Episode 10 – Research for Success

Sounds of Success – Episode 10 – Research for Success
===

Phil: hello and welcome to the sounds of success. My name is Phil Butler.

Christina: I’m Christina Bui. We’re pumped to be back in the recording studio, a lot of reasons, but especially for today, because this is our 10th episode

Phil: insert sounding.

Christina: So we’re really, really excited. This podcast started and. Fall 2020

Phil: and the throes of the pandemic in

Christina: the throws of the down from our living rooms.

I living rooms that I was recording with a $10 pair of Sony headphones that I bought in like 2016.

Phil: I was using the headphones you get with your phone for

Christina: free. That makes sense. Honestly, I should’ve just done that, but, um, now we’re in the studio. We’ve been in the studio for a bit, and it’s been a wild journey feeling professional.

We do feel very professional. My, my parents keep asking me what I do at work, and I cannot begin to explain what it is that I do at work.

Phil: I told this story earlier, uh, but students in my class this week were like, you should start a podcast. Like, well, let me tell ya. I have something you might just be interested in.

Christina: If it makes you feel better. I made my students listen to this podcast as part of an assignment. And somebody told me. Wow. The guests on the podcast was really awesome. And we should have her as a guest speaker in class. And I, I didn’t know what to do. Like awkward. I am your guest speaker. You see me every week, but yes, this is our 10th episode.

We’re super excited about it because today we are talking about undergraduate research and we have two very esteemed guests today. They’re both named Rob. Don’t get them confused, but they will be introducing

Phil: themselves. Uh, yeah. So let’s go ahead and head into the interview. Let the, our esteem guests introduce themselves.

Well today we have two esteemed guests with us on the sounds of success. We’re really excited to talk to doctors Crosnoe and Dr. Reichle, um, welcome gentlemen. Um, maybe give us a little short introduction for yourselves, for our audience real quick. So they know who we’re chatting.

Rob Crosnoe: Uh, I’m Rob Crosnoe, I’m the associate Dean of the college of liberal arts.

And I’m a professor in the department of sociology and psychology. And I have been here for 20 years on the faculty. And before that I was actually an undergraduate student here at UT

Phil: then horns, right?

Rob Crosnoe: Yeah. My parents were, my grandparents were so I go way

Phil: back. Yeah. So you’re like a third, third generation.

Rob Reichle: Uh, I’m Rob Reichle I’m the director of the office of undergraduate research, which was part of the school of undergraduate studies. And I’ve been doing that for about seven years. Um, prior to that, I was a faculty at Northern Illinois university. Prior to that, I did my graduate degree here in the department of French and Italian.

Uh, did my masters in PhD. Um,

Phil: Northern Illinois. I feel like I’ve been there before it’s in like cornfield central, right? DeKalb, Illinois. That’s the name of the town?

Rob Reichle: A reason I wanted to come back to

Phil: Austin. Well, great. Well, we have, we have the, the rock team today to Rob’s. Well, we’re excited to talk to y’all about a topic.

Say. I don’t really know a whole, whole lot about, so I’m really excited to kind of learn a little bit more from you gentlemen today, we’re talking about undergraduate research. Um, so I guess, um, you know, we all know. Uh, university is a place where you go to college, right. And you take classes. Um, but UT is, is a research university.

Right? And I think that a lot of undergraduates don’t know what that is or what that means. So, uh, I guess our first question to you all is what is a research university or research institution. Um, and you know, why, why should undergraduates care about that?

Rob Reichle: I mean, I would say the quick answer to that, By being a research university just means research is part of the mission of what the university is supposed to do.

It’s not just to teach students like that is a humongous part of what the university does, but there’s this parallel mission where it’s to conduct research, just to add to the body of. And, uh, all of the academic fields that faculty are active in here.

Phil: I like what you said there that they’re like, you know, it’s a hand in hand, uh, activity.

Right. I feel like sometimes we kind of like separate, like teaching over here and research over there, but, but really there’s a Venn diagram over there’s plenty of opportunities for overlap, right?

Rob Crosnoe: Yeah. I mean, all universities have. Teaching and learning as part of their education, really at the core of their educational mission, but research universities, which Texas is definitely one.

Um, you know, we really center research as part of the center of what we do and you know, those two things work together really well. And, you know, w w we, I mean, if you think about research, as I think that research universities view research as part of the public good or serving the public good meaning.

You know, we’re there to provide some service and we view research and the insights that it could produce as part of that. And that might mean doing the actual research here with faculty and students doing the research, but it’s also the training of people or the teaching of research techniques to students so that they can go be researchers elsewhere.

Phil: Right, right. Like research bootcamp almost in some ways. Right.

Rob Crosnoe: And if, and if it is a public good, then that’s a reason for undergraduate students to get involved in research. Right. They can serve that public good, which is its own reward, but they can also get their other reward for that too, which is that, you know, research skills are a marketable skill that translates into the, to the labor force.

