Many research opportunities are available to undergraduates at ASU through research programs and separate departments.
About 92 percent of a sample of graduating seniors have been involved in research or a capstone project during their time at ASU, according to the 2010 Graduating Seniors Survey Research Report.
John Hepburn, the vice provost for Academic Affairs, said all students in Barrett, the Honors College, are required to do some type of research as part of their mandatory honors thesis.
One undergraduate research program in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering is the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI).
“FURI was set up to give students more experience, an opportunity to work with faculty and a step up when applying to graduate school,” said Christine MacLeod, the director of FURI and associate director for Undergraduate Initiatives at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
Undergraduate research gives students experience outside of the classroom and more knowledge about what they’re learning in the classroom, she said.
“We want students to gain experience and to have hands-on experience in their major,” MacLeod said.
Though not all students create their own research projects, they’re not just participating in menial work, she said.
“The mentor and the student come up with project for them to do and then the student makes a schedule and then [the students] go into the lab or work on … whatever their research requires,” MacLeod said.
Students are encouraged to find a faculty member in their area of interest, and there are 90 spots available in the paid program.
There is a FURI Research Symposium today from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Engineering G-wing west patio.
The 2010 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium will also be held on Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m.
“Students have an opportunity to present their research findings,” MacLeod said.
Overall, MacLeod said there is one main difference between graduate and undergraduate research.
“The level of experience and expertise is a lot higher at the graduate level because they have higher level courses and they have a lot more access to faculty in their higher level courses,” she said.
Katherine Cai, a chemical engineering freshman in Barrett, the Honors College and in the FURI program, has worked on research at ASU since high school.
“I’m interested in a lot of environmental issues,” she said. “A lot of people in my lab are chemical engineers and they do water research.”
Cai said she worked at the Center for BioOptical Nanotechnology at the Biodesign Institute during her senior year of high school and in a neuroscience lab.
In the neuroscience lab, she helped train honeybees to respond to different odors.
“We exposed it to the odor and then we would have a little bit of sucrose there, so it’s in a sense rewarded … if it sticks out its proboscis,” Cai said, which is like a tongue for the bee.
She chose to work on research during high school for experience.
“I know that research is really important to science, and I thought it’d open a lot of doors in terms of giving me an opportunity to see what I’m interested in,” Cai said.
She also participated in the FURI Honors Summer Institute, where she worked with robots, and now works at the Center for Environmental Biotechnology.
“For environmental biotechnology … I’m trying to use bacteria to get rid of chemicals out of water,” she said, which is referred to as bioremediation.
The FURI program has been a help to her overall, Cai said.
“It helps support students who want to do research and don’t have the time to do research and get a job,” she said.
Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu
