The U.S. National Science Foundation Center for Molecularly Optimized Networks (NSF MONET) has built one of the most intentional and rigorously evaluated undergraduate research programs in the NSF Centers for Chemical Innovation portfolio. The Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) program does not position summer research as an add-on — it treats it as a sustained broader impacts strategy with documented, multi-year outcomes.

From its first cohort in 2023, the program embedded access and impact by design rather than aspirational goals. In Year 3, NSF MONET selected four students from a competitive pool of 166 applicants — 50% with limited prior research experience or financial need — representing institutions spanning an R1 university, a master's-granting institution, a liberal arts college, and a historically Black college. This range reflects NSF MONET's explicit commitment to expanding the geography of innovation, in direct alignment with NSF's mandate.

The program's outcomes extend well beyond the summer. Alumni tracking — conducted annually each spring — reveals that 15 of 17 URE alumni (88.2%) remain engaged in STEM through undergraduate study, research roles, graduate programs, government leadership, or industry positions. One alumnus, Len, credited the program with connecting them to graduate school opportunities across multiple institutions, ultimately leading to enrollment at Indiana University Bloomington. Others have moved into NIH research, MONET-affiliated labs, and industry — evidence that the URE experience functions as a career launchpad rather than a one-time intervention.

NSF MONET has continued to strengthen the program through structured feedback loops and responsive program design. Student and mentor evaluations have directly shaped the development of the URE Program Handbook, monthly cross-institutional meetings, virtual collaboration infrastructure, and the Science Literacy Program — a structured writing and communication curriculum that helps undergraduates produce conference-ready titles, abstracts, posters, reports, and presentations. In doing so, NSF MONET reinforces that scientific communication is part of research training, not separate from it.

Conference access has further extended student impact beyond the laboratory. NSF MONET's travel awards enabled undergraduates to present at ACS Spring 2026 and SACNAS NDiSTEM, with approximately $7,000 invested to support seven students in their first national presentation opportunities — strengthening résumés, expanding professional networks, and making their research visible to the broader scientific community. URE alumna Juliana Marston earned the Outstanding Research Presentation Award from SACNAS along with a travel grant to ACS 2026, a recognition that reflects both her individual excellence and the mentorship infrastructure NSF MONET has built around her.

Taken together, the URE program demonstrates what it looks like to treat broadening participation as an engineered outcome. NSF MONET recruits broadly, matches deliberately, supports continuously, communicates rigorously, and tracks long-term — producing a replicable model for inclusive undergraduate research that addresses representation at the earliest career stage while generating durable pathways into STEM.