And it’s also fun and it can provide a sense of purpose and a sense of accomplishment. So it’s really part of the learning experience at a university like this, that people at other universities might not get. I liked that

Christina: you put it as research as a public. Good, because Phil and I tell our classes all the time, there are all these different ways to get involved.

Studies, you can do research. You can do community service. And I guess I never really thought about it as research is a service for the community and providing that information. And that insight is something that you do for your community. So I think that’s a really awesome way to look at

Phil: it. Yeah, like scientific advancement is public good, right?

Like it helps people live their lives easier or smarter or better. Right? Yeah. I

Rob Crosnoe: mean, I, I personally, my field of research is studying adolescents and young adults and, you know, Uh, I ended up getting, going to talk to lots of parent groups and forums like that because people really want insight into their children and is how you gather that insight.

And it’s also interesting being around undergraduates because what I study is them and, and when they participate in my research, they are studying themselves. Wow.

Phil: When the subjects become the researchers, right? You’re the, I’m picturing undergraduates looking themselves in the mirror, like, okay, what can I learn about myself from my class?

Exactly. But that’s exactly what they say. That’s pretty cool. Um,

Christina: I like that both of you are researchers in liberal arts fields. We’d always tell our students, you know, what do you think about research? And they always come back with. You know, an image of a biology lab of a chemistry lab, Petri, dish, dishes, and beakers and everything.

And it’s kind of hard for them to perceive research as something that is integral to every subject in every discipline. Um, what do you think that students should know about the various different types of research methodologies and all of the ways that research can occur outside of a chem lab or a bio lab?

Rob Reichle: I mean something I tell students a lot is the, truly any, anything they can imagine, people are studying that here. So they’re using pretty much any research method or technique that exists. Right. Um, so aside from sort of lab and, and stem research, like you mentioned, um, UT is great for archival research.

So the fact that we have things like the ransom center here, where people can go. Including students, right? Lots of undergrads make use of this to look at archival materials and study, you know, writing processes, creative processes that those archives were result of. Uh, that’s a fantastic opportunity. Um, people doing research on government, right?

So it’s, it’s about looking at actions in the past, right. Or policies that have played out in the data surrounding that it’s not data from a, from a test tube or whatever, but it’s still. Uh, it can be a quantitative type of research. That’s also like tying into the liberal arts, right? I mean, it’s, there’s not so.

Strict divide between, you know, math and science things and liberal arts things. Not by any means.

Rob Crosnoe: Yeah. I think that, I mean, I totally get it that that’s the conception that most students have of

Phil: yeah. That’s, what’s portrayed in the media to write research equals labs,

Rob Crosnoe: to be fair. That’s really valuable.

And it is really representative of the very best that UTI can offer its students in terms of research training. But. More out there. I mean, and when you just look within the college of liberal arts, it’s not just the topics that are studying. It’s how. Do the study and you know, many years ago I did, I was introduced to research and a capstone project for my major here at UT.

And I did something called a content analysis, which is the way of systematically deciphering patterns from media print or digital or whatever. And I was focusing on the equal rights amendment and I really have no. Completely lost to the fog of memory, why I did those things. There’s no resemblance to what I do now.

And now what I do is called mixed methods, quantitative qualitative research, which is like, so what I might do is statistically analyze the national database about students, right? To, to establish or tide densify in very broad brush strokes, the non-academic factors that affect academic. Um, and then once that’s established, I try and dig a lot deeper by going into a specific school and spending a year there and talking to students and following them around and observing them and following them on social media to try and figure out well what’s going on intimately and personally within those patterns.

And there are other people like me in the college, but we’re really a small minority. Um, you know, psychologists who are doing experiments on kids, figuring out how kids learn language on older people, figuring out what’s going on with memory decline, you will have historians. Like we have historians here creating they’re going like doing the hard work of digitizing all these old archival records for people to study the slave trade.

Um, we have ethnographers who immerse themselves in social movements, try and figure out like. What’s working and why aren’t they achieving their goals? We have geographers and anthropologists who use laser technology to establish the environmental impact of, of climate change and things like that on the land.

And we have humanists who are creating, uh, multimedia, um, tours of landscapes and towns. And periods from classic novels to give you another way of experiencing a book. So there’s something there for everybody, and I’d actually be interested considering your background, the kind of research you did. Cause it could not probably could not be any more different than what I just described with

Rob Reichle: myself.

Well, actually you just described two things that I’ve sort of done research related to. So, I mean, my degree is in French when I was an undergrad, I did French and linguistics. And so I then come to grad school to do French linguistics, shockingly enough, right? Yeah, exactly. But linguistics is a, is an area where there’s some type of research where it is almost humanities oriented, where it’s very much like it tends to be single people or small groups of people just analyzing problems and, you know, just sort of working it out.

But I was dealing with much more quantitative stuff. I got involved in cognitive neuroscience approaches to linguistics. So I did like brain imaging on people learning and processing second languages. So it’s like you mentioned child language, acquisition, adult, second language acquisition. Um, and then yeah, my, my work in that actually led me to work with people.

