Links to Sub-Pages:

Director of Undergraduate Research

DUR Resource Page

Empiricus Journal

In the 2006-07 academic year, the collaborative research between Psychology, SLU administration, and Social Work  sparked a larger collaborative research initiative, which will build capacity to conduct research for students and faculty on main campus, at the centers, and online. Products of the collaborative research initiative include thus far a book (published through Kendall/Hunt by Drs. Jose Coll, Roger Park, and me), the journal Empiricus (the Sunshine Journal for Collaborative Undergraduate Research), changes to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, and creation of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). To support the collaborative research initiative, the psychology department funded a position for Director of Undergraduate Research from its flagship budget. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Committee at Saint Leo has agreed to support the Collaborative Research Initiative, the Office of Assessment & Institutional Research has been a great help, and the Research Club (to be created in fall of 2010) will be a strong student-led component.

Recently, I was very pleased to team up with Dr. Kathleen DeSousa of Pasco Hernando Community College and Dr. Leilani Goodmon of Florida Southern College to bring the Collaborative Research Initiative to a much wider audience. Our psychology clubs, as well as our faculty, will be collaborating on sponsored events and research projects. Internally, the CRI is gaining ever more ground, as psychology is now in active collaboration with both criminal justice and business on multiple projects. It promises to grow even more in the fall of 2010, when the Empiricus becomes a true Sunshine-State Conference undergraduate research journal. I will be reaching out to all other Sunshine State Conference Schools to both recruit journal editors and encourage student submissions of both empirical research articles and student cover art.