Spring 2020 Letter from the Dean

Welcome to the 2020 Undergraduate Spring Symposium

With the worldwide spread of COVID-19, our daily routines have been temporarily disrupted and, in some cases, forever changed. However, the 2020 Undergraduate Spring Symposium still represents an opportunity for you and your fellow undergraduate students to demonstrate, display, exhibit and, most importantly, speak about what has been your normal for the past couple of months — research.

West Virginia University has a strong research tradition, as evidenced by our Carnegie classification as a top research (R1) institution. The R1 ranking belongs to only 131 of the nearly 4500 institutions of higher learning in the United States, denoting the highest level of research activity. You have joined a long list of undergraduate students at West Virginia University whose participation and involvement in research has contributed to our maintenance of this prestigious status. This is indeed an achievement you should be immensely proud of.

Current literature indicates that the benefits associated with participating in undergraduate research include, but are not limited to, refined communication skills, clearer organizational skills, a healthy sense of self-efficacy and competence, collaborative learning and problem solving (Ziwoya & Falconer, 2018; Salsman et al., 2013). Moreover, student researchers often report significant gains in their ability to think critically and logically, put ideas together and learn on their own (Pearson et al., 2017). All of these benefits are not only applicable to you in your specific discipline, but more importantly these are life skills which will go a long way in enabling you to become an individual who contributes to society immediately and throughout the course of your lives.

Berry Gordy Jr. once said, “Less than one percent of the people in the world reach their full potential — and the reason is they take their focus off what they are doing.” Use your undergraduate research experience to validate the fact that you can keep focused on what you are doing to reach and achieve your full potential.

Great work, and keep persisting.

Best regards,

Damien Clement, PhD
Acting Dean, WVU Honors College,
Associate Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology and Athletic Training