The range of Student Research Experiences possible is vast.
Students will be exposed to research, creative, and scholarly work through course embedded experiences, and may go on to work independently with faculty or graduate students to identify an Advance SRE of distinction that fits their major and interest.
Traditional Music: You will be able to further your skills through participant-observation based research that can be used to help you produce musical performances of your own.
Architectural Studies: You will get to apply your own creative and technical skills to create solutions to a national or international call for design competition proposals. You will be able to enter the competition and exhibit your own solutions through original design drawing and models in the School of Architecture and Design senior exhibit.
Marketing: You will be able to study the marketing strategy of a local company and apply current research theory to provide recommendations to the company to improve their strategy. You will be given the opportunity to present these findings to the company as well as during Research Week.
Education Example:
What began as a traditional Children’s Literature course, transformed into a rich opportunity for professionalism and creative scholarship. The problem: to explore a missing gap in Louisiana Children’s Literature, which led to an undergraduate semester task and cultural research of childhood experiences in south Louisiana.
See the project below.
Abington-Pitre, A. S., & Bourque, R. M. (2021). Missing Voices Within the Classroom: Cultural Identity, Lexical, and Authenticity in Cajun, Creole, and Native American Children’s Literature.
Journal of Literacy Innovation, 6(1), 42-56.
Mechanical Engineering: You will get to work in a faculty member’s lab studying the use of virtual reality to help convey complex technical topics in the field of solar energy. Your active participation will have the possibility of involving you in numerous outreach activities as well as being listed as a co-author on publications.
Chemical Engineering: You will be able to work in a faculty member’s lab investigating methods of wastewater treatment for a future Mars colony. Your active participation can result in you being listed as a co-author on publications.
Trevian Ambroise is an undergraduate researcher who has worked with the Center for Louisiana Studies while completing his degree. He hosted a presentation entitled, "Re(visualizing) the Queen City: Geography of Emancipation" at the Student Center for Research, Creativity, and Scholarship (SCRCS) [link below]. Trevian is a senior at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette majoring in History.
This presentation discussed the development of African-American geographies over the course of the mid-1880's into the 1950's in New Iberia, LA.
This presentation was sponsored by the Student Center for Research, Creativity, and Scholarship as well as the Center for Louisiana Studies, and the College of Liberal Arts.
The link to virtual workshop recording is found here.
Please view this video from the Psychology Department which highlights undergraduate student research in the area of sexual violence. This video includes discussion about sexual violence involving drinking behavior, and sexual violence against minorities and women in the military. The video does include an introduction from the Department Head of Psychology, Dr. Amy Brown. Please view more information about Dr. Brown's lab.
Creative Writing: You will get to write poetry collections about the Atchafalaya Basin. You will be given the opportunity to read these poems at a public reading.
Modern Languages: You will be able to record and transcribe people speaking Louisiana dialects of French for research. You will then compile this research into a digital scrapbook with audio components, and be able to publish the scrapbook in UL Lafayette’s Digital Repository.
Health Services Administration: You will get to conduct a literature review to identify current standards of care. You will be given the opportunity to present these results of the study with a poster presentation during Research Week.
College of Nursing & Health Sciences Examples:
Jaden Romero is currently working closely with fellow peers and Dr. Tricia Templet to publish research titled “Pour Decisions: Alcohol Use, Screening, and Prevention in Adolescents.” A group of students completed this research during the first semester of their senior year to determine alcohol use in the adolescent population. They are hoping for the research to be published by the end of the Spring 2022 semester. Jaden is also an active participant in “The PREP Framework’s Impact on Pre-Licensure Nursing Students’ Critical Thinking in Medical/Surgical Settings,” a faculty led research project led by the College of Nursing. Jaden has served as a focus group leader for other research in the College of Nursing, spearheaded by Dr. Gwen Leigh on “Determining the Difference in Bedside vs. Remote Observation of Patient Simulation.” Along with this, he is working with peers on a quality improvement project on “Improving the Patient Experience through Nursing Leadership Rounds,” for his senior level leadership class. Jaden has participated in a multitude of other research opportunities, including participating in research with the Department of Psychology on “Childhood Adversity and Health Outcomes in a College Sample: Roles, Resilience, Social Support, and Mindfulness,” and has gotten the opportunity to participate in a client project where he completed research on the city of Arnaudville to identify and correct a problem within the community. Through this project, Jaden assisted with the implementation of an Alcoholics Anonymous group through St. Francis Regis Church and New Life Community Church of Arnaudville.
