Mind Over Material

Students Needn't Wait Until Graduate School to Engage in Research

Most prospective students and their families already know the University of California's reputation as one of the world's top research institutions. What they may not know: Students can begin taking part in that research even as undergraduates.

Working with faculty mentors, students may find themselves pondering the secrets of nanoparticles in a laboratory, wading into the ocean to collect specimens, scrutinizing traffic patterns on streets and highways, or composing original music for the concert hall.

In so doing, undergraduates have a chance to participate in the University's research, and to help push forward the leading edge of human knowledge. And, not so incidentally, UC faculty know that engaging in research also opens doors in students' minds. "When they e-mail me in all caps to tell me about a satisfying interview they've conducted, when they turn in a senior thesis that has changed how they understand the world—these moments take me back to that day when I realized that I could transcend the ‘education' that had thus far involved learning from the lessons of others," says UC Davis professor Carolyn De La Pena. "And I could become one who builds upon those lessons to ask my own questions of the world."

When undergraduate students develop and pursue a research project, De La Pena says, they take the solid foundation of their UC educations and harness it for their own original designs. Sometimes the hardest task is simply to choose what to study. "Oftentimes this responsibility takes the form of discerning what they truly care about and impressing upon them the possibility—indeed the necessity—of putting their own minds to the issue," says De La Pena, who is director of UC Davis's American Studies program.

Some students begin with a question that seizes their imagination, seek out faculty mentors, and go on from there. For others, the research comes first, then ignites a passion for a subject, and the work.

During his junior and senior year as a Film Studies major at UC Berkeley, Nathaniel Dumas assisted a researcher in linguistic anthropology. "After working with her, I realized that I was not ready to let go of the life of a researcher," Dumas says. "I decided to pursue graduate study in linguistic anthropology, with an ethnographic focus on the communicative practices of ‘stuttering' speech communities in the U.S. and abroad."

It's an evolution De La Pena is familiar with. "Whatever emerges from those first steps into research," she says, "marks their transformation from students to scholars."

also in this issue:

Mind Over Material: Students Needn't Wait Until Graduate School to Engage in Research
Doorways Update Submission Site Opens
Analytical Writing Placement Examination to be Held May 10
Summer Sessions Offer a Chance to Explore
Spotlight on Housing

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