Interview with Carolyn Ash - Caltech Oral Histories

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Ash–19 ASH: It was moderately successful when we had that NSF money. But it also brought in students from other places—majority and minority students, from research universities, comprehensive institutions, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. They came from all kinds of places. Some of them actually became upper-class transfers. Some came to grad school here. Once you begin to have a track record, then it begins to propel itself. People then begin to understand it. [Tape ends] http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Ash_C
Ash–20 CAROLYN ASH SESSION 2 December 1, 2003 Begin Tape 2, Side 1 COHEN: Good morning, Carolyn. It’s good to see you. Last time we stopped just as you became director of SURF. But there may have been a few other things you wanted to mention that you’ve thought of since that interview. ASH: Well, what I was thinking about was to say something about the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research. In 1987 the University of North Carolina at Asheville decided to host a national conference on undergraduate research, and they put out a call for papers to all colleges and universities in the country. They expected they would get maybe a hundred students from within a 500-mile radius of Ashville, and they ended up with about 500 students from all over the country. It was the first time that people had gotten together and realized how much undergraduate research was actually being done at colleges and universities around the country. Of course, SURF was pretty well established by that time. In almost all the other cases, it was students working informally with faculty members who attended that conference. A national board was put together to oversee the conference, and Fred Shair was a member. Undergraduate research, from that point began to emerge nationally as an important aspect of part of undergraduate education. It became much more widely recognized. As I said, SURF was well established by that time. MIT’s program was ten years older than SURF. They call it Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, UROP. It’s a very different kind of program from SURF. COHEN: How many students did MIT serve? ASH: At that time, I don’t know. At this time, they serve about 1,800 students a year. They are all MIT students—as opposed to SURF, where lots of outside students participate. The students at MIT can walk in on their first day and get what they call a research position—and it may be doing some pretty routine lab assistance. So it’s just a very different model from SURF. We http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Ash_C
Page 1 and 2: CAROLYN ASH (b. 1944) INTERVIEWED B
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Page 27 and 28: Ash-24 COHEN: By now you have becom
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Page 33 and 34: Ash-30 COHEN: Just to make it more
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Page 37 and 38: Ash-34 ASH: It was different work.
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Page 43 and 44: Ash-40 a work plan before they begi
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Interview with Carolyn Ash - Caltech Oral Histories

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