Abstract

Undergraduate research ideally gives students a chance to participate in scientific inquiry the way science is actually practiced. However, while science has grown increasingly collaborative, undergraduate research often remains largely confined to single institution studies. Collaborative research networks can unite faculty and undergraduates from different institutions in work on broader scale questions using shared protocols and shared data. To this end, in 2010, we co-established the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN), which unites ecological researchers at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). Although collaborative research networks like EREN offer PUI faculty and students increased research opportunities, there are also significant challenges to successfully coordinating and implementing these projects, including the fact that projects may not fit easily into a single semester. One on-going EREN project led here at Carthage is our Decomposition in Terrestrial and Aquatic Invaded Systems (DATIS) project, a multi-year examination of leaf decomposition rates from native and non-native species across a gradient of sites. Decomposition is a good case study because it is a long-term process that integrates many processes in an ecosystem. Here, we report challenges encountered, as well as strategies used to counter these challenges.