Your professor walks up to you in the office, proffers a hand and calls you "partner."
For sophomore Laura Dilly, that single gesture by lecturing fellow Herb Childress sticks out as one of the highlights of her "exciting" research involvement at Duke.
Dilly is one of a growing number of Trinity College undergraduates who have had mentored research experiences with faculty members. Two years ago, 13 percent of the graduating class had had such an experience; last year, that number climbed to 29 percent.
Dilly is helping Childress investigate what authors, theorists and scientists consider adulthood to be. A larger study will then use this definition to examine how and whether American high school structures promote or hinder the development of these attributes.
Working with Childress has been an invaluable experience for Dilly. "He has been nothing but a fantastic leader, partner, mentor and source of encouragement," she said. "I almost feel like a citizen of academia because of this active process of discovery learning."
Dean of Trinity College Robert Thompson said the increase in undergraduate research reflects an underlying philosophy that undergraduate education in a research university should be inquiry based, and pointed to the curriculum as a way to achieve that goal.
"We want to see the number of students engaging in research continue to increase," Thompson said. "One of the objectives of Curriculum 2000 is to provide the curricular experiences necessary to prepare our students for this engagement."
Thompson said research experience is defined in two ways: students either participate in a mentored research project that does not carry course credit, like a summer research fellowship, or complete an independent study that carries a Research code.
This latter type of independent study, he said, indicates that students have engaged in the process of inquiry and produced an appropriate product, like a research paper, poster session or performance.
Junior Casey Held said that while Curriculum 2000 has encouraged breadth in education, it did not influence her decision to pursue a laboratory position last summer. Working under assistant research professor Michael Hauser at the Duke Center for Human Genetics, she researched Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy 1A and an eye disease called Hereditary Benign Intraepithelial Dyskeratosis.
"I would have done it even without the requirement," Held said. "Lab work was something I was interested in even before I came to Duke, and Duke's reputation as one of the best research universities in the country was actually part of the reason I applied here."
Junior Sravan Kakani, who also worked at the center last summer, said the best part of research was the application of biology he had learned from his genetics coursework to the research he was conducting.
"I got to use some advanced technological equipment and computer programs that are probably at the forefront of genetics research," Kakani said. "All of the laboratory work throughout the eight weeks reinforced many of the concepts I had learned in the classroom." The Office of Undergraduate Research Support encourages student-faculty involvement with its year-long and summer programs, ranging from the Beckman Scholars program in biology and chemistry to Deans' Summer Fellowships in all disciplines.
Last week, the University also hosted The Triangle Undergraduate Research Symposium, a multidisciplinary symposium showcasing inquiries in the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and humanities by students from Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, North Carolina State University and Salem College.
Assistant research professor Allison Ashley-Koch, who mentors Kakani, said she has noticed an increase over the past five years in the number of undergraduates pursuing research experience.
"I have had the pleasure of working with students through a number of mechanisms, including work-study, the Howard Hughes Fellowships [for Undergraduate Independent Research in the Biological or Neural Sciences] and independent study courses," Ashley-Koch said. "They realize that participating in research better prepare them for a medical career."
Dilly summed up the thoughts of many about the benefits of mentored research when she said that Childress helped her experiment with her own thoughts while working towards a common, fruitful goal.
"He has taught me to appreciate the creative and challenging process of producing an original academic product," Dilly said.
"The beauty of this kind of one-on-one research is that you cannot hide within your thoughts or those of others."
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