I welcome interested undergrads who want to gain hands-on experience in all steps of scientific research. There are two (non-exclusive) avenues of becoming an undergraduate member of my lab: |
|
1) UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY (UROP):
You can enroll in BIO SCI-296: UROP Apprenticeship (1 - 3 credits; U). This involves 3-9 h of participation in one of the research projects currently ongoing in my lab (check out my project discription in UROP), plus participation in an UROP seminar (1h/week). Due to the seasonal nature of my research, spring and fall semesters will likely entail different types of research participation:
In the spring semester, you will likely start out doing call or data analysis / entry using the data gathered during the previous field season. Once the frog breeding season begins in late spring, you will learn how to record frog calls, and you will accompany me or my grad students to the ponds to record and catch frogs. The benefit of participating in UROP dring the spring semester is that you will get a broader overview of the different aspects involed in my research, plus you will gain some field experience. On the downside, there is not enough time to gather / analyze sufficient data to present your work at UWM-Biological Sciences Research Symposium that is held each April.
In the fall semester, you will spend the whole semester doing call or data analysis / entry using the data gathered during the previous field season. The benefit of participating in UROP dring the fall semester is that you will probably analyse a sufficiently large data-subset to allow you to prepare and present a poster/talk at the UWM-Biological Sciences Research Symposium in
April of the following semester.
2) INDEPENDENT STUDY
You can enroll in BIO SCI-290: Independent Study and Research (1 - 3 credits; U), or BIO SCI-699: Independent Study (1 - 3 credits; U). I encourage students with interest in behavioral ecology and communication in anurans to contact me about developing their own research project that can be carried out under my supervision. Please consider, however, that behavioral experiments can take a lot of time (month to years) to complete, and the nature of research taking place in my lab limits field work to the time of year when actual breeding takes place at the frog ponds (April – July). Therefore, the time of year in which you enroll in indepentent study will largely determine the type of project you can do.
An independent study project in the spring or fall semester, is likely going to involve data sets that were collected by me or by my graduate students, but from which information answering certain behavioral questions can be extracted. Alternatively, projects based on literature reviews can also be conducted during these times.
An independent study project that involves field based data gathering carried out by yourself is most likely going to happend during the summer semester. Please consider, however, that it may take a long time and a combination of skills to complete a meaningful research project. Therefore, even if you only enroll independent study during the summer, you will have to put in effort to plan the project before the summer, and you will have to put in effort in analyzing the data after the summer.
My suggestion is to enroll UROP in the spring semester, to get a solid foundation in the research techniques required to carry out a project on anuran behavioral ecology. This will also give you a head start in planning your project. Then enroll an independent study during the summer to actually carry out your project. Depending on the scope of the data analysis involved in finishing your project, you might also want to enroll in another independent study in the following fall. This is a lot of time and effort spend on a single project! But if you do it right you might end up with a poster/talk that you can present in a local, national or even international meeting.
If you are interested in joining my lab, please contact me (hoebel@uwm.edu) to talk about your research interests.
Check out what other undergraduate researchers have done in my lab. |
