Failure seems to have various meanings and manifestations in diverse contexts. Students hope to avoid failure because of the potential consequences towards their aspirations, yet scientists speak of failure as a typical part of the scientific experience. Because of its consequential impact for students, particularly for undergraduate STEM attrition, the experience of failure needs to be better understood in its different contexts. Situated learning experiences like undergraduate research offer students the opportunity to learn through participation in the scientific community of practice. This dissertation explores how undergraduate students define and understand the experience of scientific failure in the context of natural sciences research settings. Students were recruited through surveys to undergraduate researchers, where respondents could opt to participate in an interview. The study was guided by hermeneutic methodology. Hermeneutic analysis revealed that students saw failure as particular outcomes, responses, or as a process. These were not mutually exclusive definitions as students sustained multiple conceptions of failure simultaneously. Students also rationalized failure methodically, by admitting their inexperience in the research setting, experiencing some emotional distress, recognizing specific skills for managing failure, and finding an opportunity for learning. Students responded to failure with begrudging acceptance, based on their perception of failure as a part of the scientific process. Hermeneutic analysis through the community of practice (CoP) framework demonstrated that scientific failure could involve student participation within the facets of (1) domain through epistemic engagement, (2) membership through mentorship, and (3) practice through critical reflection of the process. This work supports arguments for allowing broader participation of students in undergraduate research and highlights the key role of mentorship in these spaces in facilitating students' sense-making of the failure experience. While this work cannot make any conclusions about students' experiences of failure in the undergraduate science classroom settings, it establishes that this meaning-making experience can be valuable to students as a means of achieving a science epistemology. Translating this learning into the classroom will require investigating how metacognitive training utilizes reflection as an epistemic practice and how students' identities impact their perception and experience of failure. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]