Many Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) students do not get a chance to conduct research until they are in a graduate program. With the Wyoming Scholars Research Program (WSRP) at the University of Wyoming, undergraduate students have an opportunity to conduct scientific research and to work in a real-world lab environment under their faculty mentor, a professor in a STEM field. This program has grown since opening in the Fall of 2015, starting with four students in the program. Now there are 36 students being funded for the program.
The WSRP gives undergraduate participants many skills for not only their future fields, but also for general transferable skills, like writing a resume and talking in front of specific audiences. The program has more benefits than simply the obvious of learning how to research, so that students are more prepared for the work force or for graduate school.
“They [the student participants] learn resume-building, resume-writing, and oral and written communication, like how to give talks,” director of the WSRP and professor in the Life Sciences program at UW, Dr. Jamie Crait, said.
Development is important in any STEM field. With undergraduate research, the student participants in WSRP have an impact not only on themselves, but on the scientific community as well.
“The data they [the student participants] collect, the results they accrue, are valuable for their mentor’s lab, so they can present these results in conferences or even publish them in peer-reviewed journals, so this is an opportunity for them to advance scientific fields,” Crait said.
Even if the research is strictly about the subjects of science, engineering, and math, there are lot of diverse projects that students have done with the WSRP, some that have even allowed students to explore other parts of the world. The student participants’ research allows them to have a unique and beneficial experience with the WSRP.
“We’ve had several students who have done projects in other countries, so we have students that have worked on water cycles and tropical birds in Panama, we have a student studying fish genetics in Africa. We have had some good, memorable projects,” Crait said.
Freshman participant in the WSRP, Tatiana Rice, is currently being exposed to this experience. Rice’s project revolves around tadpoles and their reactions to light inside the tank. After the research is conducted, it is possible that it could lead to other experiments being done on tadpoles, such as their neurological processes and how it impacts the tadpoles’ actions concerning light.
“We can go to different high schools, middle schools and elementary schools around the state and present what we study and what program we’re a part of, so that students understand the opportunities that the University of Wyoming has in the STEM fields,” Rice said.
The WSRP is a part of the Science Initiative, an initiative propositioned by the state of Wyoming to UW to upgrade the outdated facilities and improve the quality of their STEM courses. The Learning Actively Mentoring Program (LAMP)–a program that focuses on collaboration with other science teachers across Wyoming to better the STEM programs at UW and other schools–is also a part of the Science Initiative and WSRP wants to collaborate more with them for outreach purposes in the future.
“We are working with the LAMP program on this travel team thing to get more students out into the communities, kind of knitting those two programs together more,” Crait said.
