Felicia Walton started work in a microbiology lab at Duke University when she was 17, not old enough by law to do some of the experiments. Three years later, the lab is Walton's second home. She has her own bench and control of a dissecting microscope. Above her desk hangs the September issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell, a journal featuring an article with Walton as the first author -- before the names of her mentor and her professor. The splotchy blue-and-green photograph of a mutant fungus on the cover? Walton shot it.

Few undergraduates are as successful as Walton, but her experience in the lab is not all that unusual. Undergraduates have become regulars in professors' labs and research projects at both large universities and small liberal arts colleges. They are jumping into research early on -- some in their freshman year. They're taking on more ambitious work, and in a few cases, they're scoring big finds.

Walton, a 20-year-old senior from Asheville, is a full-fledged member of a lab made up primarily of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. In the course of her exploration of cell division in a fungus, she has identified genes that cause infection in people with weak immune systems. Her honors thesis will include footnotes of her own discoveries, which have been published twice.

"She's a real superstar," said Joseph Heitman, the professor who invited her into his lab after she sent him an e-mail message during her freshman year.

For most college students conducting research, the goal is not a journal paper or a historic breakthrough. The experience is about learning that does not involve sitting in a lecture hall. Undergraduate research has been around for decades, but the trend has intensified in the past several years. Most campuses now encourage their students to participate as a regular part of their college education; some have required it.

"It's just better teaching," said Nancy Hensel, executive officer of the Washington-based Council on Undergraduate Research, which counts nearly 500 colleges and universities as members.

Behind the trend is a concern that college students aren't getting what they need for the competitive 21st-century global economy. This year's Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education concluded that too many students disengage, drop out or fail to master the reading, writing and thinking skills necessary for a successful future. Others have warned that the United States is trailing other nations in science and technology innovation.

College students too often memorize facts and regurgitate them, Hensel said, but they don't understand the deeper concepts. That's where research experience comes in. Experimentation can push students to become more independent, more skeptical, more confident. That will make them more prepared to solve problems in whatever field they choose.

"You're going to be a better thinker, you're going to ask questions of your profession: 'How can we do it better?' " Hensel said.

Hensel's organization offers training programs for faculty and seeks financial support from government agencies and private foundations. Many colleges now have offices that coordinate undergraduate research and match students with professors and mentors.

UNC-Asheville publishes an undergraduate research journal and hosted a national conference for 2,000 students in March. Last month at N.C. State University, 250 students from across the state presented their findings at a research symposium.

Students can win grants for summer research projects. They can do research as part of a course or as an independent study. Or they can join a lab team, if professors are willing to take them on. Students pursue projects in history, sociology, psychology and many other fields.

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