ABOVE: Undergraduate students face an uncertain future as schools wrestle with tentative fall plans.
COREY GARZA/CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, MONTEREY BAY
While many universities weigh a return to in-person classes this fall, research progress in the fall could be stymied if students continue to shelter in place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic or if labs remain shuttered even when campuses reopen. Undergraduates in particular are important contributors to ongoing research, scientists say, but their return hinges on the virus’s progression over the summer.
“If my students aren’t in lab, the research just can’t happen,” says Annaliese Franz, a chemist at University of California, Davis. Because of the pandemic, her five undergraduates, some of whom have priority in working in the lab over her PhD students, have been barred from continuing their experiments synthesizing new molecules, a major contribution in driving Franz’s research developing biofuels forward. Moving into the fall, Franz ...
