Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year 2009
College of Natural Resources

Gene Schupp has been intimately involved in promoting undergraduate research for most of his more than 16 years at USU. He was the lead author of a successful proposal to the CNR Dean’s Council to use Quinney Foundation funds to create a College of Natural Resources Undergraduate Research and Travel Grants Program to facilitate independent undergraduate research and to promote undergraduate participation in professional meetings. While the Research Grants were modeled after the university-wide URCO program, the Travel Grants were innovative; the CNR program, instituted before a similar program was introduced at the university level, has helped students present the results of their independent research at regional and national meetings for more than a decade. Gene has been the director of the grants program since its inception and in this role he has tirelessly advocated the value of student research as an educational tool, including giving annual presentations on undergraduate research in the College and in individual classes. In addition, Gene has had more than 30 USU undergraduates gain research experience working on his and his graduate students’ research projects. His philosophy has always been that these undergraduates are not merely technicians, but rather are junior colleagues, and that the experience is not simply employment, but an opportunity to learn about the process of research. For example, students are not simply taught what to do, but also why they are doing it: the hypothesis being tested, the experimental design used to test the hypothesis, the interpretation of the results, and more. Lastly, Gene has mentored four independent undergraduate research projects from conception of the idea through development of a research design, collection and analysis of the data, interpretation of results, and writing of the final report. Three of these projects resulted in presentations at regional or national professional meetings, one has produced a peer-reviewed publication, and one is in the final stages of manuscript preparation for submission to an international journal.