RISEBIO
In my freshman year and first semester of my sophomore year, I participated in the RISEbio research program. This program takes first-year biology students out of traditional introduction biology lab classes and replaces them with a research methods lab and research lab experiences. Through this program, I got to learn basic lab skills and conduct research that will be used on a larger scale project in the future. The biggest projects that we had in this class were a research paper in the research methods lab, blog posts, and presenting research as a PowerPoint and a Research Poster. To do all these projects, we had to use the data that we gathered in the lab as well as other scientific papers to describe our research and explain why our research results are useful.
The RISEbio program gave me a lot of practice in reading, understanding, and pulling the important information out of a published paper. I have learned how to selectively read a paper and not get stuck in the nitty-gritty details of the paper. I learned that the best way to find research papers to use on a scientific project will be to use Google Scholar or the MavScholar webpages. This is because when you search your keyword, it will only bring up articles that are published in research journals. After finding an article, I was able to learn how to evaluate the scientific journal name and title of the paper to see if there would be a chance for me to pull useful information for my purpose out of the article. To pull information and data out of a study, I learned that it is important to read the methods section before you go to the results section to see what happened in the experiment. Although you do not need to understand the methods completely, it is important to make sure that the methods used in the experiment were good and that you do not see a flaw in them. While looking specifically at an article, I learned that you can get a lot of great background information from the introduction section that can be used to guide you to additional articles and resources. Besides learning how to find resources to use, I learned the importance of doing ethical research when animals are involved and how to ethically cite and give credit to others involved in the research project. Finally, being able to present my work is a huge thing that I learned in this program. I was able to present my research through a PowerPoint presentation to peers and CSET staff and as a poster to both CSET staff and at the URS. Having to present it this variety of ways, I learned when it is best to say something in simple terms and when I should use scientific terms to explain what happened. Presenting in a small formal setting also gave me practice in presenting my research so that I can hopefully use the critiques that I got to do an even better presentation at a formal conference.
After completing the RISEbio program, I decided to switch labs to one that was more closely related to what I wanted to do as a future career. Starting in the spring of 2020, I will research with Dr. Minicozzi on the comparative anatomy and functional morphology in terrestrial locomotion in fishes. I plan to use the skills that I used in the RISEbio program to allow me to be successful in learning new protocols and procedures as well as how to effectively communicate my research project to an audience when I get to that stage.
