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Lab learners
Students of Experience

Junior entomology major Gretchen Schultz landed a spot on Joel Coats' research team, which searches for natural products that double as insect repellents -- for example, catnip, which keeps cockroaches at bay. Photo by Bob Elbert.

A great chance to learn
Call it quality, yet affordable, help. Or the best side of teaching. Or a good exercise in juggling. Or even, no big deal. Iowa State faculty members who find spots on their research teams for undergraduate students have called the experience all of these things. Conducting real-world research, or at least small parts of it -- an honor once reserved for graduate students -- increasingly is becoming part of the university experience of undergraduate students. Faculty say it's a wonderful way to get to know undergraduates well.

At Iowa State, undergraduates have two research options: set up an independent study that gets them academic credit for their research efforts, or land a part-time job as a research assistant in a faculty member's lab (faculty members set aside part of their research grants to pay their help). Either way, it's usually up to the students to find their spots.

Sometimes, lifelong friendships form, and sometimes students move on to another lab after a semester.

Entomology senior Gretchen Schultz worked in several labs before she landed in department chair Joel Coats' lab last spring. Last summer, a grant from Iowa State's Program for Women in Science and Engineering paid for her work in his lab, and this year, the Honors Program student is doing her senior Honors research project with him.

"In some labs, you work pretty much with graduate students, but you never see the professor," Schultz said. "I work a lot directly with him. He gives out projects and, in some cases, you get to help design the project. But it's up to the students to step up and say, 'I'd like to do this.'

"I'll graduate in December 2002 and I hope to stay in his lab until then," Schultz said. "This experience has confirmed that this (graduate school) is what I want to do."

Derrick Rollins, a faculty member in both the statistics and chemical engineering departments, works in what he terms "probabalistic" chemical engineering -- attempting to describe the likely behavior of all sorts of processes using mathematical equations rather than verbs and adjectives (also known in the field as modeling). But what he considers his most important work is mentoring students, including those in his research program.

"It's a good combination of teaching and research, and I really like the one-on-one, personal contact," Rollins said.

His biggest problem, he said, is getting a little overwhelmed when he's trying to coordinate too many students simultaneously in his research program. He's not stuck on recruiting only those at the top of their class.

"It's hard for me to say 'no' to anyone," he admitted.


Self-starters
Mechanical engineering's Judy Vance has been forced to learn to say "no." Vance is part of an interdisciplinary team that uses virtual reality simulations to test product designs, for example, where gears should go in a tractor cab.

"Students want to be involved in this stuff. It sells itself," she said. "The hard part is matching their skills to my research needs . . . and sometimes there is no match.

"I always have a waiting list. That's the sad thing," she said.

Vance said she makes the effort, though, for the chance to sell a student on graduate school, whether it's at Iowa State or another school.

"Most undergraduate students really don't know what faculty do. They think we teach one or two classes a semester," she explained. "At a (Carnegie) Research I school, we have a lot of research responsibilities, we are leaders in professional societies, we put time into our graduates and undergraduates.

"It probably would be easier to work only with graduate students, but undergraduates need to know what grad school is all about," Vance said.

She also does it to be in a position to help students when the job recruiters come calling.

"The recruiters come to faculty and ask, 'Who do you know on this list?' Students know that, and they want to position themselves for good jobs."

Students like Priscillia Ng, who won't receive her bachelor's degree until May but hopes to land a good job offer months earlier. A chemical engineering major, her hopes are on an environmental engineering job in a chemical plant.

"We have to make opportunities to learn. No one is going to hand you anything," she said. Ng has had several internships with Rollins for academic credit; she also has worked for the campus environmental health and safety department and in Monsanto's Muscatine plant.

Ng said her research experience gives her confidence and even some "for examples" to use when she talks to recruiters.

"I really think that self-development is more important than a 4.0 (straight-A grades)," Ng said. "Leadership skills, communication skills, the ability to balance studying and student organization work, count."

Ng acknowledged that one of her research independent studies culminated in a report that summarized everything she had tried that semester -- nearly all of which had failed. "It's a report for the next student that says, 'Here's what didn't work,'" she said.

Learning -- including failing -- on her own was a big lesson to learn. "A passive person wouldn't do well in that situation," she concluded.


Win-win deal
One of the red flags most faculty see to working with undergraduate students is that it takes time to train them -- in the key points of a research program, in lab techniques, in a faculty member's expectations of them. Most also admit, quite readily, that it's worth it, especially if a student sticks around for two or more years.

"If it's a priority, you make time for it, and to me, mentoring research assistants is the ideal situation for teaching," Rollins said. "I'm hoping the experience is good enough that they'll stay as long as they can."

"When you find the right student, it's a win-win deal," agreed health and human performance faculty member Doug King, who researches the body's biochemical responses to exercise and has at least one undergraduate student each semester on his team. "When you have students who are an integral part of your research, what you get back more than compensates for the time you put into them."

King typically looks for junior undergraduates, preferably those who have expressed interest in graduate school. But he also has hired freshmen. "They aren't quite as far along, but you don't have to hold their hand," he said. Faculty also said they have learned not to put strict deadlines on their undergraduates' research projects. It's rare for students to work more than eight to 10 hours a week in a lab.

"And we have to be careful; school has to come first," said Vance, who has heard about students so engrossed in research projects they fail to show up for classes.


A non-classroom chance to develop
Entomologist Coats has included undergraduate students in his research program for more than 20 years and currently hires five or six each semester, roughly matching the number of graduate students on his team.

"The research experience is an important part of their education," he said. "They learn what research is about, what lab techniques and field techniques are about; they learn how to fit into a team; they attend professional meetings where they learn about research at other schools and how it compares to what we're doing."

Not all that undergraduate students are asked to do in the lab is glamorous; sometimes it's downright repetitive, but "that's kind of the way research is," Coats said.

Coats uses words like "capable," "high ability," "self-starter," "dedicated to the task" and "dependable" to describe his best undergraduate research assistants. "When I talk to colleagues who are in government labs or industry now, they bemoan the fact that they have no students to hire," he added. Senior mechanical engineering student Michael Williams has worked on virtual reality projects with Vance and said the experience has helped him narrow what he'll pursue in grad school.

"As a mechanical engineer, the options are everything from lasers to designing air conditioning units to virtual reality. I'm a lot closer to choosing than I was three years ago," he said.

And despite the boost it might give a resume, job search or graduate school financial aid package, most students admit it's just really fun to spend time with their teachers outside of class.

"I've appreciated all the interaction with my professors. You know you're at the bottom of the totem pole in the lab, but they don't abuse that," Williams said.

Ultimately, faculty find rewards in some of the most unquantifiable aspects of a research lab as well.

"It's what all teachers want," Vance said, "a relationship with a student that says, 'I made a difference.' Sometimes you don't know it until eight years later."

-- Anne Krapfl
  University Relations

Senior chemical engineering major Priscillia Ng (left) is one of 10 undergraduate students on Derrick Rollins' research team this year. Photo by Bob Elbert.