Undergraduate Summer Research Provides Taste Of Laboratory Life

HANDS-ON ENDEAVOR: Aspiring science writer Dawn Breault did summer research with cell biologist Sam Bowser at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, N.Y. Many undergraduate students are returning to their respective campuses a little wiser in the ways of science after spending their summer vacations working on research projects at various institutions across the United States. In most cases, the experience helps undergraduates determine if they really want to pursue a career in science. It provides an advantage for researchers overseeing undergraduates, as well: another pair of hands in the laboratory. And perhaps most important, summer programs give researchers the opportunity to pass on their expertise to future scientists. Organizations like the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Chevy Chase, Md.-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) provide millions of dollars for summer research projects at institutions throughout the United States. For example, in 1996, HHMI's Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program awarded a total of $45.4 million in grants to 52 public and private baccalaureate and master's institutions. In addition, many academic institutions offer their own undergraduate research programs. One of the most highly regarded is the California Institute of Technology's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF), which provided grants for more than 200 undergrads annually to conduct independent research projects under the tutelage of a mentor. SURF students get experience in presenting their results at a special "SURF Seminar Day." According to Caltech administrators, about 20 percent of SURF participants publish their findings in scientific journals. Restarting The Continuum OPPORTUNITY: NIDA"s Stephen Heishman notes that independent student research supplements "programmed" lab exercises. In the words of Jeff Witherly, director of outreach and education at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), researchers in a sense are "restarting the research continuum." For some scientists, the programs may be the only arena available for teaching and interacting with students. Carole Browne, codirector of the NSF-funded Research Education for Undergraduates site at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass., notes that some of the faculty members who participated in this first summer session at MBL are from graduate or medical schools and thus don't normally have the opportunity to work with undergraduates. CONNECTING: Smithsonian paleobiologist Conrad Labandeira says overseeing interns gives him a rare opportunity to teach. Working with students also appeals to Conrad Labandeira, a research paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who oversaw his fourth intern this summer. "Curators don't really have an opportunity to teach at the undergraduate level," he says. "It does give you contact with students and some sense of satisfaction that students are engaged and actively interested in a certain type of research." Interacting with students can have some unexpected benefits for researchers. For example, undergraduate workers can increase lab creativity by providing a fresh look at old problems. "These young kids get in here and they don't know right from wrong, up from down half the time," suggests Witherly. "It really can cause the seasoned researcher to stop and pause and say, 'Well, you know, I never really thought about it that way.'" On the other hand, Stephen Heishman, summer internship coordinator for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), notes that it takes extra time and energy to teach students various laboratory techniques. Despite these drawbacks, he contends, the benefits are worth the effort. HELPING HAND: Illinois' Christopher Phillips, left, revived a dormant project with the aid of undergrad Jarrett Johnson. One of the biggest benefits for Christopher Phillips, an assistant research scientist for the Illinois Natural History Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was an increase in manpower at minimal costs. His undergraduate summer student, Jarrett Johnson, came to him through a university program funded by HHMI's Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program. Johnson was slated to assist Phillips on a project he had put on hold for three years for lack of staff and funding. Johnson is collecting data on a population of a rare, all-female species of salamander at a nearby amphibian breeding pond; the species reproduces clonally but uses the sperm of another species' male to fertilize its eggs. Johnson's work on the project helped Phillips save some cash and provided enough data to publish a paper, to which Johnson will contribute. Despite his success story, Phillips warns that researchers should fight the temptation to hire a bunch of undergraduates in place of grad students. "Undergraduates don't substitute freely for master's students," contends Phillips. "It's a whole different personnel slot." Even the most capable undergraduates, he cautions, are not able to dedicate as much time or energy as a grad student would. Undergraduates can glean a lot from their summer lab experiences. Most college lab courses provide neither the repetition nor the modern equipment necessary to allow students to practice running a gel or doing a tissue culture. "When you're in a big lecture class, it ends up being 'read from the book' or 'just memorize these facts,'" says Ben White, a junior psychobiology major at Yale University. White, who worked at MBL this past summer studying the microbial defense mechanisms of various marine models, adds: "You don't really get the hands-on experience. You scratch the surface with some of your biology labs in college. Here I'm running gels every day." California Institute of Technology SURF Office Mail Code 139-74 Pasadena, Calif. 