Just working in sort of broader issues of cognitive neuroscience, including memory. So it’s like, I have a degree from a department where many of the people are doing things like a select guy, Rafa doing all the Italian, the Dante stuff where it’s about like, you know, a work from hundreds of years ago and making it accessible to people as a, as a humanist.

And then I’m. Putting a special cap on somebody’s head to measure their brain waves. Like, and it was all in the same department.

Rob Crosnoe: I think that that’s such an important point because I think that most undergraduates, when they think about scholarship and French and Italian, they’re thinking about literary scholarship, which is a huge part of what they do.

It’s probably the, actually that’s probably the majority, but then there’s also people who are studying the acquisition and development. I mean the language itself and how people learn that. Is much more akin to like what I would do, um, you know, or what would happen in the psychology department. And so it’s not just that within the college, there’s this breadth or heterogeneity of approach and topic, even within an individual department, even a small department like that.

When you have that range,

Phil: well, you started talking about, you know, your own history and what you studied. W what got you excited about research as an undergraduate? How did you see. In this world of research beyond just what was required and maybe some of your classes.

Rob Crosnoe: Um, well, I did kind of get forced into it.

I think, you know, when I was an undergrad, that sounds more pejorative than, I mean, but I wouldn’t, I don’t think I necessarily would have chosen that. I mean, You know, when I would, before I came to UT, I didn’t really know what research was and I certainly didn’t think it was something I should or could do.

And I think like a lot of undergraduates, in addition to that stereotype about labs, what they’re really thinking about when they think about research is the consumption of research or the consumption of knowledge. So in other words, um, Research is going out and gathering information from a source about a top going to the library and the library, or now it would be the internet and, and those without really thinking necessarily that those sources are based on research.

Produced by some someone else. And when I went, went into this capstone thing, I, um, for my major to graduate,

Phil: so it was a capstone program. It was,

Rob Crosnoe: it was. And so it was a requirement, so I had to do it. And, um, and so I did it and that’s when I began to see the production of research, which is you have a topic and you go out and you.

Uh, collect and or analyze data to inform our understanding of a topic. That’s a very different thing. And stepping across that line is, is really quite important to do. And, you know, and like I said, I got somewhat forced into doing this, but that experience made me realize that the production of research is something that I was very interested in participating in sociological research in particular.

And, you know, if you had told me that. You know, when I was growing up in north sexes on the plane. I would have been stupefied. Like I would never have thought that that was something that, that I could do, but I did it. I went from that captain capstone experience to applying to graduate school, to go to graduate schools.

They actually get more intensive and formal research training. And then, you know, the rest is history.

Phil: Yeah.

Rob Reichle: How about you? I got into research sort of like in a totally backwards way, like kind of the wrong way, like in a lot of ways, it’s, it’s not what I recommend students do. So cautionary tale, I mean, it really does inform like my interest in wanting students to approach it the right way here at UT.

But I did my undergrad, not at UT. It was at a different university and, um, I took a class with a professor and he just brought up a topic that I thought was super interesting. And this was a French, it was a French linguistics class, in fact. And it had to do with the fact that, um, you know, I think most people, they think of France, they think of just French, like just this monolithic.

Like they only speak French in France and that’s not at all true. There’s a lot of minority languages. Um, and so we spent a lot of the class talking about that and there were elements of that, that I found just like super fascinating. Right. So, um, I was going to study. And while there I wanted to, I just wanted to learn more about one of these particular minority languages that came up.

It’s called . It’s like, it’s not very widely talked about. I think even in France, actually, certainly not in the U S thought this was like the coolest, just most, this unusual thing that was new to me and I was really into, so I talked a lot to the professor. He told me, he like turned me onto a lot of resources about it, just less information about it.

And then I went and studied abroad. And while I was there, I did collect other information about it and interviewed some people and got these resources. But I didn’t actually like work out a plan with him to do it as research. Like it was more just, well, this is a thing you could learn more about. And by the end of the process, I had learned a lot more about.

And I realized I had all this information in this material, but not like a research question. Like I hadn’t really approached it in a systematic way, like a

Phil: curiosity about the subject, but not in like a focus or direction.

Rob Reichle: Exactly. And we also, you know, I had no arrange, no formal arrangement like to do a capstone paper or anything like that.

Um, so I came back and I mean, I talked to him about it. I was like, well, this is really cool. But, uh, it wasn’t really done in a way that lent itself to having a nice end product. So then I went to grad school and ended up, like I said, I focused on things that were less like humanistic parts of language and culture and stuff, and more of the linguistics and cognitive neuroscience part.

Um, but yeah, from then on, it was more a matter of, oh, you connect with a mentor who can really. You know, shepherd you through the process of approaching things in a systematic way. And you know, you narrow down your scope of investigation and all that. Um, so that that’s the right way to do it. To work hand in hand with somebody who already knows what they’re doing

Phil: the recommended way.

I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong way maybe, but

Rob Crosnoe: I’ll add to that, that, you know, I was really, when I was. When I was an undergrad and I did this project, I was really interested in a specific topic. And then that’s why I went to graduate school. But then when I went to graduate school through a series of circumstances, I ended up working under, you know, with a professor who studied children and adolescents and young adults and families.

