Increasing numbers of undergraduates seek out research experiences, and the best students now expect to be able to join research projects. Research experience is one of the best ways for students to learn science, so faculty are also incorporating research into coursework. At the same time, faculty members are trying to advance their own research activities. We hope to benefit both ourselves and our students when we incorporate them into our research, despite the time inevitably required for teaching them about what we’re doing. All of this means that we must design student research programs carefully.
Results/Conclusions
At Hamilton, we balance these different goals in several ways, including: collaborating with other faculty members; sharing research students among faculty; varying the lengths of time we take summer students; using nearby field sites; conducting ecological studies on nearby state and private (The Nature Conservancy) preserves; running long-term studies to which students contribute; and requiring a research project from all senior majors. We also set limits to what students can do, recognizing the range of student skills, student availability, and safety concerns. In this talk I’ll describe how these features have shaped our studies of a sand barrens and a freshwater marsh in central New York, enhancing the research possibilities for both students and faculty.
