How BYU undergraduate students engage in research

BYU is a university that prioritizes research opportunities for its students, especially undergraduates.

The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education designated BYU as a Research 1 school, a designation based on research activity and degree offerings.

An R1 school is described on its website as having very high research spending and doctorate production. The classification reports that BYU spent $137,784,000 on research. Much of this research involves undergraduates.

Were primarily an undergraduate teaching institution, Jeremy Browne, director of the Office of Digital Humanities, said. If we mentored our students through research, actively promoting research for them, then we are going to get better at research and teaching.

A peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Exercise Science showed that undergraduate research helps students develop academic skills, as well as self-confidence, resilience and a clearer sense of their career path.

For the Office of Digital Humanities, Browne said it provides undergraduates research opportunities, mainly data management projects using technology in a humanities context to support other research and conduct some of their own.

Some projects include creating a website to help Dr. Leslie Thorne Murphy from the English Department organize hundreds of stories by Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley and Arthur Conan Doyle that were not published elsewhere and originally appeared only in a Victorian-era magazine.

Every college at BYU has had to decide how theyre going to count student involvement in research, Browne said.

In the College of Computational, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Steve Richardson, an associate professor of computer science, said the college funds faculty to hire up to 10 undergraduates for research roles.

The Machine Translation Research and Interlingual Experimentation (MATRIX) lab, where Richardson and Eric Ringer serve as faculty advisors, currently has 11 undergraduates.

The lab seeks to process and translate lower-resource languages like higher-resource languages. Undergraduates assist in collecting language data, developing a website and building AI models that generate speech in those languages.

For the undergrads in my lab, its really easy because they become very passionate about this work, Richardson said. Their knowledge begins to grow, and pretty soon theyre doing things that I dont even understand.

Richardson said participating in the lab helps students engage in work with real-world implications.

Whatever gifts and talents you have God gave you those gifts so that you could do it and bless his children, Richardson said.

Mark Clement, a professor of computer science and faculty advisor over the Family History Lab, said his lab helps undergraduates develop spiritual and technical confidence as disciples of Christ and disciple-scholars an approach he said is unique to BYU.

Thats the difference between a BYU education. You may come out with the same technical skills from another university, Clement said. Here you have an ability to seek inspiration from Heavenly Father, and he can magnify your technical skills far beyond what you would do if you were just on your own.

Many research opportunities, including the Family History Lab, which works to increase involvement in family history, give students freedom in how they approach research.

When I first came in, I was super lost and confused, Matt Feist, a senior graduating with a computer science major and project lead for the Family History Lab, said. It was my first time ever doing a research project.

When Feist joined in January 2025, the lab was working on a project to study the mental health benefits of reading ancestral stories.

Feist said a PhD student in the psychology program originally started the project, but it had been forgotten. Clement asked Feist to finish it.

Ancestral stories for mental well-being is something that people think about, but theres not a lot of research on it, Feist said. To be part of the forefront of that is really cool.

As the lab transitioned from contributing solely to the technical side of the project to taking on the entire project, Feist and his team took on many new responsibilities.

Feist said last summer, more than 600 participants read both ancestral and non-ancestral stories, reporting their mental state after each one.

Feist and his team submitted materials to the Institutional Review Board a committee that ensures studies involving human subjects are ethical built a website to support the project, analyzed the data, and developed the coding for the project.

After finding greater mental health benefits from reading ancestral stories, Feist and another team member presented them at the International Conference of Information Communication Technologies in London.

Despite only being in the lab for a year, he said the experience changed his career path, leading him to pursue graduate school and, hopefully, one day attain a PhD.

I highly recommend it to everybody, Feist said. Its really cool being able to be in the forefront of different fields.

Michelle Haddock a former BYU student who earned a bachelors degree in 2023 from the School of Family Life and a masters degree in 2025 in Marriage, Family, and Human Development had a similar experience as an undergraduate student.

I switched majors a lot because I kept getting into this space where I was like, well, the only thing I could do with this is research, and I would hate research, Haddock said. It wasnt until I finally let myself try it that I realized how much I liked it.

Now, Haddock works as a project manager for the Couple Relationship and Transition Experiences (CREATE) study in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. The study examines couples' relationships over time and how transitions affect them.

Undergraduates in the study participate in tasks such as participant retention, data cleaning and preparing datasets for other researchers.

Theyre really smart and bright and they definitely gain independence as they go, Haddock said.

Haddock said students who are unsure about research should explore topics they are interested in and ask academic advisors for guidance.

That's kind of changed my life, Haddock said. Im really grateful that BYU likes to involve undergrads in research because I wouldnt have gotten involved if I hadnt been recruited.