Undergraduate research is a high impact practice that cultivates intellectual independence, maturity, and deep learning. For human rights educators tasked with teaching challenging curricula while also attempting to maintain their own research agendas, linking faculty research to undergraduate projects provides student benefits (including higher retention and professional socialization) while extending the reach of human rights education (HRE) and scholarship. And yet, supervising independent student research or collaborating with students on human rights research holds many challenges—particularly for educators carrying heavy teaching loads (often with minimal human rights content) and/or strict expectations about discipline-specific research productivity. As a sociologist at Webster University, for instance, I am often required to offer courses that fill general education or academic program requirements, leaving me limited space to focus specifically on HRE. As a professor at a teaching-focused university, I recognize that pairing my research with teaching would be advantageous for myself, as well as for my undergraduates. As a result, I engage in human rights-based, faculty–student collaborative research that privileges effective teaching, as well as generating new data for publication and sustained scholarship. By including human rights content in my disciplinary courses and collaborative research , I provide more HRE opportunities while moving my research agenda forward—and, hopefully, inspiring and training student researchers in the process.

I have become a devoted advocate of collaborative faculty–student research at my own institution, playing a central role in the creation of our Research Across Disciplines (RAD) undergraduate conference, as well as creating research-driven study abroad experiences to countries such as Ghana and Thailand. Using these experiences as case studies, I argue in this chapter that faculty–student research collaboration offers vast opportunities for HRE training, mentoring, and scholarship that can benefit educators, students, and our institutions more broadly. Certainly these collaborations require the investment of time (for providing student training and offering feedback, for instance), as well as negotiations with university administration to sustain these forms of research (by offering grants and conference support, for example, as well as creating structures to make such coursework possible for undergraduates). Yet the ongoing success of Webster’s RAD Conference highlights students’ enthusiasm for undertaking (and sharing) research, as well as the incredible potential there for supporting high-quality research. Facilitating study abroad courses—including a Summer 2017 trip to Ghana where I taught “Global Social Problems” and collaborated on research projects related to LGBT rights—further support my assertion that innovative strategies can lead to positive learning and research outcomes. In this chapter, I therefore make the case for faculty–student collaborative research as a tool for effective HRE. I outline the benefits of these collaborations to both students and faculty, as well as offer strategies for incorporating student collaborators and garnering institutional support for these endeavors.

Collaborative Research and HRE

HRE and collaborative research have the power to transform individuals and societies to create a more just world—but this potential is not without significant challenges. Navigating the difficult terrain of human rights can be daunting for even the most committed and interested undergraduate students, never mind the apathetic ones. Elizabeth L. Paul (2006) writes that she is “increasingly concerned about contemporary undergraduate students’ civic apathy and disconnection from the ‘outside’ world. Undergraduate students’ struggles with finding meaning in the research process seem to be symptomatic of a bigger disconnect between personal action and understanding how action can make a difference” (12). Yet I argue that students who work alongside faculty members on collaborative research projects can deepen their learning experience and possibly escape the disengagement that may thwart their peers. HRE is particularly well-suited to this task, since it centers on real-world issues with very significant consequences. Indeed, the goal of HRE is to ensure that students learn about “peace, non-discrimination , equality, justice, non-violence , tolerance and respect for human dignity” (World Programme for Human Rights Education, n.d.). The intention is to empower disenfranchised individuals; through learning about fundamental rights and freedoms, students can more effectively influence their own lives and affect social change. Notably, experiential learning can be instrumental in facilitating such a transformation. By allowing students to become immersed in the literature and research of human rights with the intent of producing new knowledge in the field, they learn deeply about their own rights and responsibilities—and also the rights of others, particularly when those rights have been or are being denied.

