The Cornell Undergraduate Information Competency Initiative, funded by a grant from Cornell University Library and the office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, encourages Cornell faculty to explore creative and effective ways to engage students by integrating research skills into the classroom and the curriculum through the redesign and creation of assignments for undergraduate courses. This Initiative supports the university's goal of improving undergraduate education by providing faculty the funding, opportunity, and the assistance of campus academic partners to transform the curriculum by creating authentic and engaging research assignments to incorporate into their courses.

The Initiative, based on a model pioneered by the University of California Berkeley's Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate Research, was created as a response to a growing national concern that todays undergraduates do not possess core information competencies.

Nine Cornell faculty were selected to participate throughout the 2008-2009 academic year and another 5-8 will be selected for the 2009-2010 year. Faculty attend an intensive one week Institute to be held on campus (the week of June 1, 2009 this year), and occasional events throughout the year. Each faculty member will receive $1,000 in support of scalable and sustainable changes to the curriculum, including departmental implementation, developing teaching tools that incorporate information competencies, research skills, and use of campus information resources as integral components, and assessing the impact of research assignments on student learning and faculty teaching.

At the Institute, faculty will discuss a range of topics related to developing effective undergraduate research-based assignments. They will also collaborate with consultants from Cornell University Library, the Center for Learning and Teaching, Academic Technology Services and User Support, the Cornell IT Policy Office, and the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, to create or redesign assignments which use the Library's resources “from archival materials on hip hop to scientific article databases “and introduce undergraduates to the practice of scholarly research. After the Institute, faculty will continue to work with these academic partners to develop and refine their courses and assignments throughout the year.