And, um, and I completely switched my focus to that. And it wasn’t that I just was being mercenary about it. It’s just working with this person and seeing things through his eyes. Really sparked my own interest and. You know, I think that that a lot of students don’t realize that any research project that they get involved, it’s probably going to spark their interest.

Right. And so they don’t necessarily need to think I’m interested in this. So I’m going to go find a research opportunity and that instead, what it could be is I just want to find a research opportunity. Cause who knows where it’s going to lead me.

Christina: I did it like I had so much fun with it because I started doing research my sophomore year of college.

And I didn’t know. What there was to do research about, but I just like joined a lab, um, innovations for peace and development. And I got there and I can tell you, I could not care less about private militaries and security companies. Like nothing about that sounds interesting to me, but I got placed on that project and all of a sudden.

This is the coolest thing ever. Um, I was having the time of my life going to the library and like picking up giant stacks of book, hearing them home and like inputting all of the data and everything. Like all of that sounds so boring when you’re not immersed in it. But like any project that you do get involved in eventually.

It does become somewhat of an interest or a passion for you where it is at least fun and interesting. And so whenever I have a lot of undergrad students and they’re like, I’m very specifically interested in this one niche thing. It’s like, you can probably find somebody at UT who does that one niche thing.

It’s probably going to exist, but also broaden your mind a little bit. Let’s be a little bit more creative about what kind of research you want to do. Why don’t you just try out. Researching with any professor that has an opportunity and see what happened.

Phil: Yeah. It feels like the common thread is curiosity, right?

Like if something really just piques your interest and you find yourself going down like a YouTube rabbit hole or a Wikipedia rabbit hole, like. That’s that’s, uh, you know, a novice research, right? Like that’s like the first step towards becoming a researcher. I feel like if you’re up at three in the morning watching, like your 10th YouTube video about a particular topic

Christina: on Tik TOK lately, there’s been this thing.

It’s called couch. Boy, it’s a whole, it’s a whole other thing. I cannot explain it, but

I was trying to explain research to my students in class. And they’re like, but like, what is research? How do I, how do I even begin? And it’s like, are you interested in something? Do you want to learn more? It’s kind of like how to boy. And they’re like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. So it was just like, I’m going down on Tik TOK rabbit hole.

And I’m like, yeah, that’s basically what it is. But you do it on campus. And. Actual sources that have been published. Yeah.

Rob Reichle: Yeah. We do. We talk about recently, like in my office about, um, this phrase that gets thrown around a lot more now where it’s like, do your own research. Cause sometimes people use that in a way where they’re not, they’re not really thinking in terms of like, you know, scholarly research, like sources that are.

You know, well, grounded in the literature and research methods that sort

Phil: of when doing your own research is kind of like what you were just talking about, Dean Crossman. Like that’s just the consumption of knowledge and not the creation of new ideas and new knowledge, right? Yes. I agree.

Rob Crosnoe: Are you using sources or are you the source?

You know? And, um, and that’s a long journey between those two things. That’s what we’re here for

Phil: too. I feel like I’ve always looked at PhD and doctoral programs as the training ground for researchers. That’s where you learn how. Do research, how to be part of the research academy. Yes. Um, and I also think that’s why undergraduate sometimes feel left out of the conversation, right?

Because most of the, the, I guess, traditional methods of engaging in research exists at the graduate level.

Rob Crosnoe: That is true, but I would also say that some of the best teachers of research for undergraduates are graduate students. And so, I mean, it’s just a nice liaison between the faculty and the students.

And so for example, I have lots of, um, undergraduate research assistants in my various projects, but my graduate students are the ones who actually do the like real hands-on training. Undergraduate students relate to them better. And, um, and then I supervise the whole enterprise. And so I, I think that that split.

That perceived split between undergraduate students and graduate students can probably the ties, the, um, the development of undergraduate researchers. You know, we, we, that’s actually our secret secret ingredient for getting undergraduates more involved in research. Yeah.

Phil: Well, that’s actually, you know, a good lead into this question, you know?

What can undergraduate students do to get involved in research? And like, they don’t really know where to start. Where can they start?

Rob Crosnoe: Well, Rob is really the expert on,

Rob Reichle: yeah. I mean, we, so we try to work with students from like the entire campus to help them take these first steps. And I mean, honestly, a lot of what we do is, um, you know, advising with them or info sessions to talk about ways to strategize how they would go about this and like put their best foot forward.

Because usually what it comes down to, to get started in research in the first place is for them to find a professor who does the thing that they want to be a part of and to just ask and that’s oversimplifying it a lot. Yeah. And it sort of sounds ridiculous when you’re like, how do you do it? You just ask.

But that kind of is how it begins. It’s like you start a conversation with them. And if the professor is doing something where, you know, their needs for the project really match with what the student has going on and what they’re trying to get out of it and their own, you know, knowledge, skills, qualifications, um, that they would start to work together or, you know, involve the student in some way, like working more directly with grad students, other people in the, in the lab, that type of thing.

