Lehigh University offers many options for students in any department to approach projects requiring them to innovate, inquire, design, discover and apply their findings. Whether you call it student research, thesis, independent study or capstone project, you can join lists of accomplished student researchers who have used Lehigh University’s resources to their fullest potential.
Collaborating with graduate students on their master’s projects or with faculty members on their funded endeavors are other routes available to undergraduates to enable them to not only gain experience in labs before graduation, but to help them narrow down their field of interest and, hopefully, identify a niche they can see a career for themselves in.
Gavin Fox, a second-year graduate student studying in the field of psychology, has played a major role in three key projects during their time at Lehigh, ranging from the development of a health-tracking app to the study of behavior development over time.
Fox was assigned multiple undergraduate students to assist in their work in the lab by their direct supervisor, Lucy Napper, associate professor of psychology at Lehigh. Before assigning undergraduates any responsibilities in the lab or on a project, Fox spends time getting to know the students so that the work assigned is relevant to the students’ interests, strengths and potential career paths.
“I might have one student work on creating a survey for one of our studies and another create a coding scheme so that we can break down our interviews into digestible themes,” Fox said.
Faculty research offers a guiding light to graduate students’ endeavors; Fox described the realm of research at Lehigh University as a “hierarchy,” with faculty members producing the most advanced ideas for research and receiving the most funding for doing so. Faculty members are advisors to graduate students who ideally will graduate with an intimate understanding of that particular field in their own niche. For an undergraduate student to assist in a faculty research study, either the student directly approaches a professor and expresses interest in their work, or a faculty member directly requests a promising student in one of their classes, Fox said.
Undergraduate research provides students with opportunities to experience what a field of their interest would be like in practice, not just in study. Fox said this experience is invaluable—to undergraduates and graduate students alike. It provides the former with time to hone skills that can be helpful in the field of their research but also may be transferable to other fields. Additionally, the experience is attractive on resumes to potential employers. For the latter, Fox said, teaching their research to others helps them learn it better, and Fox finds it valuable to have experience running a lab and a team of researchers because, ideally, that will one day be their profession.
More information on psychological undergraduate research can be found on the CAS’s website.