The Affinity Research Group Model

Undergraduate research is a well-known approach to integrate knowledge and provide practice of the skills critical to business, industry, and government, in particular, refinement of cognitive and interpersonal skills, enhancement of personal growth, and inculcation of intellectual and management habits. While a common practice is to recruit and involve the most visibly successful students, this results in lowering the number of promising students who can benefit from research experiences. To extend the research experience to a broader range of students, particularly students from under-represented groups, UTEP successfully developed and implemented the Affinity Research Group (ARG) model that provides students with opportunities to learn, use, and integrate the knowledge and skills that are required for research with those required for cooperative work. The model creates an integrated research environment in which a collective of diverse students and faculty contribute to the research effort. The three core components are: the definition of a group’s core ideology; active fostering of student connectedness; and application of deliberate management practices that reinforce skills development and promote establishment of cooperative teams. Through the ARG model, faculty mentors create and sustain a cooperative environment that explicitly develops skills to make students successful in research, academe, and the workforce. As a result, students and faculty, in particular those from underrepresented groups, can reach higher levels of productivity and achievement. Through CCLI funding and IEEE-Computer Society Seed funding, the investigators have published an ARG handbook (www.computer.org/arg), and they deliver workshops on the model.