Undergraduate Field and Remote Research Education in STEM
Examines how undergraduate research experiences — including remote and field-based formats — support student learning, computational skill development, and retention in STEM fields.
Knowledge Graph (51 nodes, 228 connections)
Research Primer
Background
Undergraduate science education increasingly recognizes that students learn differently — and often more deeply — when they step outside the classroom. Field experiences are learning opportunities that take place in natural settings, ranging from single-day excursions and field laboratory courses to multi-week residential research internships at places like the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) in Gothic, Colorado. These experiences give students a chance to ask scientific questions in the messy, real conditions where ecosystems actually function: counting pollinators on a subalpine meadow, measuring stream chemistry after snowmelt, or mapping geologic outcrops in the Gunnison Basin. For students considering careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), field experiences can be transformative — but only if students can access them.
Two additional ideas matter for this area of research. The first is STEM retention, which refers to whether students who begin in science majors stay in those majors and ultimately enter scientific careers. Retention is uneven: students from groups historically underrepresented in science, first-generation college students, and community college transfers leave STEM at higher rates than their peers, often not for lack of talent but for lack of belonging, mentorship, or financial support. The second concept is computational skills — the ability to work with data, code, models, and remote-sensing tools that have become central to modern environmental science. As ecology and geoscience have grown more data-intensive, undergraduate programs face the challenge of teaching both hands-on field methods and the quantitative skills needed to make sense of the data those methods produce.
These themes matter directly for mountain ecosystems and the Gunnison Basin. Long-term ecological research at RMBL, geological work across the Piceance and Paradox Basins, and watershed studies on the Gunnison and Uncompahgre rivers all rely on a pipeline of trained young scientists. Understanding how to design effective field and remote research programs — and who gets to participate in them — shapes the future workforce that will study and steward these landscapes.
Foundational work
Much of the early scholarship feeding into this neighborhood came not from education research per se, but from field-based geoscience studies that trained generations of undergraduates in Colorado. Detailed outcrop and reservoir studies in the Piceance Basin established field sites and mentoring traditions that pulled students into authentic research: characterization of fluvial sandstone architecture in the Williams Fork Formation (Pranter et al., 2007), analysis of sandstone-body dimensions in lower coastal-plain settings (Pranter et al., 2009), and three-dimensional reservoir modeling at Rulison Field (Pranter et al., 2008) all involved teams of students working from outcrop measurements through computational modeling. Later work on static connectivity of fluvial sandstones continued this pattern of pairing field mapping with quantitative analysis (Pranter & Sommer, 2011).
Field-based studies of regional tectonics and landscape evolution provided similar training grounds. Multi-author field guides and research articles examining late Cenozoic evolution of central Colorado (Leonard et al., 2002), river incision histories of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Unaweep Canyon (Aslan et al., 2008), and Quaternary incision rates of the Uncompahgre and Gunnison Rivers (Darling et al., 2009) all reflected collaborative field projects where undergraduates contributed to substantial scientific output. Ecological field studies followed a similar model; for example, work on plant–herbivore interactions in Heracleum sphondylium showed how a focused field experiment could yield publishable results, finding that simulated herbivory reduced Hemiptera abundance on leaves (Haamen et al., 2003).
Key findings
A central insight from the most recent work is that the structure of an undergraduate research program — not just its content — determines who benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden, large-scale experiment in remote undergraduate research, and a 23-institution descriptive study of programs offered in Summer 2020 found that strong mentorship, clear professional-development opportunities, and a sense of belonging to a larger scientific community were the features students valued most (Erickson et al., 2022). The same study identified consistent weaknesses: limited cohort-building between students, insufficient programmatic structure, technology problems, and a near-absence of substantive discussion of diversity, equity, and inclusion despite stated commitments to those goals (Erickson et al., 2022).
A companion evaluation went further, asking whether remote research could actually deliver the gains that in-person experiences are known to produce. Students who completed remote programs showed meaningful increases in scientific self-efficacy — confidence in their ability to do science — comparable to gains reported from in-person research (Hess et al., 2023). Gains in scientific identity, career intentions, and perceived benefits of research appeared mainly for students who entered the program with lower levels of these traits, suggesting remote formats may be most valuable for students still forming a science identity (Hess et al., 2023). At the same time, perceived costs of doing research did not decrease, and rose for students who had started with low cost perceptions, indicating remote work introduces friction that in-person experiences do not (Hess et al., 2023).