91125 surf@cco.caltech.edu (626) 395-2885 Fax: (626) 449-9649 http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~surf/ Howard Hughes Medical Institute Office of Grants and Special Programs 4000 Jones Bridge Rd. Chevy Chase, Md. 20815-6789 (301) 215-8870 Fax: (301) 215-8888 The sentiments of White, Tessara, and Haley are not uncommon. A recent book by University of Colorado sociologists Elaine Seymour and Nancy Hewitt suggests that undergraduate science majors crave something more hands-on than the typical biology or chemistry lecture. Seymour and Hewitt wrote Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Are Leaving the Sciences (Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 1997) in response to the large number of science, math, and engineering majors who had changed their fields of study because of boredom or lack of interest. According to the book, which consists primarily of students' accounts of their experiences, the type of teaching that undergraduates encounter rarely engages their interests. Seymour's research assistant, Anne-Barrie Hunter, recalls, for example, how students complained about "professors with their backs to the students scrawling chalk formulas across the blackboard, not giving any context for why this formula was important." According to Hunter, the book is a good indication that science education should involve more hands-on, open-ended exploration that engages the students and makes them responsible for their own learning. Summer research programs provide those opportunities. Aside from en-couraging undergraduates to practice different techniques and activities, lab experiences often let students see the role of those activities in the greater context of the researcher's experiment or project. As part of her summer stint in the lab, Tessara did cell cultures from patients' blood and prepared their chromosomes for cytogenetic analysis. Meeting patients and taking their histories enabled her to see firsthand the people who will be most affected by her research. "I was able to do my own science," says Tessara of her three summers at NHGRI. "To be able to use your mind and be creative and plan your experiments and see the results is really satisfying." Undergraduates also gain a nice addition to their r^Îsum^Îs and contacts who will assist them with graduate school applications or help them seek future employment. But more important, summer research may help students determine if graduate school is, in fact, where they belong. "Doing research as a career is something you really need to enjoy doing," states HHMI president Purnell Choppin. "You can be quite intelligent and not have the knack for doing original research. You have to find out whether that's what turns you on and whether you're good at it or not." But having a knack for doing laboratory research doesn't necessarily make one a successful scientist. More and more, investigators are forced to perform both inside and outside of the laboratory. "It's a multitasking endeavor now," states Sam Bowser, a structural and cell biologist who oversees students at the Wadsworth Center, a New York State Department of Health laboratory located in Albany, N.Y. "It's not enough just to be good in chemistry and biology, you have to be good in public relations, you have to be good in administration and management-it requires a whole bunch of skills that go beyond the simple science education." The desire to become a scientist is, however, by no means a prerequisite for participation in a summer research program. Dawn Breault, a summer worker at the Wadsworth Center, expects to graduate from Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., in December with degrees in both biology and communications. Breault, who researched primary cilia and the cytoplasm this summer, hopes to be a science writer and wanted lab experience to better qualify her for the field. Breault is atypical in another sense: She's 36 years old. INCREASING AWARENESS: Carmen Mannella of the Wadsworth Center notes that students who don't plan to become scientists also benefit from undergrad research experiences. In recent years, NSF has increasingly embraced the recruiting of students like Breault, who don't plan to pursue a Ph.D. or M.D.; they merely want to get a firsthand look at the inner workings of a laboratory. "Recently there have been questions about the number of scientists needed in the country and the number of Ph.D.'s we're producing," explains Carmen Mannella, director of the summer undergraduate research program at the NSF-funded Wadsworth Center. Mannella notes that "NSF is saying, 'make the public more aware of science and use this program to some extent to do that, not only to convince kids to go to grad school.' I think five years ago that would have been unheard of." At the very least, a summer of science research is a unique opportunity to get a better idea of what it means to be a scientist. For Carla Tessara, the experience has surpassed any expectations. "You can see that it can be a very social job, it can be a very exciting job. It gives you hope that it's actually a great career."

Undergraduate Summer Research Provides Taste Of Laboratory Life

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