Um, So, yeah, I mean, we, um, we have some resources, uh, to help students like find out what professors are working on others. This website called Eureka, which is a database of, um, it’s really two databases. There was a profile for pretty much every faculty member of the whole university. Just sort of saying what they work on in general.

And then there’s also a space where professors can sort of have like listings of projects where right now they’re trying to recruit people sorts, like wanted ads almost. Um, and a ton of students use it. And a lot of faculty use it as well. Um, not all faculty posts like projects on that listing. So it ends up being, I mean, it’s like a couple hundred do every year.

Content is there, but like, it’s still a pretty small slice of all the research happening at the, at the university. So I always like to remind students, like, you know, don’t just limit the scope of your, of your search to just those projects, because there’s so much else happening at the university right now.

Rob Crosnoe: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. You know, Rob’s office, the office of undergraduate research and the school of undergraduate studies is, I mean, it’s really there to serve the whole university. And, but, but there are versions of it and each college or most colleges too, including the college of liberal arts. And I think that the service that they give is really helping students map.

You know, the, you know, the strategy for doing this. And I completely understand, especially at a university like UT how daunting it seems to, to navigate the world of research, but the first step in doing that, which is going to his office or going to my office, that’s easy. That’s pretty easy. I mean in any given semester, I get dozens and dozens of emails from students, um, who are inquiring about research projects, some of which work out some of which don’t.

And I always tell other students, I’m like, they’re doing something you’re not doing. Right. You know, they’re, they’re getting something that you’re not getting. And so. I think that it’s partly students understanding or being motivated to do it, but it’s also our responsibility to help scaffold that, um, that a lot and make it easier for them.

I understand that that’s a scary proposition.

Christina: Yeah. Coming up to a professor that you might not even know and asking, but like what’s the worst that can happen. They say no. Um, in the best that they, that can happen. They say yes. And then in between they say no, but they introduce you to somebody else who might be a better fit.

So there’s truly no harm in just asking.

Phil: We do a lot of trying to make professors seem less scary to students. I’m happy to hear your advice is kind of in line with what we do in a lot of our first year programs right now. It’s just trying to get them like, Hey, go to office hours. That’s a place you should be going to and doing start building these relationships with faculty now.

So that. When you are ready to do research your junior senior year, you are already. That relationship established. And, um, you know, we, we just had a class on, on registration and I showed my students where they can look at a faculty CVS and explain what a CV is. And it’s basically like a resume for all your faculty.

And you can see what kind of research they’re doing or research they’ve done before. And if that’s something that you’re interested in, read it and ask them about it. I feel like that’s, that’s every professor’s dream is to have a student come to them. Um, about a paper that they wrote that wasn’t assigned for class, right?

Like talk about an office hours to remember

Rob Crosnoe: and just to be realistic. I mean, there are going to be some professors who are not nice about this. Right. Know what I mean? Everyone’s different, right? This is the truth, but most of them are not. And if you do happen to run across one of the, one of the curmudgeons, just, just keep trying, because other ones are out there for sure.

I also

Christina: just want to keep plugging the office of undergraduate research because it truly is like the best and easiest place to start to just have someone walk you through all the processes of starting in research. And there are so many things available in the office of undergraduate research, too. I remember you had actually helped me work out some funding issues for a scholarship or a grant that I had gotten from OU our, um, there’s just like.

Opportunities in there that students don’t know about. And I’m like, just go to the basement of the FAC they’ll help you out. Just go there.

Rob Reichle: Yeah. Yeah. So like funding, we do a lot of funding for students, um, who, like, once they’ve gotten, started doing the research project, um, and events, funding

Phil: for their own projects.

Right. Not just faculty projects. Yeah. That’s

Rob Reichle: very much the model it’s like about a quarter of students on the campus. Like. Have the possibility of getting funded as they’re like assisting a professor, but kind of the more common thing is that involvement tends to turn more towards the student, like having ownership of part of the project, like intellectual ownership, right?

Like they’re sort of taking the lead on it. And then, um, those types of independent projects are the kinds where. Uh, they might apply for funding. They might present it in an event, you know, like give a talk or present a research poster where they sort of walk people through the process of what they’ve done.

And we do a lot of events, um, so that they can share their work that way.

Phil: Yeah. Yeah. We talk about the opportunity to get published, right? You could, co-author a paper with a faculty member. Um, I like to sell it as you might work on a project with a professor and then you might go abroad and do some field research with them depending on.

The scope of the project is, and trying to figure out ways to, to sell it. So it’s a little bit sexier than hanging out in the library,

Christina: the library. Oh my gosh. I remember a while ago, some, I was like having, um, just a conversation with friends about, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. Like what is there to do?

And it’s like, you know, your dream job might not be something that exists or it might not be something that, you know, exists. And I think that for a lot of undergraduate. A lot of undergraduate students, something that they don’t know exists is actually researching and getting involved in, um, producing knowledge and producing scholarship.

