Undergraduate Research Network
Research and UVa: Endless Possibilities & Opportunities
Research and UVa: Endless Possibilities & Opportunities
Author: Sarah Smith (ses6eu@virginia.edu)
Date: 2/14/2012
Hi all and welcome! This year, we’re adding a lot of components to make URN grow so that we can help you. Part of that effort is this: ‘The Lab Notebook’. For each entry, we’ll have UVa students who are members of URN or who are involved in research at our university share their experiences with you. Our hope is that this will give students who are interested in getting involved in research better insight as to what that really means for them - from finding a PI to finding a cure - we’re here to let you in on it all.
So first things first: allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sarah. I’m a second year pre-pharmacy student, working toward my BA in Biology. I’m an active member of URN and a co-chair of the Symposium committee.
My experience with research goes back to my junior year of high school. Through my junior and senior year I had worked on a project investigating genetic associations with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I fell in love with my lab and with research in general. I knew that whichever college I went to, I had to find a way to keep exploring what the scientific world had to offer through research.
My first instinct was to apply to small schools, where I envisioned professors knowing each and every student by name, and where I thought a research position would be guaranteed. I made a list of prospective schools and searched faculty websites for professors there with whom I shared research interests. All in all, by the end of my senior year, I had contacted professors at 8 different schools. Of these 8 schools, UVa was the only one with over 5,000 undergrads, and the only one at which I was afraid of becoming lost in the crowd.
Since I’m here writing today, it’s a given that in the end, I chose UVa. But if research is so important to me, and small schools advertise their ample research opportunities and sometimes even require that EVERY undergraduate student participates in some form of undergraduate research, one might question WHY I chose UVa.
Initially, I had only considered the ease of becoming involved in research. Being a state school, UVa has an incredibly large number of undergraduates, which scared me. How was I ever going to find a position in a lab with so many other outstanding students who could do the same? What I hadn’t considered is that with a large number of students, comes both a large number of professors, as well as a large amount of diversity in topics being researched.
UVa has over 50 departments, and it is possible for an undergraduate student to do research in any one of them. Every professor has a unique research interest, so within the college alone, a student with almost any academic interest can find a professor who is researching that topic. Additionally, UVa’s medical school offers even more research opportunities for motivated undergraduates interested in medical research. It’s possible, even for a first year in their first semester to start research.
Because I was so motivated to continue being involved in research, I signed up for a research for credit course during my first semester. Although it was somewhat challenging to find a lab willing to accept me in my first year, because I persisted and continued emailing and asking new professors, even after the first few said no, I was able to work in a pharmacology lab for my entire first year for credit. The research experience even paid off in the form of a summer job following my first year.
All in all, UVa was the right choice for me. There are ample opportunities for undergraduates to be involved in research, and a huge pool of resources for our researchers to use in their studies. Although I was afraid of not being able to find a lab, all it took was the effort to seek out professors and the persistence to continue asking for the opportunity to do research.