Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C.-Susan Larson, Professor and Director of Undergraduate Research and National Fellowships and the Credo Honors Program at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, has been elected to serve as the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) President for 2016-2017. CUR, with its over 700 institutional members and more than 10,000 individual members, supports faculty and student development for high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship.
For more than the last decade Susan Larson has been an active member of CUR. Her past volunteer work with CUR as a Division of Psychology Councilor and Chair, as well as her co-leadership of the preparation of CUR’s Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (COEUR) document, signify the wealth of experience and multiple perspectives she will bring to her Presidency. In addition, Dr. Larson has served as an expert consultant and facilitator for a variety of CUR professional development institutes. In response to the news Larson stated, “Through connections I have made in CUR, I have grown as a researcher and a research mentor; I have developed as a teacher and as an administrator. I know I am not alone in being significantly influenced by involvement with CUR. I am delighted to have been elected to provide leadership to an organization that has been so transformative in the professional development of so many faculty and administrators, including my own. I look forward to working with volunteers and national office staff to support the continued development of CUR set forth by our strategic pillars and to help CUR to be the premier undergraduate research organization.”
Elizabeth Ambos, Executive Officer for CUR, excited to make the announcement stated “Susan Larson brings a broad array of strengths to the CUR presidency. She is both a very active teacher-scholar-administrator on her own campus, and a dynamic and engaged volunteer leader within CUR. As CUR moves to expand the services and programs it offers to members, including its recognition program for institutions achieving excellence in undergraduate research, Susan will play a significant and vital leadership role.”
Larson has played an integral role in CUR leadership, CUR is looking forward to gaining from her continued work inspiring faculty, students, institutions, and funding entities to help build and sustain strong undergraduate research programs. In June, at the close of the 2015 CUR Annual Business Meeting, Dr. Larson will begin her one year term as CUR President-elect, which will be followed by a year as President and a year as Past-President.
##Council on Undergraduate Research: The Council on Undergraduate Research (www.cur.org) supports faculty development for high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship. Over 700 institutions and more than 10,000 individuals belong to CUR. CUR believes that the best way to capture student interest and create enthusiasm for a discipline is through research in close collaboration with faculty members.
Susan J. Larson received her BA from the University of Manitoba (1991) and earned her PhD in Experimental Psychology from McMaster University (1997). She joined the faculty at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN in 1998 after a post-doctoral fellowship at Louisiana State University Medical Center (Shreveport, LA). She is a Professor of Psychology. In 2009 she was appointed Concordia College’s first Director of Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and National Fellowships and she continues to serve in that role. She has also served as Psychology Department Chair (2007-2010) and currently serves as the director of Concordia’s institutional honors program, Credo. Larson regularly teaches Research Methods, Learning and Behavior, Drugs and Behavior, and senior seminars in the psychology department and neuroscience program. She engages students in undergraduate research through course-embedded research experiences in a many of her courses, including Research Methods and Learning and Behavior. She also supervises students in her laboratory on research projects including the investigation of behavioral and cognitive changes associated with immune system activation. She and her collaborator were funded by the Lupus Foundation of Minnesota (2011) to evaluate the behavior and gene expression of lupus prone mice. Larson also works with undergraduate collaborators evaluating the impact of undergraduate research at Concordia. She is a Councilor in the Psychology Division of CUR and served as Chair of the Psychology Division and on its Executive Board from 2009-2012. She was a co-author of CUR’s Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research, published in April 2012 and she regularly serves as a facilitator for CUR’s Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research institute.
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