Like I know for a fact that as a first gen. I thought school was you go to class, you go to lecture and then you take a test and that was about

Phil: it. And then after a while you get your

Christina: degree and after a while you get your degree. And then all of a sudden, everyone around me was like, oh yeah. So this research lab, and then I got paid to do this.

And then I did that. And then I presented this and I was like, what are you talking about? That’s all. It’s really cool. Please let me in the loop. Yeah.

Rob Crosnoe: Yeah. I mean, I think that the. You know, you can talk about the meaningful and the practical, right. And on the meaning side, we know that. Education is about more than listening and rating, right?

It’s about doing, and the, the research is doing, it’s doing, learning is doing, and that adds to, and it maximizes classroom based learning. I mean, there’s no question about it. On the practical side, something I alluded to earlier. Being able to analyze data, understanding methodology, those types of things really are concrete skills that are very well aligned with the 21st century economy, which is often referred to as the knowledge economy or the information economy.

And so whether it’s the meaning side or the practical side, or are both. Getting you are gaining something from it that is going to help help you. And I’m going to go back to this competitive edge, uh, analogy I did earlier. If you’re not doing. But some other students are, they are they’re winning right there.

They’re beating you and they have something you don’t, and you are not getting as much out of this university as you could. Yeah. Yeah.

Christina: Especially cause I think a lot of times liberal arts students think that, oh, well it’s liberal arts, so I don’t need to do all the science-y things. I don’t need to do the math things, but that was something that I learned like junior year.

Apparently I need stats. Apparently I need to learn how to do data analysis, but how, how unique is it for students to, you know, graduate and have all of the wonderful research and critical thinking and problem-solving skills that comes with liberal arts, but also the actual quantitative skills. I guess like the quote unquote hard skills that comes with doing research.

And I think that, I think that a lot of times students really undersell the ability to learn how to use different data analysis tools quickly and to customize it for different projects. Like I think that is something that not everybody who goes into the market force

Rob Crosnoe: has. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, within liberal arts, there’s, you know, what we’re really doing is critical analysis and you can critically analyze statistics the way that I do, or you can critically analyze texts and pieces of art and discussion.

You know, it’s all legislation, it’s all critical analysis, then that’s really what we’re driving home. It, that takes, it takes many different forms.

Phil: Um, well, you know, going back to this idea of like, you know, you’re not getting everything out of the university that you could, what, what are some of the individual benefits to participating in research for undergraduate students?

Do you think?

Rob Reichle: Well, I mean like, like rubbed just said the acquisition of skills, like the learning by doing the, this whole, um, this whole thing. Actually acting out and living through the process is learning it in a profoundly different way from hearing about it or reading about it or watching a video about it, any of those things?

Um, that’s a huge part of it. I would say. Um, I do like to sort of emphasize the students, that there are a lot of sort of career instrumental benefits of this too. I mean, Being able to talk about skills that you might put on your resume or talk to an employer about. But like, if you end up thinking about grad school or med school, like professional schools, number one, to have a professor on your side to write a rec letter for you.

And number two, that professor might also put you in touch with like, oh, this is a program you should check out. I have a colleague here who couldn’t, you know, like you should look at what they’re doing, stuff like that. Yeah. Our

Phil: fields are kind of small world sometimes, right? Like people know each other in the different academic fields and can call in for, Hey, look out for the student’s application.

Or I worked with this student and they were really great that that stuff goes a long way towards you getting accepted to a program or a, you getting a research position. Yeah.

Christina: What about for students who aren’t looking to go into grad school or med school or law school where it really is valuable to have previous research experience?

What if students, they just want to graduate and they want to get a job and just stay that way? Yeah, I

Rob Reichle: mean, I would still say it can be rewarding just because it might be a meaningful activity where you’re impacting society. It’s like, you know, I think most people would feel that it’s a good thing to make a positive impact.

Right. Um, it, it’s actually a really good way to learn about your likes and dislikes like an internship. Yeah. So even if it’s, it’s not even a matter of prepping yourself for some sort of subsequent education stuff, but it’s just a matter of like figuring out your major or figuring out your specialization within your major or.

Knowing the things that you’re going to be curious about further on in life, like the experience you have doing research, um, you’re going to deepen your knowledge of like that content. Um, To such an extent that you’ll sort of get to know yourself better.

Phil: Yeah. And then you’re like, well, I do want to spend the next six years of my life in graduate school studying this, or no way Jose, I ever studied this for another six years.

Right. I mean,

Rob Crosnoe: research is about process, right. And, and, you know, and training and research, which is what we’re talking about with undergraduate. It’s learning a process and that process is translatable to many, many different things. I mean, critical analysis, communication. Yeah, understanding data and, you know, the, these are things that really matter and, and, you know, and they can really help you regardless of whether you want to be a researcher or not.

And, you know, one of the most valuable things that I’ve learned from doing research is just, I’ve fully accepted that how fragile a lot of my assumptions. The world are because I’m so constantly wrong. Um, you know, with my studies, I mean, you know, you to the best of your abilities, based on theory and past research, you develop hypotheses, you try to test those hypotheses, oftentimes you’re wrong.

