Undergraduate Catalog 2024-2025

Community-Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars (CODES) is a pathway for motivated students in all fields and majors to use their general education credits to work alongside community organizations to study and address the world’s most pressing problems.

CODES students take a set of core courses emphasizing transdisciplinary research and problem-solving methods together in their cohort. They meet each semester in research-team courses facilitated by their mentoring instructor and a community organization to address major social problems in our region such as food insecurity or the inequitable effects of climate change. Students take their education beyond the walls of the classroom and into the St. Louis region.

The research teams analyze, visualize, and share their work with the broader public using data mining, mapping, storytelling, networking, and cultural analytics. In this way, the pathway gives students firsthand experience applying twenty-first century skills including collaboration, systems thinking, and innovative approaches to digital communication. In this community-based program, students learn the important skill of negotiating the civic responsibilities they bear toward others in both physical and digital spaces.

General Education Requirements for CODES Students
CODES students are required to complete a general education program that combines the requirements outlined in University policy 1D1 – University-wide Criteria for the Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Bachelor of Science (B.S.), and Professional Baccalaureate Degrees – with the following 22 credit-hour curriculum.

CODES Summer Seminars
Students participate in two-day, non-credit bearing research seminars in the summers preceding each year of the pathway where they will choose community partners, learn from peer mentoring, and share their research outcomes.

CODES Research Teams (9 hours)
Students meet in intensive research teams comprised of eight to ten students, a faculty mentor, and a community partner. Teams focus on a “wicked” or seemingly unsolvable problem such as nutrition and food access, the challenges of intergenerational communication, and poverty’s manifestations across rural and urban environments. The level of difficulty the research teams undertake grows with students, and the curriculum is intentionally organic, transforming each year based on student and faculty interest and community need. Students and faculty work together to structure a series of readings from diverse fields such as history, literature, anthropology, biology, and sociology that supports their work, and study their problem using critical thinking, writing, and qualitative research methods. In final projects each semester, research teams apply a variety of digital methods to communicate the results of their research.

CODES Core (13 credit-hours)
CODES students are required to take CODE121 and CODE123 during their first year. These courses are designed to help student research, map, conceptualize, and communicate about global problems and their impact on our region. Students will learn how to write and speak using interdisciplinary, multi-modal forms of communication. In their second year of instruction, students will take CODE220, in which students will learn how scientific modes of inquiry can apply to their problem. Their work culminates in CODE320, a summer research experience before the third year, in which students complete a public-facing digital collaborative project to explain their problem and propose solutions, incorporating creative non-fiction, graphic design, and data visualization. In their final year, students enroll in CODE420 to reflect on their work and prepare for careers and continuing studies.

Completion Plan

Year	Summer	Fall	Spring	Outcome
Year 1	Two-Day Orientation	CODE 120: Research Team I (3 hours) CODE 121: Transdisciplinary Communication (3 hours)	CODE 122: Research Team II (3 hours) CODE 123: Research and Systems Thinking (3 hours)	Multimodal essays, digital storytelling, and public speeches communicating the problem
Year 2	Two-Day Mentorship of New Students	CODE 220: Community Engagement with Science (3 hours)	CODE 221: Research Team III (3 hours)	Digital problem visualization integrating previous research
Year 3	CODE 320: Digital Collaborations (3 hours)			Culminating digital project
Year 4		CODE 420: CODES Capstone (1 hour)		Resumes, graduate school application materials, portfolios

Additional Requirements
In addition to the course requirements listed above, students must satisfy the following requirements through major, minor, or additional coursework:

• a lab course in the physical sciences
• a mathematics, statistics, or quantitative reasoning course

Articulation

The Illinois Board of Higher Education mandates 37 hours of course work across the bachelor’s degree that integrates “communication, mathematics, social and behavioral sciences, life and physical sciences (to include a laboratory component), and humanities and fine arts.” In the CODES pathway, students complete these requirements using transdisciplinary problem solving; diversity of knowledge is integrated within each course. For this reason, students are considered to have finished their general education coursework holistically upon completion of the pathway. If a student leaves the pathway early, the articulation plan demonstrates how the courses can count toward general education requirements in the Lincoln plan.

