One such opportunity is Rensselaer’s Undergraduate Research Program, which provides students with hands-on research experience. Through this unique opportunity, students work with Rensselaer professors on projects such as nanostructure synthesis of energy materials, fuel cells, and electrode coating development. Work on such projects provides students with the capacity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom to real life problems, solutions to which can lead to future patents or careers. Students in the program gain critical leadership, team-building, and thinking skills. Rensselaer also provides a 10-week competitive program­—the Summer Undergraduate Research Program—where students need to submit applications with research proposals.

Other research opportunities include the Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software, where undergraduates with a stipend write open source software to benefit society around the world. Project themes include safer neighborhoods, disaster recovery, childhood learning, and handicapped access.

Hejela also spoke of Rensselaer’s increasing efforts to conjoin research and study abroad opportunities. Research Internship in Science of the Environments is such a summer internship program for undergraduate students from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, and engineering. It offers unique opportunities for undergraduate students to work with research groups at universities and top research institutions across Germany for a period of one-and-a-half to three months during the summer. RISE interns are matched with doctoral students whom they assist and who serve as their mentors.