“It’s definitely helpful to get credit for doing psych research,” Krueger says.

LEARNING THROUGH DISCOVERY

“When you do a hands-on experiment and hear something similar in class, then it clicks,” Viel, the director of Northwest Laboratories, says. “It’s putting a face to the concept.”

This approach to learning represents an increasing emphasis on experiential learning as a part of the undergraduate experience. Currently, all nine Life Science concentrations both require a research component and offer independent advanced research seminars.

This curricular requirement demonstrates the high value the Life Sciences Cluster has placed on undergraduate research.

“Just like writing, research is a skill we’re learning by practicing and doing,” says Nicholas K. Lee ’15, an organismic and evolutionary biology concentrator who is currently enrolled in LS100r. “It’s similar to Expos in that we’re learning a skill set, but it’s much more fun than Expos.”

Research classes differ from the type of lab work students see in required or introductory level classes, like Life Sciences 1a and 1b, where students often replicate experiments that have been conducted many times over, and that have specific expected results.

“These are not cookbook projects,” says Lue. “This is current, ongoing research.”

Steve A. Buschbach ’16 is studying mating practices in C. Elegans, a commonly researched nematode, in LS100r this spring. Enrolling in this class, Buschbach’s experience is a far cry from the time-tested drills and tasks most would expect in their freshman science course—the results produced and analyzed by Buschbach and the rest of the student team on the project could shed new light on previously unknown areas of biology.

Lee, the sophomore OEB concentrator, is one of Buschbach’s teammates.

“We’re exploring and asking questions that haven’t necessarily been asked before,” Lee says.

Buschbach agrees, saying, “The idea that we’re finding something that is new to science is awesome.”

Both the students and Viel, their professor, agree that this experience in a lab is essential to a proper understanding of science.

“You don’t really get a sense of how the story unfolds unless you’re in the lab,” Viel says. “Doing research is learning how to combine a certain number of facts into a narrative.”

TRYING OUT RESEARCH