Institutional Statement

For Use in Grant Preparation

The Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Center (URECA)

The URECA Center is the embodiment of Wake Forest’s historic commitment to and strategic vision for intense, productive, faculty-student collaboration through scholarship. The Center provides an administrative umbrella for mentored, undergraduate scholarship and encourages and supports programs of the highest quality and far-reaching impact.

The Center’s policies, guidelines, and direction are established and overseen by an executive faculty committee that is broadly representative of the academic disciplines, departments, and programs of the undergraduate college of arts and sciences. In addition to the conduct of research and creative projects, students are encouraged to present their work at domestic and international conferences and symposia. The Center receives administrative support from the Office of the Dean of Wake Forest College.

Current examples of individual, mentored research programs under the auspices of the URECA Center include The Paul K. and Evalyn Richter Memorial Fund (primarily for research and creative inquiry outside the United States); The Wake Forest Research Fellows Program; the Atlantic Coast Conference Inter-institutional Academic Collaborative (U.S. and foreign study opportunities); and the C. V. Starr Foundation (for the presentation of research and creative inquiry in the U.S. and abroad).

Since 1996, with Wake Forest’s formal, programmatic commitment to student partnerships with our faculty, over 750 undergraduates have joined our faculty in summer and academic term research. Numerous other students have been supported in their research and creative programs through grants to individual faculty members.

The URECA Center works with WFU’s administrative offices and faculty mentors to provide training and certification for undergraduates in human subject protocols and responsible conduct of research. The Center also hosts professional training and career development workshops for students across all of the College’s academic disciplines.