Collaborative Research: The VIP Program - Integrating Undergraduate Design Projects and Graduate Research

该项目是乔治亚理工学院和普渡大学的合作项目，旨在开发和评估垂直整合项目（VIP），该项目支持多学科本科生团队从事设计项目，这些项目嵌入了教职员工及其研究生的研究工作。该项目正在扩大普渡大学现有的努力，并在乔治亚理工学院启动一个新项目。VIP项目的设计利用了大型、垂直整合的团队和长期的、信用的设计经验，类似于EPICS项目的设计经验。研究人员正在创建多站点的合作VIP项目，并开发和共享课程模块，使加入VIP团队的学生能够快速掌握设计项目的基础技术。评估工作由一位独立专家领导，利用学生和教师的调查和访谈以及社会网络分析来监测项目的进展。教学材料和评价结果正通过一个特定学科的网站（即ConneXions网站）、通过会议介绍和通过期刊出版物传播。更广泛的影响包括传播项目的材料和结果，特别是关于学生和教师经验和合作模式的社会网络数据，同时特别关注项目对评估研究中妇女和代表性不足的少数民族的影响。

Engineering - Other (59) The project, a collaboration between Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University, is developing and evaluating vertically-integrated projects (VIP) that support multidisciplinary teams of undergraduates working on design projects embedded in the research efforts pursued by faculty members and their graduate students. The project is expanding the existing Purdue effort and initiating a new program at Georgia Institute of Technology. The design of the VIP program utilizes large, vertically-integrated teams and long-term, for-credit, design experiences similar to those developed in the EPICS program. The investigators are creating multi-site collaborative VIP efforts and developing and sharing course modules to enable students joining VIP teams to come up to speed quickly on the technologies fundamental to their design projects. The evaluation effort, led by an independent expert, is using student and faculty surveys and interviews along with social network analysis to monitor the project's progress. Instructional materials and evaluation results are being disseminated through a discipline specific website (i. e., the ConneXions site), through conference presentation, and through journal publications. Broader impacts include the dissemination of the project's materials and results, particularly the social network data on student and faculty experiences and collaboration patterns, along with a special focus on the project's impact on women and underrepresented minorities in the evaluation study.