And once you’ve done that enough, you get much more flexible in the way that you think about things. And I personally think that the world could use a lot more of that, right.

Phil: Um, well, uh, is there anything else that we haven’t really talked about that you think, you know, students need to know about undergraduate research or maybe, uh, opportunities that are coming up that you wanted to highlight or, or shout out?

Rob Reichle: I mean, one thing that I just, I like students to know in general is that this is like a very normal thing for students to do at UT. Like it’s about half of UT undergrads who do research. That’s not part of their classroom experience at all, but like the sort of above and beyond type of research, it’s about half the students here who do that at some point.

So. It’s not just like for some tiny sliver of the population, it’s like, anybody can, can do this. Yeah.

Phil: I talk about the, the, the research on undergraduate research and then the research shows that that’s a really beneficial things for students to engage in. They on average, make higher grades. Students that don’t engage in undergraduate research that go to grad school at higher rates and students that don’t enjoy

Christina: college,

Phil: they like is true.

And you kind of get to see behind the UT burn orange

Rob Crosnoe: curtain a little bit. Yeah. Especially at a place like UT that’s so big and everything, it gives you something, you know, it gives you a niche to do it. I mean, I, you know, I D I am a firm believer in giving concrete opportunities. So I w I, you know, there are a few that we can talk.

Let’s talk like general to specific. I mean, on the university level, I’m the big fan of the bridging disciplines program, which is also in the school of undergraduate studies. And I’ve been involved with one of them, but there are many reasons I liked that program. Not the least of which is just the whole interdisciplinary vibe of it.

But what I really like is that when it comes to research, Put their money where their mouth is. They emphasize that it’s an important part of learning process. And then they help you figure it out. Right. You know, cause the students it’s daunting, like as we said before, and they help you do that. And a lot of the students that have worked on my research projects came to me because BDP was contacting me about, you know, um, in my own college, the college of liberal arts, we’re about to relaunch.

Something called the undergraduate research apprenticeship, and this is going to be starting next fall. It’s a paid semester long internship where students are assigned to student cohorts and a specific research unit. And, um, and then they engage in group research, activities and training with a faculty member and a PhD student mentoring pair.

And. You know, one of the units that’s going to be doing this is innovations and peace and development. Sorry. Yeah. So

Christina: you’re paying them. I only know of one lab on campus does that,

Rob Crosnoe: there’s actually a lot of paid opportunities. So for example, I have always paid my, um, undergraduate research interns that money, unfortunately, that my most recent project is over.

So I’ve ran out of, of, of spots for that. But, um, And then within the population research center, which is my own unit within the college of liberal arts, the national science foundation funds a summer research internship program for undergraduates. And it’s residential. You live here at UT you get paid, um, and you get a really immersive training and demographic research and policy analysis.

The theme right now for that is about families. You know, just studying families and especially family diversity in the United States, but that’s like 12 students per year. These are all things that have websites that have an application. And so that cuts out the daunting part of it. You just fill out the application, um, and you don’t have to do the work on your own.

You actually get assigned to the research

Phil: project. Awesome. Yeah. Get some of that tuition money back. Right.

Rob Crosnoe: Those are just three. I’m just giving those three as an example of the breadth of things that are, that are

Phil: out there. It’s hard to even know how many things are out there because it is such a big institution.

And sometimes when I think about research, um, you know, I think about it as what’s happening in the rest of the building, right? Like I think about patent hall. Classrooms on the first floor and in the basement, but there’s this whole other part of the building where other things are happening. There’s a lot of places on campus that aren’t classrooms where

Rob Crosnoe: research has happened, you know, and we, and I was the chair of the sociology department for a long time.

And, um, People tend to think about sociologists. Like I’m a quantitative sociologist where I’m analyzing statistics. We also have a lot of what’s called qualitative sociologists who are doing, you know, out there observing and, um, and watching and listening. And, um, but some of our most recent hires actually have labs where they’re extracting, you know, biological specimens to trace the impact of things like racism on the body.

Right. So, you know, every. I guarantee students that their conception of research and any given thing much like what Rob was saying about French and Italian is way too narrow. Yeah. I think research needs a new publicist. I think it really does

Christina: like a whole, a whole marketing campaign, a whole PR campaign.

It, it really needs a revamping.

Phil: That’s incredible research needs the. The brussel sprouts got psych.

Christina: I’m a huge fan of brussel sprouts. Now I just needed to no longer think that narrowly about,

Rob Crosnoe: uh, well, we’re going down that road. Yeah, no, that’s all right. That’s a different

Phil: podcast for a different day, I think.

Well, I can’t thank you both so much for, uh, I can’t. Thank you both enough for coming to talk with us about this topic. It’s super important. And it’s one of those like wizard of Oz. Most undergraduates. Aren’t really sure what’s happening behind the curtain with research. So we appreciate the opportunity to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit and talk to our listeners about what’s happening in the rest of the buildings on

Rob Crosnoe: campus.