I witnessed this process during a Summer 2017 research trip to Ghana, which intentionally centered on collaborative faculty–student research as a strategy for effective HRE. Ten undergraduate students traveled with me to West Africa for a two-month research trip, combining coursework (including my “Global Social Problems” class, which was infused with human rights law and policy) with rights-centered research. Some students collaborated with me on my existing research agenda, which centers on LGBT rights around the world. Others designed their own research projects based on human rights and social justice issues in Ghana. (Evelyn Whitehead, who is featured in Chapter 11, presented a research poster on “How the Patriarchal System Within Ghana Affects Women’s Access to Food” at the December 2017 RAD Conference. Students Joy Kuhlo and Alexis Pettay offered a poster on “Causes of Differential Treatment toward Individuals with Mental Disabilities in Ghana,” while student Olivia Potter made an oral presentation on statelessness in West Africa. See Webster University 2017.) The study abroad experience also included rights-related excursions, including a trip to Elmina Castle—one of the most significant stops in the Atlantic slave trade (Emerson 2017). As a result of this trip, students gained a much deeper understanding of the human rights situation in Ghana, past and present, and their experiences were far more enriching than traditional study abroad alone.

Data show that collaborative research provides conditions to facilitate learning and meaningful scholarship—but careful planning is the key. In a history research project that paired students with history faculty mentors, for instance, “students recognized more effective learning through out-of-classroom experiences with the professor” (Johnson and Harreld 2012, 370). In that case, students had regular debriefing meetings with their faculty mentor and had the opportunity to reflect on both the process of research and the content. My students in the Ghana program had similar experiences; we met weekly to discuss the research process , providing students with guidance on scholarly sources and research design. Having this kind of structured and collaborative engagement requires faculty to become invested not only in the students’ learning, but also in their research progress and development. I was deeply invested in my students’ understanding of the material because I needed them to fully grasp the literature; they needed to recognize when they were contributing new knowledge to the field, rather than simply reviewing existing research. Syllabi, assignments, and assessments provide vital opportunities to sequence and guide students through a collaborative research project. For the Ghana program, for instance, I created a syllabus that was quite broad but provided students with a structure to guide the research process during our time in-country. (Although my students focused on research rather than service learning , I believe that such guidance can also overcome the limitations of that approach; students who take on community service projects around the world require guidance to fully understand the significance of their experiences. See Paul 2006, 12–13.)

My experience establishing—and consequently, regularly attending—RAD Conferences also reinforce my commitment to faculty–student collaborative research . I helped establish RAD in 2015, during my time as an Associate Dean in our College of Arts and Sciences. Sponsored by Academic Affairs and coordinated with the help of faculty mentors, the conference stresses the benefits of collaborative research and encourages its use throughout the university and across disciplines. The conference—originally semi-annual, but now an annual event—features presentations of student research that includes oral presentations, posters, and creative displays. The Spring 2017 RAD Conference, for instance, featured 72 graduate and undergraduate students representing 16 academic departments from four schools/colleges; seven presenters teleconferenced in to participate from five of Webster’s international campuses. In December of that same year, as noted above, my students were able to connect their research experiences in Ghana by presenting their work at the conference for an audience of classmates, faculty, and community members. The full experience of seeing their research through from start to finish—in this case, by presenting at the RAD Conference—provides students with the skills, knowledge, and motivation to pursue future research and to engage in meaningful HRE.

The Potential of Faculty–Student Collaboration

Benefits to Students

The scholarship on undergraduate research documents many benefits to students, including “tolerance for obstacles faced in the research process , how knowledge is constructed, independence, increased self-confidence, and a readiness for more demanding research” (Lopatto 2010, 27–28). Learning the process of research and pursuing an original object of inquiry helps students hone skills of analytic and logical thinking (Ishiyama 2002) and develop or focus areas of interest. Like independent research experiences, collaborative faculty–student research allows students to cultivate intellectual independence (Elgren and Hensel 2006), and is also linked to student retention (Nagda et al. 1998). By engaging in undergraduate research —and thus producing new knowledge, instead of merely regurgitating course material—students learn that coursework is not simply esoterica, but rather can impact the “real world.” Working collaboratively on a human rights research project (or on an independent project with the close mentorship of a faculty member) facilitates this kind of deep learning and knowledge transfer to real-world problems.

