Curriculum and Research at UMass- Amherst

crowlady
Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:52:03 +0000

I cannot speak from experience at UMass but through affiliation with four medium to large research universities as undergraduate, grad student, or staff. You should not expect to be offered research opportunities at any level, but if you seek them out you can participate in research as early as your freshman year. Professors will have active research programs – read their webpages and scholarly articles and approach those whose work interests you. Ask how you can get involved. If you want to do independent research for credit in your major that is likely to be listed in the catalog. There is an office staffed to help you find research opportunities: http://www.umass.edu/ours/ and a lot of special opportunities and funding for honors students (https://www.honors.umass.edu/research). When people say “research” for a university, they always mean original research. I’ve never heard of universities encouraging people to copy experiments from the internet – unless you are trying to replicate a controversial result.