Confronting Failure: Building Confidence and Resilience in Undergraduate Researchers

Abstract

In this open-access book, authors from a range of disciplines—from geosciences to drama—capture how failure manifests and can be productively supported in a range of undergraduate research experiences. Whether the learning environment is a STEM research lab, a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), a humanities summer undergraduate research experience, a library, or the stage, students can benefit from support when they experience a gap between an expected/desired result and their lived experience. These perspectives and disciplinary contexts address failure from different vantage points and lenses, with the common focal point of nurturing undergraduate success through leveraging failure as an opportunity to build confidence and resilience. Represented are different institutional types, classroom and non-classroom environments, and programmatic and individual efforts.

Adjusting to Your Surroundings: An Inquiry-Based Learning Module to Teach Principles of Mechanobiology for Regenerative Medicine

“…Importantly, scientific literacy is a skill that students must continually develop throughout their scientific careers. To do so, undergraduate students should complete multiple guided modules, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURES) [ 61 – 63 ], and eventually transition to independent research projects outside the classroom. In doing so, they will continually develop their scientific literacy skills and prepare themselves for careers as scientific leaders.…”