Students most likely have experience collaborating with other students to complete a course assignment, but they often do not benefit from true collaboration during their undergraduate studies. In fact, group course assignments frequently create antipathy toward collaboration, largely due to the “free rider problem”; if students feel like they work much harder than other members of the group, they may be reluctant to engage in collaborative work again. However, when projects are truly collaborative and students must rely on each other to solve a particular problem, they may experience deep learning and have more positive feelings about the subject matter (Shibley and Zimmaro 2002). The key for faculty collaborators is to ensure that students are integral to the process. When students are equally invested in the research, they are likely to be more engaged. Moreover, the provision of guidance, oversight, and accountability from a faculty member may help avoid free riders when multiple students work together.

Indeed, effective mentoring creates conditions where faculty and students work together to address new and confusing problems, which may have deeply transformative effects for students. Mentoring makes the research process explicit for students and should include clear instructions on conducting research, as well as regular feedback on the student’s progress in an environment designed to support and hold students accountable (Johnson and Harreld 2012, 362). In their discussion of democratic and collaborative learning environments, for instance, Lynne E. Anderson and John Carta-Falsa (2002) note that “some degree of joint planning , consulting on how to make such activities work, and a willingness to cooperate with each other seemed to be critical to their success” (135). While it may be tempting to include undergraduates in only the most menial tasks, genuine mentoring includes students at every stage of the research project—from the conceptualization of the idea, to the background research and theoretical work, to data collection and analysis (Weimer 2006). Including students as genuine partners in research provides them with a mentor on how to “fail forward”; students experience how confusing and disjointed the research process is and watch as faculty overcome the usual (to us) obstacles, unexpected findings, and inevitable failures. They learn that research is not linear and that failure, confusion, recovery, and adjustment are part of the process. With a faculty collaborator, students have a role model who has (hopefully) learned to deal productively with disappointment and rejection and who has developed strategies to overcome such obstacles.

Benefits to Faculty

Students are not the only ones who benefit when they collaborate on human rights research projects in class or outside of class. “Long-term, sustainable models that cultivate effective student-faculty collaborations take advantage of the natural synergistic relationship between two primary objectives: ensuring good student learning outcomes and advancing the research agenda of the faculty mentor” (Elgren and Hensel 2006, 5). When faculty members incorporate students as genuine collaborators, their human rights research agenda can be furthered in many ways. Yet while it offers significant advantages for students, undergraduate research can be time-consuming and distracting for faculty—and “[t]his interference is particularly problematic as faculty scholarship criteria are increasingly emphasized for tenure and promotion” (Cooley et al. 2008, 464). The pressure for increased scholarly productivity affects faculty at teaching-oriented universities, like mine, as well as those at research-intensive universities. As a result, creating undergraduate research structures that benefit faculty as much as they benefit students is vitally important.

The collaborative (or team) model is more common in the physical and natural sciences, where students (at least at the graduate level) and faculty regularly collaborate on research projects. This model is gaining some traction in the social sciences, particularly psychology , but a collaborative model for research in the humanities is quite uncommon. As a result, many faculty members may not be familiar with how to incorporate student researchers—or may see little value in doing so. Addressing an audience of anthropologists, Luke Eric Lassiter (2008) contends that “many academics…still seem suspicious of collaborative research approaches: while it can be theoretically appealing to many, in practice collaborative research still seems to pose, for some, a threat to academic privilege, authority, and control” (80). For academics attracted to the profession (at least in part) because it is imbued with privilege, authority, and control, this concern is not trivial. While relinquishing control over a research project may initially inhibit some faculty from engaging in collaborative research with undergraduates, creating the conditions for “cognitive apprenticeship,” where faculty work with students to solve real research problems, embodies the very best of teaching:

Collaborative research speaks to some of our most fundamental educational objectives by providing a personalized education, exemplifying engaged pedagogy , and promoting students’ intellectual independence and maturation…These relationships are particularly important at a time when undergraduates are seemingly more disengaged in their education and rarely interact with faculty members outside of the classroom. (Elgren and Hensel 2006, 4; see also Farmer et al. 1992)

