Traditional student research participation programs (e.g., joining research teams, doing summer research, taking advanced courses etc.) have demonstrated considerable success in exposing students to current research paradigms. However, it is becoming more and more evident that comprehensive instructional programs, which offer systematic and constant research experiences to students, will be more effective in involving a larger body of students in research and retaining their interest and enthusiasm. Creating positive research experiences for students and including as many of them as possible in research requires a great deal of sensitivity and careful planning. We believe that the key solution to preparing students to get involved in research is through the integration of research results into undergraduate courses, especially "core" courses. This idea forms the "skeleton" of our model around which we build a number of other, more traditional, research activities.

We will concentrate on four core courses (two at the sophomore level and two at the senior level). The first encounter of the students with research will happen in their sophomore year, when they take their second programming course or their first course digital design course. There are two major objectives in these courses: first, to introduce students to the concepts and procedures for scientific research and second, to introduce them to the computer vision area through some simple computer vision examples. They will also be introduced to more sophisticated applications of some of the basic principles which they will encounter later in more advanced courses. We understand that students' first impression about research will be very critical and will influence their attitude towards future research activities. Thus, we will place significant emphasis on choosing assignments that will spark their interest in computer vision and make both courses positive and fun experiences. We will also emphasize team work, something that is very important in today's society.

Their next research experience will occur in their junior year, when they take the data structures and microprocessors courses. At that time, they will be introduced to progressively more meaningful and challenging computer vision examples and will begin to implement algorithms which are suitable to their skill level, but which actually perform useful functions. Emphasizing critical thinking, creativity, self motivation, and collaborative work will be the goals in these classes.

To set a strong foundation for enabling student research, we plan to develop a new, junior-level, course on mathematical methods for computer vision, in other words, a course that will teach them the fundamental tools for computer vision research. The need of such a course has been addressed many times by the research community. After finishing the above courses, the students who plan to pursue more research experiences can take the mathematical methods for computer vision course (new course) which we plan to offer at the junior-level. The goal of this course is to set strong foundations for student research by teaching them the fundamental tools complemented with computer vision examples. Besides teaching them the fundamentals, this course will further expose them to more research experiences with a more clear focus. By the end of their junior year, we expect them to have a good grasp of fundamental concepts and techniques in computer vision.

In their senior year, they can get involved in more serious and innovative research by taking the introductory computer vision course, the object recognition course (new course), independent studies, or choosing a computer vision related topic for their senior project design. During the summer, students (juniors, seniors, and graduate) will be given the opportunity to do research at UNR, an academic institution, an REU site, a national laboratory, or an industrial site. The selection of the students for the summer research program will be done on a competitive basis and every student will be paid a stipend following the practices of current UNR summer research experience programs. The summer research activities will be implemented with the help of the UNR Academic Affairs Office as well as our academic (REU) and industrial collaborators. At the end of each summer, students will participate in the campuswide poster program where students will present their summer research work along with students from other summer programs. The poster sessions will be attended by our academic and industrial collaborators as well as other UNR faculty and students as well as state representatives.