Biology Examples:
I’m Natalie Graham, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. While working as an undergraduate research assistant in the Stauffer lab, I reached out to one of my professors at the time Dr. Nigel D'Souza to help look for possible graduate school opportunities. That is when he emailed me about an REU program taking place in Bermuda. At BIOS (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences) research looks at the functionality of the shallow water reefs in the area. There were three major topics, including looking at environmental drivers of the organism themselves as well as community scale metabolism. This is the topic I chose as an interest since I have a passion for ecology. Another huge appeal to me was being able to experience ecosystems that are rare in the U.S., with southern Florida being the only place with coral species. I have always had “wanderlust” and plan on seeing all the different ecosystems the world has to offer by the end of my career, from tropical reefs to the polar seas.
I must give a special thanks to Dr. Nigel D’Souza and Dr. Stauffer. Without Dr. Nigel’s help, I would not have been able to attend this program. The feeling of applying itself was surreal, and the thought that my professor believed that I could get in was what really gave me the confidence to go all in for my application. I spent two weeks dedicating time to creating a CV, getting reference letters from professors I had professional experiences from, and writing my personal essay. Also, working in the Stauffer lab (Almost a year) gave me the experience I needed to stand out during the application process.
My reasoning for having such tenacity to get this position is my personal interest in coral reef ecology. I have wanted to study coral since the 3rd grade when I chose to write a book on the Great Barrier Reef. That is when I knew I would be Marine Biologist, specifically one that deals with impacts of climate change. Anthropogenic caused climate change is something I am deeply passionate about correcting. Many people are blind to the other world right here on Earth. The ocean is strong, powerful, and unpredictable, yet I’ve made it my mission to be a steward of these precious ecosystems so that one day, maybe another little girl will find her passion below the waves.
Jeanne Smith completed an internship in Key Biscayne, FL. The organization she worked with was a field school. This type of school hosts courses that train students for pursuing graduate and undergraduate degrees involving fieldwork. These are Jeanne's words, "The internship I selected involved Shark Research. It was everything you think, and more. I was able to learn about shark research and actually tag each shark we caught. We learned how to do biopsy’s, measure, and fin clip the sharks. The sharks we caught were Black tips, Black fins and Nurse sharks. We did catch one hammerhead. After all the procedures occurred, we released the sharks, only keeping an animal on the boat for 5-10 minutes. We did our fishing in Atlantic waters. We also got an opportunity to snorkel. COVID 19 did have an impact, there were only 5 interns including me that were accepted. Usually there would be closer to 10 interns accepted.
During this experience, I got an opportunity to talk to the people who were in charge about what I wanted to do with my biology major as a career. I have always been a good writer and speaker, as well as having a love for all things biology, specifically conservation. My new colleagues steered me in the direction of possibly looking into science communication. In a nutshell, this is a field that relays information from scientists to the public. Helping to increase the public's awareness and get them more involved in science. These writers inform people about issues like habitat loss or water pollution. Sometimes these people write grants or policies for other people’s work/research. They can also plan outreach programs. I would recommend internships or student research experiences to anyone with a biology degree, even if they don’t want to study sharks. I had been lost for a while figuring out what goals I wanted to pursue with my degree and this experience made it so much clearer, I am glad I decided to go.” See Jeanne's short presentation.
Biology: You can work in a faculty member’s lab to further study the topics that lab focuses on. Your active participation can result in you being listed as a co-author on publications.
Informatics: You get to analyze the website needs of an organization and design a website with this in mind, and the organization will publish the website. You will be able to write a report that explains your design decisions.