Although faculty may be reluctant to relinquish control over their research projects, educators invested in the learner-centered classroom have already done just that. In fact, faculty familiar with radically democratic teaching processes such as Donald Finkel’s (2000) “teaching with your mouth shut” have the background to transition easily to collaborative research . Democratic teaching practices ask students to become active participants in their own education and require faculty to listen, consult, and guide students toward deeper understanding of the material. It is noteworthy that teaching and researching in this collaborative way requires openness and active listening to ensure that students actually learn the material. In my collaborative research projects and in my classes, I have to pay attention to students’ nonverbal behavior—to what they are saying or writing as much as how they are saying or writing it—and to the confusion students may be hiding with their silence or their bravado. Traditional assessment mechanisms, through course exams and written papers, do not allow faculty to gain real-time information about the effectiveness of their learning environments. Traditional assessment is important, but it measures a different aspect of the learning process. Because faculty collaborating with students have a stake in their students’ ability to master the content, they are likely to adjust teaching methods and create new structures for learning because their own research is on the line. The result is a more rewarding experience for both faculty and students. For me, not only did my Ghana-based research project expand in unexpected ways, but I had the opportunity to watch students become more engaged learners because of this experience.

Additionally, human rights researchers often have a deep commitment to social justice and the transformative power of research and education. By engaging in the ambiguous and messy process of collaborative research , faculty embody the “underlying spirit…of working, learning, and moving toward positive social change together” (Wali 2006, 6). Students learn, first-hand, how difficult developing, answering, and applying a research question to a human rights problem can be. At the same time, they learn how rewarding and important original research is in their own lives and in the lives of people around the world. Collaborative, active learning processes that link abstract educational experiences to actual events in students’ lives may result in learning that is more internalized and applicable to real-life situations (Hopkinson and Hogg 2004). My students in the Ghana program, for instance, reflected regularly on what they read and observed there and how those experiences compared to their lives in the United States. One well-traveled (and law school-bound) international relations major noted the stark contrast between poverty she witnessed in Ghana and the amenities she enjoyed on campus. “It made me angry at wealth,” she said. “It made me angry at the system. I felt so undeserving of all the great things we got to do” (Emerson 2017, para 11–13).

Finally, including student collaborators may help keep research and writing at the forefront of faculty responsibilities. Given the increasing expectations for publishing, even among faculty at teaching-oriented institutions, incorporating student collaborators may help educators remain engaged in scholarship. Teaching and service obligations can consume all available time, even for faculty at research-intensive universities; incorporating student collaborators into the research process provides a built-in accountability structure. While it may be easier to neglect our writing routine when we are the only ones responsible for the output, having students involved evokes my sense of responsibility to teach students and to help them get a finished project on their CV.

Incorporating Student Collaborators

Even when faculty see the benefit of collaborative research and are willing to cede some control over their research, they may not know how to incorporate students into their research projects. As Anderson and Carta-Falsa (2002) point out, “[i]n spite of the potential value of more collaborative modes of teaching, such teaching modes may not be mentioned because they are not well understood by many teachers. Faculty may need to see discipline-specific models for student-faculty collaboration to appreciate its value” (137). Therefore, it is imperative to outline strategies and approaches for incorporating student collaborators into human rights research.

For students and faculty to accrue the full benefits of collaborative research , the collaboration should strive for conditions of equality. Although faculty may initially assume more concrete teaching and mentoring roles, the ultimate goal should be for both faculty and students to become more like peers on the project, with students assuming increasingly more responsibility (Paul 2009, 198). For students to become true partners in the research process , they must do more than data entry or other menial tasks; students must participate in the preparation and collection of data, including conducting interviews, observations, archival research, data analysis, and so on. Faculty–student collaboration should include identifying the research question or problem, articulating the methodology or plan of research, conducting the research project, and disseminating the results (Dotterer 2002). Faculty can accomplish these goals in many ways, including “research internships ” or other individualized research mentorship experiences, curricular offerings emphasizing or requiring research skill acquisition, or course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs ).

