long as these core features are present, an URSCA project can be introductory or advanced, course-based or co-curricular, short-term or extended.

What counts?

What can URSCA include?

At Boise State, URSCA may include:

  • A student joining a faculty-led or community-engaged research team, contributing to design, data, or interpretation, and presenting results publicly.
  • A course-based project in which students investigate a question, analyze evidence or data, or create original work for an audience beyond the course.
  • A capstone, thesis, design, or performance project that includes mentored inquiry, public sharing, and reflection.
  • A studio, archive, field, lab, or applied professional project in which a student contributes meaningfully and learns through guided practice.
  • An entrepreneurship or innovation project in which a student investigates a need or problem, uses evidence-based inquiry, develops and tests a concept, and publicly shares findings or proposed solutions.

Because Boise State values scholarship across disciplines, URSCA can include discovery, integration, application, and practitioner-related inquiry where appropriate.

What does not automatically count?

Not every valuable learning experience is URSCA. For example:

  • A student who follows a fixed procedure and submits work only to an instructor may be doing important coursework, but not necessarily URSCA.
  • A service-learning, internship, or study abroad experience may be highly valuable, but it is considered URSCA only when it includes mentored inquiry or creative work, meaningful student contribution, appropriate methods or practice, public sharing, and reflection.
  • An internship or campus job in a startup or business does not count as URSCA when the student only completes assigned tasks without engaging in mentored inquiry, original analysis or design decisions, public sharing, or structured reflection.

Our goal is not to narrow the definition too much, but to provide clarity about what makes an experience part of Boise State’s URSCA ecosystem.