Center for Student Research and Scholarly Engagement

MISSION
The Center for Student Research and Scholarly Engagement (CSRSE) helps Grand Valley students and alumni identify, explore, and pursue individualized opportunities outside the classroom that connect with, clarify, and deepen their intellectual interests and career plans.  

Our Approach 

We provide programs, opportunities for engagement, tools and resources, and advising services. We build these pathways by: 

• Curating a tailored experience for academic and professional growth. 
• Informing and enriching our professional knowledge and understanding through continual learning and critical engagement. 
• Creating collaborative connections with colleagues across divisions and professional roles. 
• Focusing on the shared goal of student agency, well-being, and thriving as we support research, applications for competitive fellowships, and other high-impact practices that deepen and expand student engagement with their own learning. 
• Elevating narratives of success that capture the diverse ways students and alumni reach their academic and professional goals. 

VISION
CSRSE is a dynamic, collaborative center that elevates and supports opportunities for research and intellectual engagement through which students and alumni transform their lives, communities, and the world. 

VALUES
Compassion 

We are committed to embodying a culture of compassion and empathy, fostering connection in all our interactions with students, colleagues, and the broader GVSU and local community. We are dedicated to nurturing personal and collective growth through acts of kindness and caring. We view learning, collaboration, and challenges alike as opportunities to strengthen our bonds and enrich our community. 

Collaboration 

We promote a culture of collaboration built on trust, creativity, and appreciation of differences in our identities, histories, and ways of knowing. We nurture partnerships within the center, across the University, and in the community at large, believing that collaboration, resource-sharing, and reciprocity are the paths to effective and efficient cooperation. 

Inclusion 

We welcome all into this space. Inclusion is at the core of our programs, services, and professional practice. We intentionally engage with and understand differences in pace, strength, and ability, and we work together to move forward and nurture personal and collective growth. 

Adaptability 

We share an expectation of curiosity and a willingness to learn, grow, and enrich lives through meaningful experiences. We are committed to being proactive about changes to the student body, institution, and community, so that we can meet the evolving needs of our students, faculty, staff, and communities. 

Courage 

We recognize that vulnerability and uncertainty are inherent to our work. We take risks, make mistakes, and keep learning. We strive to foster an expectation that learning will be met with respect and curiosity.

In Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding my Place in the Universe, Dr. Aomawa Shields describes her experience of research as an undergraduate student: "It didn't matter where I did the research. It didn't even really matter what the research was. I was energized by all of it. ... What mattered was how much I learned that I didn't know before, and someone taking the time to teach me that new thing. It's what I have to remember when I'm too busy to mentor an undergraduate because they don't know much yet and need lots of time and attention. Someone--many people--gave that to me once. My world, my very universe, kept getting bigger and bigger. Research became more a part of me with every project."

We take as a touchstone William Cronon's landmark essay, "'Only Connect...': The Goals of a Liberal Education." -

"More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways. Every one of the qualities I have described here—listening, reading, talking, writing, puzzle solving, truth seeking, seeing through other people's eyes, leading, working in a community—is finally about connecting. A liberal education is about gaining the power and the wisdom, the generosity and the freedom to connect." ~William Cronon

"We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old "teaching versus research" debate and give the familiar and honorable term "scholarship" a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work. Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research. But the work of the scholar also means stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively... Specifically, we conclude that the work of the professoriate might be thought of as having four separate, yet overlapping, functions. These are: the scholarship of discovery; the scholarship of integration; the scholarship of application; and the scholarship of teaching (p. 16)."

~Ernest Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered (1990),