In August 2019, after our final exhilarating and exhausting summer running the Harvard Forest Summer Research Program in Ecology, we headed out to lunch to reflect on the past and venture into the future. We were looking to share our experience and knowledge about successful undergraduate research with the broader STEMM community. And what better way to do that than to write a book (or two). Three years in the making, with two perspectives intersecting and colliding to unifying, and through one pandemic, the books are here!
Success in Navigating Your Student Research Experience: Moving Forward in STEMM is a complete guide for students on how to make the most of intensive, experiential research outside a college classroom. Engaging in research as an undergraduate can lead to successful and rewarding careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). Being successful in an undergraduate research experience benefits from the self-awareness and planning, strategies and skills that Success in Navigating your Student Research Experience can help you build and develop.
The companion book, Success in Mentoring Your Student Researchers: Moving STEMM Forward is a guide for mentors on how to recruit, mentor, and support students through a student research experience in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) fields. Being a successful research mentor benefits from the self-awareness and planning, strategies and skills that Success in Mentoring your Student Researchers can help you build and develop. These are useful for mentors working with any students, but especially those who have been minoritized in STEMM or are the first in their family to attend college.
Both books feature short vignettes invited through open calls on social media from student researchers and undergraduate research mentors reflecting on their successes.
Vignette from Success in Navigating your Student Research Experience: Moving Forward in STEMM
Unexpected long-term outcomes from your research experience
Contributed by Karen Tang
One month into my undergrad, I received an email out of the blue inviting me to work as a research assistant. Little did I know that that one single email would change the rest of my life. That research opportunity led to working for another research lab, which then snow-balled into a three-month-long paid internship in Germany, and finally to an Honors thesis in addiction psychology, where I found my true passion in research. I have cherished all these memories, from conducting research in Europe and finding life-long collaborators and friends, to publishing five peer-reviewed articles as an undergrad, including a “Best Paper of the Year,” for an article that was rejected three times. I credit that single auspicious email in getting me into the highly competitive field of clinical psychology, where I am currently training to be a scientist-practitioner. As someone who is BIPOC and disabled, I never would have discovered my joy for research had I not taken a leap of faith in my first year as an undergrad.
Go ahead and take a chance on a research opportunity. It’s waiting right there for you. You simply have to reach out and seize it.
I dare you.
Order your copies today with the following links!
Sound Solutions for Sustainable Science 