Often, faculty considering student research collaborators think of the “research internship ” model, where a highly motivated and competent student self-selects (or is selected) to work on a faculty member’s project outside of the class. If the student is familiar with the content area through coursework, faculty can spend less time getting the student oriented to the content and more time training them on the faculty member’s research quirks and processes. Similarly, faculty may select students who exhibit potential to accomplish high-level research. In this case, faculty may have to invest more time in getting students up-to-speed on the content area, but should be able to spend less time explaining research design. I have had both great successes and great failures with this model. Students who seek out additional research experiences outside of the class are highly motivated and, together, we can accomplish great work. However, these students are often engaged in a variety of other activities and may underestimate the kind of commitment necessary to conduct original research. My successful experiences usually include a frank discussion about what is necessary to conduct original research.

Because students may not have the research skills necessary to engage in original research projects, faculty might use course-based research training to help students acquire research skills necessary for collaboration by, for instance, requiring introductory-level classes that cover research methodologies and processes, or incorporating course assignments that require students to engage with one or more stages of the research process . In some cases, course-based experiences may lead directly to collaboration (Rowlett et al. 2012, 15). The most typical example of this strategy is requiring students to walk through the entire research process by building a robust research proposal (for example, in a research methods class). Faculty can also build an undergraduate thesis into their curriculum, which would ideally require students to accumulate research skills throughout their coursework and allow students to demonstrate their ability to conduct original research over time. (Webster University requires a “Senior Overview” thesis in its human rights program, for instance. These research papers are published in the December issue of Righting Wrongs: A Journal of Human Rights; the journal opens its May issue to undergraduates around the world regardless of institutional affiliation.) Requiring a senior thesis may entail longer-term changes, as faculty must re-design courses throughout the curriculum to develop research skills throughout students’ educational career.

Another route is to require all students to engage in original course-based research projects. These CUREs (course-based undergraduate research experiences) include all students in a particular class, regardless of their previous research experience or aptitude. In a genuine course-based undergraduate research experience, neither students nor faculty know the outcome of the course-based object of inquiry (Auchincloss et al. 2014). Ideally, faculty will offer a course in their human rights-related research area and have a sense of what topics have not yet been researched. This will allow students to create independent projects perhaps related to a smaller subsection of the faculty member’s area of expertise or to collaborate with the faculty member, leading to peer-reviewed journal publications. The Ghana program was built around such a model; students enrolled in my “Social Problems” class and selected a research project related to social justice issues. Students could design their own research project or work on my LGBT human rights research project. Courses like this can be structured to introduce the literature driving the project and the methods used to conduct the faculty member’s research. For this to become a truly collaborative process, however, additional time and mentoring outside of class or after the term may be required so that students genuinely transition from mentee to peer. In Ghana, my students had additional hours outside of class and my research supervision continued into the next term in order to help students prepare research presentations at the RAD Conference.

Faculty can also design intensive summer undergraduate research experiences , which take many forms. Such programs can provide extensive discussion and training about conducting research in relevant fields, including the social sciences, philosophy, and law. A summer program can also incorporate study abroad experiences in order to bring students into the field to conduct research. Because the summer term is often shorter than fall and spring semesters, students will need considerable background or mentoring to make significant progress on an original collaborative research project—unless, of course, the summer experience is devoted to research training or students are plugged into a ready-made faculty research project. The Ghana program was designed most explicitly using this model, although it clearly included components from the models mentioned previously. Before their study abroad experience, my students proposed a research topic (or proposed what aspect of my LGBT research project they wanted to work on). The first part of the summer term was spent reviewing research design and research ethics , while the last part focused on data collection. Upon returning to campus in the fall, students analyzed their data and wrote preliminary papers for presentation at the RAD Conference. Notably, this model requires a serious investment by the faculty member—and the temptation for faculty to put their research project to the side, in support of student work, may be strong. For this reason, I recommend having an equal stake in the students’ research outcome. That is, if faculty are also on the hook for a research product, then they may be more willing to invest the kind of additional time and energy required to ensure that students are able to conduct research during the shorter summer term.