Term & Year	Courses	Articulation
Fall Year 1	CODE 120: Research Team I	Humanities Breadth Global Cultures Experience
	CODE 121: Transdisciplinary Communication	Foundations Written Communication I Foundations Oral Communication First Semester Transition
Spring Year 1	CODE 122: Research Team II	Foundations Reasoning & Argumentation
	CODE 123: Research and Systems Thinking	Foundations Written Communication II Social Science Breadth
Fall Year 2	CODE 220: Community Engagement with Science	Life Sciences Breadth
Spring Year 2	CODE 221: Research Team III	US Cultures Experience Info and Communication in Society Breadth
Summer Year 3	CODE 320: Digital Collaborations	Interdisciplinary Studies Fine and Performing Arts Breadth

Students Transferring from Lewis and Clark Community College

In addition to the students enrolled in the CODES Pathway at SIUE, 25 students and Lewis and Clark Community College’s Honors Program will be engaged in the curriculum, participating in summer seminar, and collaborating with SIUE students. They will fully enter SIUE’s version of the program in the summer prior to their third year of study when they enroll in CODE320 on SIUE’s campus.

Late Entry to Pathway

Although the CODES Pathway use a cohort model with a chronological completion process, students may request acceptance after their first semester, and will be asked to complete an orientation with CODES faculty and students prior to entry if accepted.

The Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URCA) Program at SIUE encourages, supports, and enables students to participate in research and creative activities at the undergraduate level. An undergraduate research or creative activity experience enhances the quality of the baccalaureate experience by giving students opportunities to engage in scholarship, to interact with faculty, and to connect more fully in the educational process of discovering and creating. The URCA Program recognizes that student talents can be uncovered in ways that do not always appear through the usual format of classroom instruction and testing. In cooperation with the academic departments at SIUE, the URCA Program recruits eligible students as URCA Associates or Assistants. URCA Associates work one-on-one with a faculty mentor to lead their own research projects or creative activities over the course of an academic year. This is an extremely competitive program, and only a maximum of 10 Associates will be selected per academic year. Associates are the principal investigators in their projects. The process involves several stages:

• submitting a proposal and budget for approval,
• being accepted into the program,
• doing the research or creative activity during the semesters specified in the proposal,
• participating in periodic URCA events,
• preparing a final report, and
• presenting the results at the URCA Symposium.

URCA provides budgetary support for conducting the scholarly activity as well as advisory support during preparation of the proposals and reports. The Office of Academic Innovation and Effectiveness, in which URCA is housed, assists students during their work by providing prompt administrative support as needed. Academic departments and supervising faculty mentor(s) provide all necessary research guidance and facilities. Academic departments also arrange the purchase of commodities and services required for the projects, using the project budget funds provided by the Provost’s Office. In addition, URCA Associates receive a monetary award in two installments — one per each semester of participation. Full-time undergraduate students who have been accepted as a major in any of the disciplines at SIUE and who maintain a grade point average of 3.0 or better are eligible to compete for URCA Associate positions. Students must have junior or senior standing at the time they conduct their URCA Associate work and may use the URCA Associate project to fulfill the Senior Assignment requirement for graduation (with departmental approval). Proposals must be signed and submitted in the prescribed form by the third Friday of March to the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Program, Office of Innovation and Effectiveness, Box 1300, SIUE, Edwardsville, IL 62026-1300.

URCA Assistants work approximately nine hours per week on faculty-led research or creative activities over the course of one semester. These positions provide students with an introductory experience in the research or creative activities of a specific field. Up to 80 Assistants per semester will receive a monetary award for their participation, and many students participate each semester without receiving the monetary award. In this program, first interested faculty submit their research or creative activity proposals to the URCA Program coordinator. Faculty who have their proposals approved are then eligible to mentor URCA Assistants. After the faculty proposals are selected, students apply online for the Assistant positions through the URCA Web site (siue.edu/urca). This typically happens in the middle of the semester before the work will be completed. Students accepted as Assistants must meet the learning outcomes set forth by the faculty member who is principal investigator on the project. Some Assistant positions are available for course credit, but no tuition waiver is associated with the URCA program. Full-time undergraduate students at SIUE who have a minimum GPA of 2.3 are eligible to apply for URCA Assistant positions, and students may apply for Assistant positions at any time during their SIUE careers (freshman through senior years).

More information and application/proposal forms are available on the URCA website: siue.edu/urca.