Undergraduates relish research opportunities

For two PSU seniors, the opportunity to do research is opening doors to a future that neither might have imagined a few years ago. Meryl Twarog, Girard; and Brent Cameron, Bartlesville, Okla.; are two of just 14 students nationally who were selected to participate in a summer biomedical research opportunity at Washington University in St. Louis. Both are chemistry majors at PSU.

Twarog, whose father is the owner of a Girard nursing home, and Cameron, whose father is a medical doctor, have both planned on careers in medicine for some time. The research they have been allowed to do, however, has caused both students to ponder medical career paths that they hadn’t when they arrived on campus.

"I originally wanted to be an M.D.," Twarog said, "but the more you get into research, the more (interesting the M.D.-Ph.D. program becomes)."

"The M.D.-Ph.D. program is really a good program," Cameron said. "Although it is expedited, it still takes seven or eight years. Only the top schools have medical scientist training programs."

Whether they pursue careers as medical scientists or M.D.s, both students say the research they have done at PSU and the research they are able to do in special programs such as this summer’s has benefited them in many ways.

"Research teaches you to think in different ways," Twarog said. "You have to think abstractly."

"Research teaches you to work through problems," added Cameron. "It also helps you get admitted to med school."

Virginia Rider, a member of the faculty in the Biology Department and a student research adviser, said research opportunities are especially important for undergraduate students.

"It is really the first time most students will gain insight into the mechanics of conducting a research project," Rider said. "Students develop better communication skills because they have to present their data and discuss its importance in the bigger body of knowledge. Undergraduates who generate research data and present at local and national meeting are more competitive for professional schools. Moreover, they grow so much personally that the experience benefits them regardless of their final profession."

One thing that young researchers discover early on, Rider said, is that failure is an important part of research.

"Many students become discouraged by failure since most experiments fail," Rider said. "Others discover the thrill of finding out something that no one else in the world knows at that moment. Conducting research as an undergrad teaches much more than the science (though the students don’t know this)."

Learning does not go just one direction, Rider said.

"Students chosen to do undergraduate research can do amazing things," Rider said. "I always learn from their research efforts because the students have no bias. So in fact, the faculty benefit by seeing a problem from a fresh approach."

Rider said that several of the faculty at PSU are part of the Kansas-IdeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (K-INBRE) program, which provides research support for students at PSU as K-INBRE scholars. K-INBRE is a multimillion-dollar grant award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The student researchers give much of the credit for their success to Rider and their other research mentors at PSU.
"She doesn’t sit there and show you everything," Cameron said of Rider. "She makes you do it yourself. She is more of a guide."

Twarog worried that she wouldn’t find other research mentors who could match the personal attention she has received at PSU. Both said that faculty throughout the department and elsewhere on campus have taken a real personal interest in them and their success.

"We are having Ph.D.s write us recommendation letters and they really know us," Cameron said. "They take the time to talk to us about what’s going on in our lives beyond school."

For Rider and the other faculty research advisers in the department, working with the students has its own rewards.
"I love to see our students out in the world competing with the best this country has to offer," Rider said. "Many will choose to come back to Pittsburg because the quality of life here is great. But going out in the world and knowing where you fit is very rewarding."

Rider said that PSU’s efforts to provide undergraduate research opportunities set Pittsburg State apart from many universities, especially large universities with a research emphasis. Few undergraduate students have the opportunity to do research, she said, "because it is time consuming for the mentor and expensive."

Despite that, some major funding agencies in the U.S. have tried to earmark resources to support undergraduate research because they understand that undergraduate research is important if the nation is to recruit biomedical researchers for the future.

---Pitt State--