Administrative Collaborators to Facilitate Collaborative Research

The institutional support of academic administration and other support units can create long-term, sustainable structures for collaborative research to deepen HRE, further faculty research agendas, and enhance student learning. Such institutional structures can transform not just students and faculty, but the institution as a whole. Judith A. Ramaley (2002) opens her chapter on institutional academic culture and transformational change with this radical call:

Our institutions are changing all the time but for the most part these changes do not make a big difference, either because the results are confined to an isolated segment of the organization or because the environment is not responsive. To be considered truly transformational, the initiative must alter the culture of the institutions by changing select underlying assumptions and institutional behaviors, processes, and products; it must be deep and pervasive, affecting the whole institution; it must be intentional; and it must occur consistently over time. (59; see also Eckel et al. 2001)

The role of administrators and other institutional actors has been discussed as instrumental in facilitating long-term, sustainable collaborative research endeavors. In their national panel report for the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), for instance, Ramaley and Andrea Leskes (2002) argue that “building a culture centered on learning is the job of presidents and their senior staffs,” including mutually reinforcing curricular and cocurricular programs (34). In fact, given the “clear hierarchical models of leadership that mirror those in place in corporate, political, and ecclesiastical worlds,” senior university staff are essential in creating truly transformative experiences for students (Dotterer 2002, 87). Senior university administration (including department chairs, deans, provosts, and presidents) can contribute to deep student learning and increased faculty productivity by facilitating collaborative research . Academic administration and academic support units (including academic affairs, student affairs, and study abroad ) can support and sustain collaborative research by, for example, adjusting faculty schedules to accommodate collaborative research , introducing internal grant mechanisms, creating student research conference opportunities, offering cocurricular and extracurricular activities around collaborative research , and communicating the importance of faculty–student collaborators.

Importantly, administrators can help ensure that time dedicated to collaborative student research counts toward workload obligations, including merging teaching and research expectations. In the current model of faculty productivity expectations, teaching and research are separate endeavors. However, with student collaborators, faculty approach the research process as a mentoring and teaching endeavor (Johnson and Harreld 2012). Even if students have taken courses in research methods, faculty must invest additional time in training, mentoring, and providing feedback to their student collaborators. Faculty may need to advocate for themselves and make the argument to their department chairs, deans, or other administrators that their collaborative work should count positively toward their annual evaluations or tenure review. For some, this may mean presenting their collaborative work time as part of their teaching obligations . For others, this may mean arguing that the product of collaboration with undergraduates should carry the same weight as a solo-authored piece. In either case, it is important to review the benefits to students and faculty. In my case, discussing new ways to expand faculty research required talking with my department chair, dean, and provost to first emphasize the benefits to students and the ways that student research experiences relate to student recruitment and retention. I then secondly discussed how aligning teaching and research would also benefit my research agenda and the research agendas of other faculty members. Relatedly, administrators can seek ways to build supervision of student research experiences into faculty teaching loads. Doing so requires creative thinking about course offerings and ensuring that special research-rich topics can be offered, even though course enrollment in these specialized and demanding courses may be lower than traditional course offerings (Rowlett et al. 2012, 15). Additionally, because undergraduate research is time-consuming, faculty committed to mentoring undergraduates and incorporating them in their own research projects must have adequate time outside of teaching and service obligations . The Council on Undergraduate Research recommends considering the quantity and quality of teaching loads, when courses are scheduled, and disincentives for summer teaching to allow for more time to conduct student research (Rowlett et al. 2012).

Faculty engaged in collaborative research with students may be better able to guide students through the project to publication and dissemination if they teach multiple sections of the same course instead of multiple courses, have their course schedules arranged so that one day per week is free for collaborative research , ensure that their teaching load does not exceed nine credit hours (three classes) a term, and/or their summers are protected for research time. To accomplish these goals, administrators may need to consider faculty release time (particularly for faculty at teaching-intensive universities) or additional compensation for research mentorship . These kinds of structural incentives can create opportunities for faculty to invest more in collaborative research , instead of collaborative research becoming yet another obligation to add to the growing demands on faculty time. At my university, several of these options are in place and have allowed faculty to develop research agendas in new and interesting ways while emphasizing student learning outcomes . At the moment, we are struggling with ways to integrate these new activities into existing structures, instead of multiplying the workload. I suspect this is an ongoing challenge that many universities need to address.

