Large Crowd Attends Student Research Meeting

Students listen as Candice Canaday (right) describes her internship experiences at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory

A large crowd of about 30 students gathered to hear about the internship experiences of junior and senior Honors College students. Catherine Smead Phillips described her research in the psychology of risky behavior. That research, conducted with two other non-honors students (Alaina Atkinson & Zach Seaton), was recently submitted as a poster to the Southwestern Psychological Association. That group will meet in April 2011 in San Antonio.

Samson King and Courtney Fricks discussed their research on Alzheimer's Disease. They will send questionnaires to about 120 local area physicians in order to determine what medicines they prescribe for Alzheimer's patients. Their research proposal was recently approved by the SAU IRB. Both King and Fricks had to complete NIH training in research ethics first.

Nitish Narula spoke about the biological internship he attended at MIT in the summer. Narula said that the MIT internship was his second one. The summer before he had attended another similar internship at the University of Arkansas. He noted that while he had applied to internships after his freshman year, none of those came through. He speculated that the those who run such programs may be looking for students with credits in upper division courses.

Perry Grant, Clayton Martin, Martin Hawron, and Noe Cuevas talked about the research they conducted at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There, they worked on cutting-edge research in astrophysics. They shared a three-bedroom house ($2000/month rent) in Berkeley's Chinatown. Their expenses were covered by the program. However, they reported that food was expensive and Walmart nonexistent (in Berkeley itself, that is).

Carter Jones reprised some of his experiences in Russia (see HERE for a more complete report). Carter spent two week in Russia thanks to the SAU endowment donated by Amy and Pat Sixbey to honor retired professor David Sixbey. Carter said he was the only applicant and that he could have stayed longer had he wanted to. He also pointed out that students could apply and go even if they could not speak Russian.

Biology students Xi Wu, Kate Curtis-Dockter, and Candace Starr Canady also were present. Canady told of her work with coral research in Maryland.

All of the internship winners and student researchers expressed strong desire to attend graduate school. Many plan to wait a year after graduation before applying, however. All urged attendees to apply to internships because they provided very valuable experiences, and those would help their grad school applications stand out. When asked, all agreed that their undergraduate education at SAU had been sufficient preparation for their internship work. Narula said that was especially true on the theory side of things, but that his internship had provided him with laboratory experiences he could not duplicate here.

Students who wish to apply for internships in the future should secure STRONG letters of recommendation from faculty. That means, of course, that they should develop early and fruitful interactions with faculty at SAU. Nearly all of the internship winners agreed that making and nurturing those kinds of relationships was easier at SAU than at bigger schools. That is one of the big advantages of pursuing an undergraduate education at SAU. Naturally, a strong GPA is another requirement.

Dr. Bachri added that off campus research was a good deal for students and faculty. When he first arrived at SAU he quickly realized that he'd have to go elsewhere to conduct his own personal research. Thus, he found research programs (e.g., the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) where he and his students could work on research, a real win-win situation for both.

In the future, the SAU Honors College will collect information about internships in all disciplines and post them on its Web server. The Honors College is also interested in qualifying students for major awards such as Eisenhower, Truman, and Goldwater fellowships and scholarships.

Watch this blog for announcements of future meetings like this one. The promotion of undergraduate research and its concommitant effect on the promotion of academic engagement is one of the major goals of any honors program.