Utah Built a 25-Year Pipeline From Undergraduate Research to State Law. It Just Passed Its Biggest Test.
The Translation Infrastructure
On February 20, 2025, as federal agencies lurched through funding freezes and partisan standoffs, six Utah undergraduates stood in the State Capitol rotunda briefing legislators on policy gaps their research had uncovered. Rebecca Elwood, a kinesiology student at Utah State University, had surveyed elementary schools across the state about recess practices and discovered something lawmakers didn't know: Utah has no codified law governing recess. Schools and districts make their own rules, creating a regulatory blind spot affecting thousands of children with no consistency in daily physical activity requirements.
This wasn't a science fair. Research on Capitol Hill, now in its 25th year, functions as translation infrastructure, a mechanism for converting undergraduate findings into legislative intelligence before partisan framing hardens around an issue. The event is a collaboration between Utah State University and the University of Utah, both R1 research institutions, and it operates on a land-grant principle: research isn't complete until it reaches the people who can use it.
Governor Spencer Cox declared February 20 a statewide day of undergraduate research. That formalization signals something beyond ceremonial recognition, Utah has institutionalized a pipeline that most states never build.
How the System Selects What Lawmakers Hear
Not every undergraduate project makes it to the Capitol rotunda. The selection process filters for research that's "legislative-ready", studies that identify actionable problems or provide evidence on contested policy questions. Elwood's recess research qualified because it revealed a gap in state regulation. USU psychology seniors Hanna Jensen and Eva Jones presented survey-based findings on the relationship between social isolation and misogynistic radicalization, connecting loneliness to susceptibility to online extremist ideologies. Their work speaks directly to forces shaping their own generation, and it arrived at the Capitol with data legislators could reference in debates about youth mental health and online safety.
From the University of Utah, student Kian Robinson presented research on water quality in Bolivia's Sajama province, examining how resource extraction and climate change compound to create public health crises. The international scope matters, Utah lawmakers considering water policy in the Colorado River Basin need comparative data on how other regions manage scarcity and contamination.
Alexa Sand, associate vice president in USU's Office of Research, noted that 2025 marked the 50th year of sponsored undergraduate research at Utah State. That half-century of infrastructure, funding, mentorship, institutional support for student-led inquiry, created the conditions for Research on Capitol Hill to exist. The event didn't emerge from a single legislative champion or a one-time grant. It grew from sustained investment in the idea that undergraduates can produce work decision-makers need.
The Moment Research Becomes Policy Intelligence
Elwood's discovery that Utah lacks a recess law illustrates how policy gaps typically surface: through crisis, lawsuit, or media exposure. Proactive research that identifies regulatory blind spots before they become emergencies is rare. Her survey methodology was straightforward, she asked schools what they do and discovered no state framework governs their answers. That's the kind of finding that doesn't require advanced statistical modeling to be useful. A legislator can immediately understand the problem and the range of solutions other states have adopted.
The reception suggests lawmakers are hungry for this kind of input. HB373, a bill creating a pilot program for higher education research funding, advanced out of the House floor with a 66-1 vote. Utah Senator Ann Millner, a Republican from Ogden, is floor-sponsoring the legislation. A 66-1 vote in any contemporary legislative body is unusual. In an era when party-line votes dominate state capitols, near-unanimous support for research funding indicates something cuts through: evidence presented before ideological battle lines form around it.
University of Utah President Taylor Randall described research as a tool for "solving policy problems without requiring trade-offs." That framing matters. Most legislative debates are presented as zero-sum, more funding for X means less for Y, protecting one group's rights means restricting another's. Research that expands the information available to lawmakers can reveal options that weren't visible in a purely ideological debate.
What Utah Built That Washington Hasn't
Federal science advisory mechanisms have been dismantled, ignored, or sidelined across multiple administrations. The Office of Technology Assessment, which provided Congress with nonpartisan research on complex policy questions, was defunded in 1995 and hasn't been restored to its original capacity. Presidential science advisors issue reports that gather dust. The infrastructure for translating research into federal policy exists in fragments, vulnerable to each administration's priorities.
Utah's model operates at a different scale. A small state with unusual political culture, Republican supermajorities that still fund higher education robustly, a civic tradition of technocratic problem-solving alongside social conservatism, can build patient infrastructure that doesn't survive in more polarized environments. The question isn't whether undergraduate research is "good enough" to inform policy. The question is whether decision-makers have access to findings before their positions calcify.
Research on Capitol Hill creates that access point. Legislators walk through the rotunda, stop at poster presentations, ask questions of students who spent months on a problem the lawmaker just learned exists. The format strips away some of the performance that dominates legislative hearings. An undergraduate presenting survey results on recess policy isn't lobbying for a particular bill or representing an interest group. They're showing what they found.
The Infrastructure Funds Its Own Expansion
HB373's passage means the system is funding its own growth. The pilot program for higher education research funding, if implemented, will direct more resources toward the kind of work that gets presented at Research on Capitol Hill. That's a feedback loop: legislative appetite for research generates funding for more research, which generates more findings lawmakers can use.
The 2026 event is already scheduled for February 26, with about 25 USU scholars expected to present. Institutional commitment at that level, planning a year in advance, allocating space in the Capitol, coordinating between two universities and the legislature, indicates this isn't performative. The infrastructure is weight-bearing.
USU's Office of Research funds undergraduate attendance at professional conferences where they're accepted to present. That investment recognizes that dissemination is part of the research process, not an optional add-on. For a land-grant university, the work isn't complete until it reaches the public. Research on Capitol Hill operationalizes that mission by defining "the public" to include the people who write laws.
The Exportability Question
Whether this model works outside Utah is unresolved. The state's political culture, small enough that legislators and university administrators know each other, wealthy enough to fund higher education without constant budget crises, conservative but not hostile to expertise, creates conditions that don't exist in most states. Replicating the infrastructure requires more than copying the event format. It requires sustained funding, institutional buy-in from multiple universities, and legislative willingness to engage with findings that might complicate preferred narratives.
But the 66-1 vote on HB373 suggests something survives partisan polarization: lawmakers want evidence when it's presented before they've committed to a position. Research on Capitol Hill creates space for that exchange. The alternative, governance by blunt instrument, policy lurching between administrations, decisions made without reference to what's actually happening on the ground, is what's happening at the federal level.
Rebecca Elwood found a regulatory gap by asking schools what they do about recess. That's now information Utah legislators have. Whether they act on it is a different question, but the infrastructure delivered the finding to the people who could.