Release time and course scheduling that is better aligned with collaborative research are probably the most effective ways for administrators to facilitate collaborative research . However, financial incentives can encourage faculty who have not otherwise considered collaborative research . During the summer months, administrators can incentivize faculty–student collaborative research through summer research grant funding for faculty and for students. Likewise, if faculty seek to transition from solo-authored work to faculty–student collaborative work, faculty may fear a drop in their productivity and a reduction in their ability to apply for external grants. Even if faculty recognize that this is most likely a temporary setback, such perceptions may decrease faculty willingness to engage in collaborative research . The provost at my university has engaged in this process explicitly by creating small collaborative faculty–student research grants to fund student research. Internal grants like this, and other faculty development training on incorporating undergraduate collaborators, can incentivize faculty to adapt their research agendas to incorporate student collaborators.

Such faculty development training may take the form of faculty learning communities (LCs). As A. P. McNeal (1998) eloquently states, “most of us do not adopt new teaching strategies by simply being told about them. We need to experience being taught in these ways ourselves; we need to practice, get feedback, and receive continuous support from our colleagues as we implement the changes in our classrooms” (90). Faculty learning communities can do precisely this. While faculty LCs take many forms, a learning community around faculty–student collaborative research should include readings on collaborative research and a community of support for practitioners of collaborative research to troubleshoot, support, and provide accountability for each other. Administrators can further support faculty LCs by providing funding to attend workshops and conferences not directly related to their research area, but rather related to the practice of facilitating undergraduate research .

To enable students to complete the cycle of research, administrators can establish student research conferences or student research publications, a practice that has been particularly successful at my university. Student research conferences such as Webster’s RAD Conference allow students to present their original and collaborative research in a public setting. The creation of a student research conference has created a higher profile for both independent student research and collaborative research . Informal presentation opportunities, such as research symposia, may be organized by departments or schools/colleges, as well. Each of these presentation opportunities allows students to practice the public dissemination of their work and provides them with feedback for the publication stage of the research process . To help facilitate the publication stage, administrators can support the design of student research journals (such as Webster’s undergraduate human rights journal, Righting Wrongs) or create workshops to help students navigate publishing undergraduate research . Deans, provosts, and presidents can also clearly communicate the importance of faculty–student collaborative research by highlighting new or completed projects in university newsletters or press releases.

Other academic support units could also support faculty–student collaborative research through communication efforts or by developing new programmatic opportunities. Drawing from the success of my research program in Ghana, I recommend working with the study abroad office to create international undergraduate field research opportunities. Our study abroad and global program offices helped advertise the trip and recruit students into the program, while the library helped create research guides, and the academic director at the Ghana campus helped make introductions to research-relevant organizations there. Student affairs can also be an important partner in facilitating faculty–student collaborative human rights research. For example, free or reduced cost student housing could be available for summer research programs. In fact, providing inexpensive or free summer housing and access to the library, computer labs, and food services could incentivize students to work on collaborative research projects with faculty. (This kind of incentive structure allowed students to travel with me to Ghana to conduct research; without housing and airfare assistance, most of the students in that research program would have been unable to participate.) Student affairs offices could establish extracurricular or cocurricular activities to help build a community of scholars; activities or workshops might include field trips to local sites, ethics training, in-depth methods training, presentation skills, and more. (This was another successful component of the Ghana program; in addition to research experiences related to coursework, student affairs designed extracurricular activities that helped students get a better sense of place. Since I also participated in these activities, we had opportunities to discuss how these cultural events related to our research projects.)

In sum, faculty–student collaborative research can retain students and deepen their learning, enrich the human rights research agenda of faculty, and help faculty better align teaching and research goals. Academic administration and support units can create structures to facilitate, incentivize, and sustain faculty–student collaborative research . While the challenges related to creating and sustaining these research programs should not be underestimated, strategies for effective collaboration can provide deep and rewarding experiences for faculty and students. As my experience with the RAD Conference and collaborative study abroad in Ghana have shown me, the rewards to this approach to HRE vastly outweigh its costs.