Research Crucial to Academic Life at Columbus State

At Columbus State University, research has been emphasized for decades, most notably in the context of encouraging scholarly growth among faculty and the students whose lives they touch inside the classroom and beyond. At each year's spring Honors Convocation, a professor is honored with a Faculty Research and Scholarship Award, and the top student awards in many disciplines that are also announced then often reward student research achievement.

Columbus State University implicitly recognizes the role of research and scholarship in enhancing the effectiveness and breadth of teaching and service by faculty. Professors are encouraged to:

• Seek publication, via books and scholarly journals, of the results of their research.
• Present the findings of their research to colleagues both at Columbus State and beyond.
• Seek appropriate internal and external funding to further such research.
• Actively involve students in research as a result of teaching or projects beyond the classroom.

In 2010, Columbus State established its Social Research Center to more effectively connect campus researchers and those in Columbus and beyond who might benefit from their expertise. Separately, steps were taken to move beyond the campus' longstanding Human Subjects Committee to form a full-fledged Institutional Review Board that would particularly help encourage research among students conducting research while seeking master's, specialist and doctoral degrees. Those graduate students often conduct publishable research, and many undergraduates in CSU's Honors Program have, for more than a decade, tackled significant research as part of an honors thesis.

Columbus State's Grants and Sponsored Projects office takes an active role in encouraging research and helping faculty pursue necessary external funding. That office, working with the IRB, also ensure that research at Columbus State adheres to the highest ethical standards.