Emily Hildreth is an international studies major with plans to go to law school. But this summer she was in a laboratory researching the disappearance of white oak savanna.
Hildreth was a visiting student at the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research, or SPUR.
She presented her findings at the program’s Undergraduate Research Symposium on Aug. 31.
SPUR offers students a chance to learn from experts, think innovatively, and practice speaking about science, according to SPUR director Peter O’Day.
“The purpose of the program is to provide an avenue for undergraduates to learn about science through hands-on experience,” O’Day said.
University students from Oregon and from around the country participate in ongoing research in life science laboratories during the summer, earn a weekly $300 stipend and take science-related trips around the state.
“During the summer, students are required to write a research paper and they’re also required to give a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation at our end-of-the-year symposium,” O’Day said.
That last part is essential for O’Day.
“When we communicate science it’s really important to communicate science well, to be prepared to say what you mean and to understand how your audience is going to interpret what you say, make sure they get the message you want to send,” he said.
SPUR student Jennifer Comstock agreed, and credited her mentor Patrick Phillips with teaching her how to communicate about science.
“Data is meaningless without the story to go along with it. You have to set up the story before you can tell it. Patrick taught me all about setting up stories,” she said.
The program is competitive, especially for visiting students. University students have to be recommended for the program by a professor. Only 24 visiting students are accepted out of 300 applicants.
“It’s hard to get in. You need good grades,” O’Day said.
But potential matters even more, he said.
“We don’t accept people who have great grades and only great grades. We’re looking for people who think outside the box and can come up with great ideas,” he said.
Student Matt Britton said, “I think (good grades are) kind of a requisite. They want students who can pass their classes.”
Britton is a neurobiology student who studied the guts of microscopic worms.
“I studied how locomotion – just movement in space – is a product of individual cells working together. A worm gets hungry, it changes its behavior so that it increases the probability of finding food, much like humans do,” he said.
O’Day speaks highly of Britton, who is the minority in the SPUR program: He’s white and male.
That’s because another goal of the program is to increase diversity in the sciences. In fact, the program was a recipient of the University’s 2007 Martin Luther King Jr. Award.
“Before there was public funding of sciences you had exclusively white males, rich white males. They had to have some sort of sponsorship for their science or be independently wealthy,” O’Day said.
Hildreth, a SPUR student from the University of California, San Diego, said the program is very multicultural and has at least an even number of males and females.
“I think that it’s probably still more men than women at my school, but I think that is something that is changing in general,” she said.
All of the students spend at least 40 hours per week in the lab during the summer. O’Day says that’s because of the excitement of being the first person to have done a particular experiment.
Comstock said, “You try to get as much time in as possible because there’s some really great things that can come out of lab. Besides being interesting, if you put the time in, your work can get published and that’s amazing for grad school and just personally.”