Sustaining student persistence and post-graduate competitiveness requires moving beyond traditional instruction toward high-impact experiential learning. Modern student success is no longer a linear ladder from classroom to retirement; it operates as a dynamic career lattice where learners enter, upskill, enter the workforce, and re-enter higher education to stack skills as technology evolves.

Undergraduate research acts as a catalyst engine for this lattice model by boosting retention and building adaptable digital fluency. Grounded in the theme “Strengthening Excellence at HBCUs” and the Student Success strand, this session demonstrates how Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU)—a Carnegie R2 High Research Activity HBCU—built and scaled a student-centered research and innovation ecosystem. As part of PVAMU’s strategic “Journey to Eminence” toward Carnegie R1 status, the Division of Research & Innovation embeds undergraduate scholars directly into a $100M+ research enterprise.

The session highlights two signature funding mechanisms:

Faculty RISE (Research & Innovation for Scholarly Excellence): An internal grant program funding paid student assistantships, equipment, and structured faculty mentorship.

Panther RISE (PRISE): A cross-institutional seed program with Texas A&M University pairing students on interdisciplinary research teams.

Crucially, these programs yield tangential benefits by fostering strategic industry partnerships that grant student and faculty researchers direct access to corporate R&D teams, joint facilities, and executive co-mentors.

Participants will engage through an interactive 60-minute workshop featuring a guided institutional mapping exercise. Presenters will share frameworks for building low-barrier undergraduate research grants, structuring cross-institutional and industry alliances, and measuring the ROI of student research on retention, academic performance, and graduate placement.

Attendees will leave equipped with actionable blueprints to adapt these low-cost, high-impact research, mentorship, and industry-pipeline models within their own campus contexts—strengthening institutional capacity and cultivating environments where educators and student leaders excel.