About Us

The Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU) Undergraduate Research and High-Impact Practices Community (UR-HIP) brings together faculty and staff from UERU member institutions to discuss and advance inclusive and effective methods for implementing High-Impact Practices (HIPs) to facilitate undergraduate students’ academic and career success. Areas of focus include connecting HIPs across siloes, measuring “high impact,” navigating evolving funding landscapes for undergraduate research, scaling up HIPs to research university student population size, and addressing barriers to student participation in HIPs. The community also plans to collaborate with other national and international organizations focused on HIPs, while positioning itself as a unique resource for staff and faculty serving undergraduate students at research universities.

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Institutions without active UERU memberships, learn more about joining UERU here.

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If your institution is already an active UERU member, request to join community here.

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UR-HIP Events

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Member Meetings - 3rd Monday of each month from 1-2pm ET

Steering Committee

Lauren Bonilla

Program Manager for Undergraduate Research and High-Impact Learning

Wayne State University

Program Manager for Undergraduate Research and High-Impact Learning

Wayne State University

Sandi Deacon Carr

Faculty Director for Experiential Education

Boston University

Sandi Deacon Carr, Ph.D. is a Master Lecturer in the Management and Organizations Department at Boston University's Questrom School of Business where she teaches leadership, teaming, and career management courses. Sandi also serves as Boston University’s Faculty Director for Experiential Education where she oversees several experiential learning programs within undergraduate affairs, consults with programs and faculty seeking to develop or augment experiential learning within their curriculum, leads experiential learning curricular and co-curricular initiatives on campus, and serves on university committees such as the Career Strategies Working Group. She specializes in innovations in course design, experiential learning, and curriculum development and leads the faculty team for the required undergraduate career management course series.

Joshua Feinberge

Director, Office of Undergraduate Research

University of Minnesota

Professor working in higher education on research, teaching, and service at the departmental, college, and university levels. As Director of Undergraduate Research (2024-present), I oversee undergraduate research programs and support across all five campuses of the University of Minnesota system. As the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Earth & Environmental Sciences (2016-2023) I helped develop new courses and majors for our students to enable them to be competitive within a variety of geoscience career paths. I work hard to establish partnerships with companies, regulatory agencies, non-profits, and county and municipal organizations. My academic research is varied and uses lab- and field-based applications of mineralogy, material characterization and microscopy, mineral exploration, and magnetics to explore questions about climate and environmental change, archeology, fundamental mineral physics, and the short- and long-term behavior of the Earth's magnetic field.

Stephen Ortiz

Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Enrichment and Executive Director

Binghamton University

Stephen Ortiz has been the Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Enrichment at Binghamton University since 2021. In that role he works closely with all of the university's undergraduate research programs, including the curriculum-based First-Year Research Immersion (STEM) and Source Project (Arts, Social Science, and Humanities) research programs. He is a faculty member in the Department of History.

Kimberly Schneider

Assistant Vice Provost, Undergraduate Studies

University of Central Florida

Kimberly R. Schneider has been at the University of Central Florida since 2007 and currently serves as assistant vice provost in the Office of Undergraduate Studies. She previously worked in the Division of Student Success and Well-Being, where she oversaw centralized career planning and academic engagement departments. Before that, she was assistant dean in the College of Undergraduate Studies and the founding director of the UCF Office of Undergraduate Research.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of Florida and a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of South Carolina. Her current research focuses on science education and high-impact practice engagement. An active scholar, Schneider has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and has received continuous external grant funding for more than 17 years at UCF.

Leticia Steffen

Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Achievement and Enrichment

Missouri University of Science and Technology

I am passionate about helping students navigate their higher education journeys through academic support and enrichment.

Belkys Torres

Associate Vice Provost for Curricular Innovation, Office of the Provost

University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus

In her capacity as Associate Vice Provost for Curricular Innovation, Dr. Torres provides strategic leadership in the design, development, and implementation of innovative academic initiatives and learning experiences. This role supports the institution’s mission to deliver high-quality, learner-centered education across all modalities, including in-person, online, hybrid, and non-credit formats.

Dr. Torres also holds the position of Teaching Associate Professor in Latinx and Gender Studies for the Literature Program in the Department of English.

Her research interests include Latinx literary and cultural studies, ethnic media studies, cultural hybridity, transnationalism, feminist theory, intercultural competency training, global & community engaged learning, and program/curricular assessment.

Kate Weishaar

Senior Program Coordinator of the Office of Experiential Learning

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kate Weishaar is the Senior Program Coordinator in the Office of Experiential Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she manages assessment, communications, systems, and programming to create a more intentional, integrated, and impactful ecosystem of experiential learning opportunities across MIT. She also serves as staff to MIT's Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program, which launched in February 2024 and is tasked with reimagining MIT's curriculum, pedagogy, policies, and programs to better support undergraduate learning.

She has worked in MIT’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education (OVC) since 2018, first in the role of First-Year Experience Coordinator and more recently as Special Projects Coordinator. Across these roles, she has led and supported strategic initiatives in the OVC, including assessing and reimagining first-year advising, reforming grading policies, and facilitating major exploration.

Kate earned her Master of Education degree in education with a focus on higher education administration from Northeastern University and her Bachelor of Science in architecture studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.