UC Davis is having great success in involving undergraduates in research--creating just the kind of enriching educational opportunities that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching advocates. Evidence of that success was presented to the UC Board of Regents yesterday by a small campus contingent of students and faculty members led by Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies Peter Dale. UC Davis and UCLA were invited to make presentations as an outgrowth of a recent report funded by the Carnegie Foundation titled "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities." Jeanne Abalos, a junior in neurobiology, physiology and behavior, and molecular and cellular biology professor Scott Hawley, the 1998 winner of the Chancellor's Prize for Mentoring Undergraduates in Research, spoke to the governing board about their experiences. Rounding out the Davis group were computer-science associate professor Matt Bishop and his student, Ricardo Gomez, and geology associate professor Louise Kellogg and her student, Lai Lee. "At Davis we have a growing cadre of faculty actively engaged in introducing undergraduates to a love of discovery, a love, that is, of independent research outside the systematic, 'duty-driven' learning of the classroom," Dale told the regents. "Ten years ago a survey of graduates indicated that 13 percent had participated 'very often or often' in research projects mentored by faculty. Seven years later, in 1996, the proportion had grown to 22 percent, and I have not the least doubt that it has continued to grow in the intervening three years." Dale pointed to undergraduate research opportunities such as the Davis Honors Challenge, the annual Undergraduate Research Conference and a newly initiated undergraduate research journal. Last year the honors program offered 180 lower-division students the opportunity to participate in 15 individual, faculty-led seminars, based on research problems that students addressed as teams. In addition, in April the campus sponsored its 10th annual Undergraduate Research Conference in which more than 150 upper-division students and their faculty mentors participated.