Students TalkingThe Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program is designed to facilitate long-term research involving large teams of faculty/staff members and students. The students gain valuable research skills and academic credit through their participation, and faculty are able to scale up their research through the framework provided by VIP.

VIP is an established program with sites at universities all around the world

Key characteristics of VIP teams include the following:

  • They are large, often involving multiple faculty and staff members, 10-20 undergraduates, multiple graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, community or organizational partners, etc. Beginning projects may start smaller than this and scale up over time. 

  • They are interdisciplinary, involving multiple perspectives to solve big problems. The interdisciplinary perspective often comes from the recruitment of students from diverse majors. The interdisciplinarity may also come from having faculty investigators from diverse disciplines.

  • They are based in faculty research interests, which allows teams to thrive for several years and helps advance the scholarly agendas of KSU's faculty members. Faculty bring their expertise and enthusiasm to their VIP teams.lab-notebook

  • They are aimed at big issues in the discipline(s). Consider just a few examples from VIP programs at other institutions: 

We are excited to be a part of this initiative, and we invite you explore more at this website. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact the Office of Undergraduate Research at our@kennesaw.edu.

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