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New UROP director Erskine: seeking to grow program and include arts and humanities
By Brian Fitzgerald
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Mary Erskine, UROP director. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Collaboration between graduate students and professors on research projects is common in higher education, but at BU such work increasingly includes undergraduates as well.
“For an undergraduate, involvement in research projects provides excellent preparation for graduate school and medical school,” says Mary Erskine, the recently appointed director of BU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). “But more important is the experience itself, because it could have a dramatic effect on a student’s education — it can help define career goals.”
Erskine, a CAS biology professor, should know. The behavioral neuroscientist says that after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biology, she was a research technician in a laboratory for five years before going on to earn her master’s and Ph.D. in reproductive endocrinology from the University of Connecticut’s department of biobehavioral sciences. “Being a research technician was a transforming experience — I realized how exciting research can be,” she says. “I think that if I had had a UROP-type of experience as an undergrad, I might have gone to graduate school sooner.”
During her postdoctoral training in UCLA’s department of psychiatry, she studied the development of physiological responses to stress. At MIT she received a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the study of neuroendocrine control of behavior. She came to BU in 1985 as a research assistant professor, and in 1990 she was appointed a Clare Boothe Luce Professor of Biology — a professorship that recognizes outstanding women in science, funded by the Luce Foundation. Her research involves the application of a wide variety of behavioral, neural, and physiological techniques to questions of how an organism’s behavior brings about changes in its own physiology.
Through UROP Erskine mentored biology major Jennifer Ziegenfuss (CAS’05) in a study last summer on the mating behavior of female rats. Ziegenfuss says that the program “has given me the opportunity to see if I love research or I hate it, and I am happy to have found that I really like it.” When she was a freshman, she thought she wanted to go into biochemistry. However, her summer experience helped steer her toward neuroscience.
Prior to UROP, BU had always had numerous opportunities for undergraduates to participate in real-world academic research, but it usually took place more informally within a specific school or department. UROP, which was created in 1997 to foster such faculty-mentored undergraduate research, provides grants for student salaries and research supplies during the academic year and the summer. Based at 143 Bay State Road, it publicizes faculty projects available for student participation — in addition to surfing faculty home pages for similar interests, students can visit www.bu.edu/UROP. The program also helps students apply for funding and prepare research proposals. A faculty committee evaluates the proposals and decides which ones merit funding. UROP is instrumental in letting students know what kinds of funding are available for their projects and in administrating those funds. As well, the program offers active undergraduate researchers who are not receiving academic credit for their work a chance to apply for faculty matching grants and summer research awards. In addition to the major funding by BU, UROP hosts programs funded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the NIH.
UROP also assists students with dissemination of their research findings. Indeed, faculty-undergraduate collaboration frequently leads to coauthorship of research in publications, many of which are listed on the program’s Web site. During the seventh annual Undergraduate Research Symposium on October 15, more than 60 UROP students from disciplines across the University presented posters about their summer research projects on the first and second floor lobbies of the Photonics Building. Erskine says that the event gave the students the opportunity to present the results of their work and the interesting challenge of conveying their complicated, discipline-specific projects in layman’s terms.
One of Erskine’s goals is to expand opportunities to students in the arts and humanities. “The program’s definition of research is broad, but so far we’ve had just science and engineering students involved,” she says. UROP is open to any scholarly activity that leads to an original critical theory and interpretation, but in order to expand beyond the natural sciences, “we’re going to need input from various departments on what constitutes an independent research project in their areas,” she says, especially one that isn’t necessarily hypothesis-driven.
“I’m also looking forward to growing the program,” she says. “We’re looking to bring in a larger number of students over the next few years.” Last year UROP had more than 150 applications, and 83 applicants received funding.
Erskine is “excited about directing UROP, because the program facilitates hands-on learning, something the students never experienced in the classroom,” she says. “Students get into the lab and understand for the first time the patience that it takes — and sometimes the drudgery involved — in coming up with a new piece of information about the natural world, one that has never been known before. UROP also gives us an opportunity to reach the students who are exceptionally creative and bright — but aren’t particularly outstanding in the classroom. Some of them find their niche in research.”
22
October 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations