Departments
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Week of 3 April 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 26 |
Feature
Article
Science Day '98 brings researchers into the spotlight
by Eric McHenry
David Shepro brought Science Day into being six years ago, he says, because he loves "elbow teaching." It's a term with at
least two implications: by being elbow to elbow with their mentors, students gain experience that's truly hands-on, and a nudge is often better guidance than an explanation.
"That's graduate teaching," says Shepro, a CAS professor of biology. "You don't lecture. You're right there at the bench with the student. It's an interpersonal experience, and no matter what the requirements are for the Ph.D., in the last analysis it's a research degree."
Science Day '98 will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 9, in the George Sherman Union's Metcalf Hall. It will showcase nearly 90 graduate research projects representing all of the University's natural and physical science departments, including those affiliated with the Medical Campus, the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Public Health. Students design posters that display in summary form their research methods and results. Poster presentation and viewing, Shepro says, is the format used at most professional scientific and medical conferences.
"Science Day affords graduate students the experience of presenting," he says. "At scientific meetings, the old method was 10-minute presentations. Today, with the plethora of investigations going on, there's no way to allow that many presentations -- you'd be there for weeks. Some conferences draw 15,000 people. So apart from special symposia that have themes and feature the top guns, poster presentation of scientific data has become the prescribed format, whether it's for astronomy or for biology."
At Science Day, the most outstanding presentations from each of the University's schools and colleges are recognized with honoraria. The University also confers matching awards to the recipients' laboratories, a President's Award, and a Provost's Award. The Community Technology Fund (CTF), which manages BU's venture capital fund and is responsible for technology transfer for Boston University and the Boston Medical Center, gives a prize to the presentation that shows the most potential for practical application and marketability in the future. Shepro calls these accolades "dollops of whipped cream," emphasizing that the day's purpose is to acknowledge the University's graduate scientists collectively.
"It's not a contest. It's a way of honoring graduate research. Any one award is really a reflection of the quality of all," he says. "Believe it or not, thesis research is generally more innovative, more on the cutting edge, less concerned with simply grinding out material than postdoctoral research. Graduate research is the creative life force of all the research programs on both campuses."
Because the annual event is only six years old, Shepro says, claims about the contributions past honorees will make to the world of science would be premature. He shares one success story, however, that he hopes won't be anomalous: the research of one student, Mark Lim (CAS'93, GRS'99), which debuted at Science Day '95 and was not singled out for any awards at the time, has gone on to receive two national prizes. A patent is pending, Shepro says.
"The track record of the winners of the Community Technology Fund Prize at Science Day, in terms of getting jobs in the technical area of their work, has been just excellent," adds Ashley Stevens, director of patent administration for CTF. "I think the people who do the sort of work that wins the CTF Prize -- and obviously we're looking both for scientific excellence and for potential commercial utility -- are very attractive to industry."
One indirect benefit of the attention Science Day calls to graduate student work has been to provide good models for undergraduate scientists. Because they are often close in age to the researchers whose work they are viewing, many undergraduates see for the first time that science has a face, and that it resembles their own.
"It offers our undergraduates who attend, sometimes because of assignments from the big introductory courses, a chance to realize that these researchers are only a few years older than they are," says Shepro. "It removes them momentarily from the formality of undergraduate scientific training and clues them in to the reality that this is what they're going to be doing in no time at all. And it's not about memorizing and categorizing. It's a blank sheet of paper."