I was wondering if there were opportunites for students to participate in any CS related research at SIUE (either volunteer or paid). I am interested in joining a project. :-)
Assuming you are an undergraduate student, I would highly recommend SIUE (http://www.siue.edu/)'s Undergraduate Research Academy (URA) (http://www.siue.edu/ura/). The two-semester program allows students to work closely with a faculty professor on a creative and innovational research project. The URA (http://www.siue.edu/ura/) provides students with tuition assistance, monetary rewards, and graduation with honors (not to mention support from their respective department)! As a two-time URA (http://www.siue.edu/ura/) scholar myself (working with Dr. Jerry B. Weinberg (http://www.cs.siue.edu/faculty/?Who=weinberj) on "Algorithms for Control and Interaction of Large Formations of Robots (http://roboti.cs.siue.edu/projects/formations/)" and "Impromptu Teams of Heterogeneous Mobile Robots"), I'd highly recommend the program to anyone interested in a research endeavor. For more perspective on the URA (http://www.siue.edu/ura/), contact to Jerry (http://caos.siue.edu/userinfo.php?uid=103) (my URA (http://www.siue.edu/ura/) mentor) or ModernDayDarwin (http://caos.siue.edu/userinfo.php?uid=336) (a former URA (http://www.siue.edu/ura/) scholar). Good luck! :-)
In a year, depending on how far I am with my thesis, you may be able to do some work with me that would count towards some sort of credit, such as a senior project (meaning you'd also work with 2 or 3 other students). My thesis deals with a device driver framework for microkernel operating systems and a senior project, assuming it was approved, would deal with helping write some device drivers using only tools from that framework.
As a shameless promotion, the paper in its current form is available here as PDF (http://symbolx.org/projects/ddf/doc/thesis.pdf) and here as PostScript (http://symbolx.org/projects/ddf/doc/thesis.ps).
As Ross mentioned the URA is a great way to get funding and credit to do research, but there are other possibilities too.
You should start by figuring out what areas of research you are interested in by looking at what areas the faculty work in. You can find some of this out by looking on the CS Departement Faculty Webpages. (http://www.cs.siue.edu/faculty/) Myself, I do work in HCI, Robotics, and Machine Learning.
Set-up a time you can talk with the professor of the area you are interested in to find out what projects they are currently working on. Let them know you are interested in doing some work on a particular project. They may have some grant funds or they may be interested in doing a URA with you.
You should work out your course schedule to take the CS elective in your area of interest. This will give you necessary and valuable background knowledge.
It is also really helpful to know about current research in your area of interest. One of the best ways of doing this is to attend a research conference. Most of the major conferences will pay student's registration and help with travel if they volunteer to help out at the conference. For example, Ross and I will be going to AAAI 2006 (http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai06.php) in July. There are a lot of conferences, so you should talk to the professors to find out which ones are the best to attend.
Thanks for the information! I had no idea the URA even existed. I will definitely check that out.
As for a particular area of interest, I would prefer something in computer science. However, I am easily interested in many other things (maybe even robotics!) and wouldn't mind getting involved in something that wasn't purely CS.
I guess I need to decide what sort of research I want to get into and find a professor who is willing to work with me.