Office for Student Research Created

Scholarly journal also launched

California Lutheran University has created an Office for Undergraduate Research (OUR) to coordinate, highlight and increase student investigations.

Directed by Michele LeBlanc, Ph.D., the new office is working to provide additional project funding, disseminate results and place students in research-based internships. Two new student grant programs that support undergraduate research were announced in October. Details about the Small Grants Program and the Undergraduate Professional Presentation Travel Grants are available at www.callutheran.edu/our.

The office, which also organizes workshops and discussion groups to help students carry out their projects and to help faculty integrate more investigations into their classes, will coordinate CLU's annual Festival of Scholars, a spring series of public presentations and performances that showcase the research and achievements of students and faculty.

In a separate research venture, CLU faculty helped launch the Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, an online peer-reviewed publication promoting scholarly student investigation of psychology, sociology, political sciences and gender studies throughout the world.

Psychology professor Rainer Diriwächter, Ph.D., is the editor of the new journal. The editorial board includes more than 40 scholars from throughout the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Scotland, Serbia and Switzerland.