When a library leads the lab: How Purdue Libraries is reimagining undergraduate research

Academic libraries are traditionally partners in undergraduate research, providing databases, instruction sessions, and research consultations. Purdue Libraries is doing something different.

Since 2022, Purdue Libraries has served as the lead academic unit for the Purdue Undergraduate Research Experiences for Plant Biology and Data Science (PURE-PD), a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site. PURE-PD is one of the first academic library programs in the nation to hold principal investigator leadership of an NSF REU, making it a genuinely rare institutional achievement. The program represents a new model for what libraries can do: not as a support service on the margins of research, but as a full institutional partner driving it.

A new model for library-research collaboration

PURE-PD is built on a partnership between Purdue Libraries and the Purdue Center for Plant Biology (CPB), combining the library’s expertise in research data literacy and evidence synthesis with CPB’s strengths in plant biology and bioinformatics. The program is led by Dr. Chao Cai, Associate Professor and Agricultural Sciences Information Specialist at Purdue Libraries, who serves as Principal Investigator.

This collaboration challenges a persistent assumption in higher education: that research training programs belong exclusively to disciplinary departments. PURE-PD demonstrates that libraries bring distinctive and complementary capacities to undergraduate research, particularly in an era when data-intensive science demands not only technical skill but rigorous information and data literacy.

What makes PURE-PD different

Over 10 weeks each summer, undergraduates conduct hypothesis-driven research in plant biology across areas including plant health monitoring, nutrient signaling, host-pathogen interactions, and developmental regulation, applying methods in bioinformatics, molecular genetics, physiology, and ecology.

What distinguishes PURE-PD from conventional REU programs is what students learn alongside domain science. Because the library leads the program, information and data literacy are woven into the research experience from the start rather than added on. Students engage with structured training in scientific literature search and evaluation, research data management and curation, and research data literacy. These are foundational skills that define rigorous, reproducible science, that disciplinary programs often assume students already possess, and that students rarely have the opportunity to develop systematically. PURE-PD makes them explicit and central.

Results that demonstrate the model works

Since launching in 2022, PURE-PD has trained 30 undergraduates across three cohorts. Eighty-three percent of participants come from underserved populations, including underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and students from non-R1 institutions, groups for whom immersive research experiences can be transformative and access-expanding.

Outcomes reflect the program’s impact. Seventy percent of participants reported increased likelihood of pursuing graduate STEM programs, and 90% identified graduate school as their top career goal. Several alumni have continued their research at Purdue, including joining CPB as Ph.D. students or completing post-baccalaureate training. The program maintains biannual follow-ups with alumni through email, professional networks, and career-transition interviews, ensuring that the mentoring relationship extends well beyond the summer.

These outcomes are not incidental. They are evidence that a library-led model, built on cross-unit collaboration and embedded research literacy training, can produce results that match or exceed those of conventionally structured REU programs.

A replicable model for research libraries and their partners

For peer institutions, PURE-PD offers a proof of concept: academic libraries at research universities have the infrastructure, the expertise, and the cross-disciplinary relationships to lead externally funded undergraduate research programs. For Purdue faculty and academic units, it opens a question worth considering: what could your department accomplish with Purdue Libraries as a research partner rather than a resource?

PURE-PD is one answer to that question, and it will not be the last.