Special Issue: Undergraduate Research in Agricultural and Applied Economics

Call for Papers:

Special Issue: Undergraduate Research in Agricultural and Applied Economics

Applied Economics and Teaching Resources is calling for manuscripts related to the subject area of Experiential Learning and Research in Undergraduate Education, with a specific focus on Undergraduate Research. Submissions of Case Studies, Education Scholarship and Research, Educational Innovations and Methods, and Commentaries about structuring, supervising and funding undergraduate research opportunities are strongly encouraged. In particular, we are seeking submissions that exemplify innovative and effective approaches for:

• Developing and Implementing opportunities for undergraduate students to have a substantive research experience while an undergraduate student in an applied economics or agribusiness program of study. These could be presented as Case Studies, or as Educational Innovations and Methods articles.
• Documenting, describing and categorizing the range of potential approaches to create undergraduate research opportunities; A non-exhaustive list of examples includes departmental course-based research, summer “research intern” programs, supervised independent studies, grant-based employment, undergraduate thesis projects, and/or approaches that rely on opportunities that are external (e.g. internships) to Departments of Agricultural and Applied Economics (e.g., College-level, University-level, State or Federal governmental agencies).
• Researching and examining relative feasibility, effectiveness and enduring viability of alternative approaches to providing undergraduate research opportunities, either as analysis of a specific approach, or as comparative studies of two or more approaches, as listed in the previous bullet point.
• Designing and Assessing learning outcomes related to undergraduate research opportunities.
• Addressing issues of incentives and barriers both to instructors tasked with creating and supervising undergraduate research opportunities, and to students who have an interest in pursuing these opportunities; Considerations about diversity, equity and inclusion as dimensions of students’ access and participation in undergraduate research are encouraged.
• Collating and show-casing research outputs from undergraduate research activities, as either compilations of research or as stand-alone examples of scholarly outputs created by undergraduate students. (Note: Editors of this Special Issue will consider manuscripts and infographics authored by undergraduate students submitted for peer review and publication as articles within a section of this special issue).

We expect this special issue will be of broad interest to agricultural and applied economists, including those who are directly involved in undergraduate education, their administrators (both Department Heads and Deans), their peers with research programs who may be able to benefit from gaining insights about how to include undergraduates in their efforts, as well as grant-issuing agencies and Graduate Program Coordinators with incentives to create “pipelines” of next generation scholars.

The special issue will have a guest co-editor Dr. James Sterns (jasterns@oregonstate.edu) at Oregon State University in addition to the AETR Editor, Dr. Jason Bergtold (bergtold@ksu.edu).

Special Issue Timeline:

If you are interested in making a submission to the special issue, please submit a 300 word abstract to Dr. James Sterns (jasterns@oregonstate.edu) and Dr. Jason Bergtold (bergtold@ksu.edu) by June 30, 2023 at the latest. The abstract should describe the overall theme/topic of the manuscript, how it relates to the special issue call, and how it can be used for educational purposes. Your abstract will be reviewed once submitted and you will then be informed if you will be invited to submit a submission to the special issue.

Full papers for accepted abstracts must be submitted through AETR online by September 30, 2023. All papers will go through a double-blind peer review process and be available online via Advanced Access for readers once accepted. All submissions will need to follow the AETR submission guidelines at: https://www.aetrjournal.org/contribute/submission-guidelines. If you have questions about the special issue, please email the special issue editors.