Well, and as Rob said, most students actually do do research by the time they graduate. So just remember that it’s the norm. We’re going

Phil: to try to get it to like 75%, right. That’s part of our goal. Yeah.

Christina: Thank you so much. Y’all this was a really, really awesome episode. Just we talk about research so often in our classes and besides my own personal experience, I’m not able to give them what is on the other side from offices that support students to professors that do the research with students.

So this was a really great episode to have. I think they’ll really appreciate this.

Phil: Thanks so much. Y’all thank you.

Christina: That was a super awesome episode. I’m so glad that we had both of those guests with us here today. I feel

Phil: smarter just having been in the same room with those

Christina: guys. When Dr. Regularly was talking about the weird little caps, reading your brain waves or whatever, I was just like, I’m sorry. They do this in liberal arts

Phil: in

Christina: French linguistics.

I was like, you’re reading book. He was not reading books. He was reading your brainwaves. Yeah. But honestly, like I really appreciated that both of our guests today plugged some super awesome resources. We had Dr. Rackley from the office of undergraduate research. This is. Honestly, one of my favorite Reese resources at,

Phil: yeah.

They’re a great partner. Um, with the college of liberal arts, I really liked getting to work with those.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Because I think a lot of times research can seem very daunting. You know, even if security have an idea for what you want to do, you already have a professor or a lab, it can still feel very directionless.

You know, where do you go next? What do you take? Your research to the next step with, you know, there’s publication, there’s presentations, there’s posters, there’s all these sorts of different things, but how do you get to that point? And I think that the office of undergraduate research is a really great way

Phil: to do that.

All of that. It stops a lot of people from engaging in research, right? Like, feel like they need to have all their ducks in a row. They need to already have funding there to need to know exactly what they want to do and what they want to research and have it all figured out. But as we learned today, that’s not necessarily the case at all.

Michael

Christina: even said, they’ll help you work through the hypothesis. They’ll, they’ll help you frame your hypothesis in a way that makes. Easy. Not easy, but I guess

Phil: it makes sense structured. It makes sense. Yeah. That’s probably cause he wishes somebody had done that for him earlier.

Christina: I agree. Cause when he was talking about that, I also very much related when I was working on my thesis.

That was how I felt it was like, this is something I’m really interested in. I have no structure. I am just going to read books and talk to people just because I have no, no reasoning for it.

Phil: Yeah. One thing that we didn’t talk about was like research. What, as like a selfish act almost right? Like you can research things to help yourself understand yourself, better, understand your world around you better.

I remember when I was in graduate school, I did a lot of research about. When I worked in Greece and I worked in the Dean of students, office and student activities in Greek life. And that was a very interesting topic to me. And I’m wanting to know more about it. It was crazy to learn that the same kinds of things that happen a thousand years ago in universities are still happening today.

And that kind of made me feel. Bad about it in some weird, strange way. Yeah. I was about

Christina: to make a joke, but I was like, I feel like, I feel like we will get a cease and desist immediately. I will not be making jokes, unfortunately. Um, and then I also really appreciated that, um, Dean, Krasno talk about all of those opportunities at the very end.

And he mentioned, you know, these are just three opportunities where there is research that is structured, um, profound, relevant, and paid, but it’s just three of the many options available. And for

Phil: undergraduates, right? Because undergraduate, I brought it up during the conversation, but I do feel like there’s this perception, that research is only for grad students.

Right. Um, but we hope we demonstrated today that that’s not at all the case and an Indian cross knows Casey hires, 12 undergraduates every year to help with this research

Christina: with money. That’s incredible to me because there was, I remember years ago in the UT. Meme page, there is this meme. Um, the professor was like, oh, I’m going to get paid 50 K a year to do this research.

The grad student was like 50 K. I only get 40 K. And then the undergraduate was like,

Phil: like I get course credit, maybe. Yeah,

Christina: so that was incredible. And you know, like he, he did point out these things are all out there for you. You just need to ask, or you just need to apply. Um, you just got to put yourself out there and a good place to start office of undergraduate

Phil: research.

It does take a little bit of initiative. I think. Not, some students do get lucky and some research opportunities fall into their lap, but I think more often than not, it does take students taking the first step, whether that’s going to office hours and asking a question about the professor’s research or what opportunities there are, or going to the office of undergraduate research is website or going to Eureka or going to another.

Um, but, you know, uh, as with all things in life, you know, the more ya put some effort and steam behind it. Like the more likely you are to get some results. Exactly,

Christina: exactly. Overall really awesome episode. I’m excited to talk to our students about this. Me

Phil: too. Uh, I hope you all learned something about undergraduate research that you didn’t know beforehand.

I know that I did. I learned

Christina: a lot. I learned a lot.

Phil: Well, I think that’s all the time we have for this episode. We made it to 10 double digits. We’re we’re fancy, uh, thanks for hanging out and listening with us. Um, and I guess until next time we hope that all your endeavors are a success.