A third strand of recent work focuses on community college students, who are systematically underrepresented in field science. A national conversation convened by the Undergraduate Field Experience Research Network found that community college populations are more diverse than those at four-year institutions — including higher proportions of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, older students, low-income students, working students, first-generation students, and student parents — and that they face distinct barriers including family and employment responsibilities, financial constraints, and limited awareness of opportunities (Robin et al., 2022). Programs that successfully engage these students share concrete features: flexible scheduling, nearby field sites, longer timelines that accommodate work and family obligations, and comprehensive support including stipends and sustained mentorship (Robin et al., 2022).
Current frontier
The temporal trajectory of this field is striking. Earlier work in the 2000s and early 2010s emphasized field-based geoscience and ecology training as a byproduct of disciplinary research, with educational outcomes largely implicit. Since 2020, attention has shifted explicitly to program design, equity, and the question of what counts as a field experience at all. The pandemic-era studies have established that remote research can produce real learning gains, but cannot fully substitute for in-person experience — particularly for cohort-building and reducing the perceived costs of a research career (Erickson et al., 2022) (Hess et al., 2023). Recent work has also pushed researchers and program leaders to think systematically about who is missing from field stations and why, especially community college students (Robin et al., 2022).
Emerging directions include hybrid models that blend remote computational work with shorter, more accessible in-person components; partnerships between research stations like RMBL and nearby community colleges; and more deliberate integration of computational skill-building so that students leave field programs prepared for data-rich careers. The University of Georgia and other institutions hosting summer programs are central to this conversation.
Open questions
Several important questions remain. How can field stations design programs that retain the demonstrated strengths of in-person research — mentorship, community, identity formation — while removing barriers for students who cannot relocate for a full summer? What hybrid structures most effectively build computational skills alongside field skills without overwhelming students? How durable are the gains in self-efficacy and scientific identity observed in remote programs once students return to their home campuses, and do they translate into long-term STEM retention? And how can research stations build sustained pipelines with community colleges so that participation is not a one-time opportunity but a continuing pathway? Answering these questions will shape who studies the Gunnison Basin in the coming decades.
References
Aslan, A., et al. (2008). River incision histories of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Unaweep Canyon. Geological Society of America eBooks. →
Darling, A. L., et al. (2009). Quaternary incision rates and drainage evolution of the Uncompahgre and Gunnison Rivers, western Colorado, as calibrated by the Lava Creek B ash. Rocky Mountain Geology. →
Erickson, O. A., et al. (2022). "How Do We Do This at a Distance?!" A Descriptive Study of Remote Undergraduate Research Programs during COVID-19. CBE Life Sciences Education. →
Hess, R. A., et al. (2023). Virtually the Same? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Remote Undergraduate Research Experiences. Life Sciences Education. →
Leonard, E. M., et al. (2002). High Plains to Rio Grande Rift: Late Cenozoic Evolution of Central Colorado. Geological Society of America eBooks. →
Pranter, M. J., & Sommer, N. K. (2011). Static connectivity of fluvial sandstones in a lower coastal-plain setting: An example from the Upper Cretaceous lower Williams Fork Formation, Piceance Basin, Colorado. AAPG Bulletin. →
Pranter, M. J., et al. (2007). Analysis and modeling of intermediate-scale reservoir heterogeneity based on a fluvial point-bar outcrop analog, Williams Fork Formation, Piceance Basin, Colorado. AAPG Bulletin. →
Pranter, M. J., et al. (2008). Characterization and 3D reservoir modelling of fluvial sandstones of the Williams Fork Formation, Rulison Field, Piceance Basin, Colorado, USA. Journal of Geophysics and Engineering. →
Pranter, M. J., et al. (2009). Sandstone-body dimensions in a lower coastal-plain depositional setting: Lower Williams Fork Formation, Coal Canyon, Piceance Basin, Colorado. AAPG Bulletin. →
Robin, B., et al. (2022). Community College Students in the Field: A review of a Community Conversation on Successful Programs and Strategies. →
The response of Heracleum sphondylium (Apiaceae) and its herbivores to simulated herbivory (2003). →
Concept (3) →
undergraduate field experiences
Student learning experiences that occur in nature, taking various forms from field laboratories to multi-day field trips and research internships
computational skills
STEM retention
Keeping students engaged and continuing in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields