Finding a research opportunity:
which type is best for you?
Perhaps you are interested in trying research, but you need to know whether doing it as course work or as a part-time employment or volunteer experience is best for you. In addition, you may also be wondering how to go about finding research in an area of biology that interests you.
Also, remember that research requires time. Several blocks of time of 3 to 4 hours each per week may be required to carry out your project. Occasionally you will need to be flexible about your hours. This is true whether you are pursuing research for course credit or as a paid or volunteer experience. The amount of time per week that you will need to spend varies from project to project. If you are doing research for credit or for pay, you will need to commit to a set number of hours per week . For this reason, you may want pursue a research project when your course load, workload and other activities are not extremely demanding. In addition, you should talk to your supervisor or course instructor about the specific time requirements before making a commitment.
Research in Course Work
If you have space in your course schedule and time in your weekly calendar, you may want to consider doing research for course credit. Most undergraduates take 1 to 2 credits for a semester-long research project. Be sure to meet with your academic advisor to determine whether research credits will count towards your degree and major if that is a consideration for you.
Research courses often require that you write papers and/or present a poster or talk on your research. These are excellent opportunities for you to develop valuable communication skills in the area of your research. However, you should expect that these requirements also contribute to the time you need to commit to the project.
In some courses and academic programs, you will receive assistance in finding a mentor. In others, you will need to find a mentor on your own. Be sure to check with the instructor of a research course to determine whether you will need to find a mentor yourself before you can register for the course. Some courses with a research component are described on this web site and on the Biology Course Information database.
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Research in Part-Time Employment
If you need to work part-time, working as a student hourly in a research lab can be a great way to get experience in lab procedures while earning money. However, many student hourlies start out by performing basic procedures and do not get involved in the discovery part of science until they have mastered these. In some hourly positions, research is not possible. If you are currently employed as an hourly or are looking for a position, ask your supervisor about the possibility of getting involved in a research project.
To find out about student hourly positions currently open, consult the UW-Madison Sciences Jobs category of UW Student Job Center web site.
The Bacteriology department's Career Guide web page lists a number of laboratories in a number of departments across campus that have sponsored undergraduate research projects and/or hired student hourlies in the past and may possibly be looking for undergraduates for similar positions currently.
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Research as a volunteer experience
If you are interested in pursuing research but do not need to receive credit or pay for the experience, consider approaching a potential mentor and requesting the opportunity to participate in his/her research program as a volunteer. This is a good way to explore research without some of the requirements of course work or employment. However, be aware that your mentor may still expect that you commit to a given amount of time per week or that you write a paper or give a presentation on your research. These requirements will vary with each mentor. You should discuss expectations with a potential mentor. Remember, training a new researcher in techniques, scientific process and the background of a specific field is a time-consuming activity for a mentor and his/her lab personnel. Therefore, you should be prepared to make and adhere to some commitments yourself. To find a volunteer research opportunity, you will need to go through a process of finding a mentor on your own.
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Finding research in an area of biology that
interests you
Often, finding a research opportunity requires that you first decide upon a broad area you are interested in and then find out which departments have research in that area. Because there are so many different departments in which biological research goes on on campus, you will need to develop a strategy for navigating through these possibilities. A sample strategy for finding departments with research on bacteria is given in the first link below.
Let's say you are interested in a research project with bacteria. Right away you may think of the department of Bacteriology. However, did you know that many researchers use bacteria as a system for studying genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology? With that in mind, you may want to add the departments of Biochemistry, Genetics and the Cell and Molecular Biology Program to your list. Are you interested in studying diseases caused by bacteria? If you are interested in bacterial diseases in animals, you may want to look into research in the departments of Medical Microbiology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine which are located in the Medical School or in the department of Pathobiological Sciences which is in the Veterinary School. Maybe you are interested in studying plant diseases caused by bacteria. In that case, you will want to look in the departments of Plant Pathology and Agronomy. Are you interested in how bacteria interact with other organisms in their environment? Bacterial ecology is studied in the departments of Plant Pathology, Soil Science and Bacteriology, to name a few. This list of potential departments is by no means complete.
How can you find out which departments have research using the organism or approach you are interested in? The best way is to make guesses based on reasoning like that above and then visit each department or program and read about the research in that department or program. You can visit by physically going to each department and asking for a list of faculty and their research interests. (The Timetable lists the location of each department's main office where you get this information.) Or you can surf the web pages of the individual biological departments or programs and get the same information. Most biological departments on campus have web sites that link to individual faculty web pages containing a description of that faculty's research.
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Questions or comments about this web site? Please contact Janet Branchaw,Center for Biology Education at (608) 262-1182 or email: branchaw@wisc.edu