“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” – Aristotle

surf.jpg

As Aristotle knew (along with countess others), a surefire way to learn something is to actually do it. That’s one of the main tenets behind a major initiative launched by the college last year.

For the 15 Evergreen students chosen to participate in this groundbreaking program, the summer of 2013 was a season of doing, learning, and getting rewarded for it. These 15 individuals constituted the first cohort to benefit from the college’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, a new effort funded by the college to enhance student learning experiences and achieve another fundamental goal: advancing faculty research. The program gave selected students the opportunity to become junior research partners to more than a dozen faculty mentors whose own work moved forward as a result. And while the college provided funding for student stipends, several faculty mentors relied on professional development grants from The Evergreen State College Foundation to support their work participation.

The inaugural recipients of the SURF award landed 12-week positions working closely with faculty on a range of research projects. Each fellow devoted at least 20 hours a week to his or her assigned project and received a $3,000 stipend.During the program’s pilot, the 13 faculty/student teams took on 13 different projects inareas that included anthropology, literary arts, indigenous studies, organic chemistry, plant and marine biology, microbiology, ornithology, biogeochemistry, urban planning, 18thcentury literature, and math education.