As Deacon indicates, undergraduates are becoming an increasingly important part of many faculty research teams. Although the undergrads have limited time and expertise, Donald J. Ciappenelli, director of the chemical laboratories, says they make up for those deficiencies in other ways.

"Undergraduates are brand-new and fresh, Grad students have a different point of view since they have already gone through college," he says, adding. "Undergrads are exploring and are often original."

"The students are very conscientious and smart. They really care about what they are doing," comments Jerome Kagan, professor of developmental psychology, who has two undergraduates working with infants in his lab at William James Hall.

Most psychology students who are writing a thesis must spend time in a laboratory gathering and recording data, but Kagan says the department also has some work-study students and some volunteers. "They say that they like working in the lab and I believe them," he remarks.

One of the reasons for the enthusiasm, says Ciappenelli, is that students can participate in work on the cutting edge of scientific research. "They are not given make work. We don't have the time or the resources for that. Students can be part of a research and can co-author a scientific article. It's a lot more valuable to them than a non-lab thesis which gets locked away in Widener."

But Dowling cautions that undergrads do not spend enough time in the laboratories to do trailblazing research on their own. "We pick projects that are manageable in the short time available to do them--three months is not really enough time to do anything really significant," he says, adding, "undergrads are real apprentices and we expect the least from them."

And while the apprentices generally report satisfaction with the work they have done in the laboratories, there are some problems, including graduate students and travel. "Some of the graduate students are hostile, they think we're invading their turf," says one undergrad researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, but adds. "It's also tough to generalize; many of them are terrifically nice and helpful."

For science concentrators, who decide to do lab work at the Medical School, commuting becomes an added inconvenience. As Michael Aronow '84, a Biochem concentrator who spent 20 hours per week this past year at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studying cell biology, says. "During the fall and spring I rode my bike and that was no problem, but during the winter riding the shuttle became a bit of a hassle."

But despite any obstacles, the undergrads for the most part seem to have positive experiences. Senior Dan Chung is typical: "I thought that it would be very time consuming and tedious, and it was, but more importantly it was very, very rewarding."