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The Hands On Approach
For more than a decade,
the Student Research Program has been giving undergraduates a taste of
real world problem solving in real life research environments
By Dan Gordon
UCLA’s Student Research Program provides undergraduates the opportunity
to work with faculty and graduate students on significant studies; participants
gain a broader context for what they are learning in the classroom by seeing
firsthand how it applies in research settings. Students learn to problem
solve and to think critically and about the importance of painstaking and
methodologically rigorous research. They experience the long stretches
of tedium such work can entail and the euphoria that comes from gaining
new knowledge.
By placing students side by side with faculty and graduate student mentors,
the Student Research Program (SRP) counteracts the impersonality of large
lecture courses. Moreover, hands on experience with research often proves
helpful to students struggling to identify their field of interest and
encourages many who have never considered research as a career to continue
what they have begun. According to SRP data, approximately 80 percent of
students who engage in research as undergraduates move on to graduate education.
Undergraduates in the program commit to spending six to eight hours
per week in a professor’s laboratory or other research environment, under
a 10 week contract agreed to by both student and faculty sponsor. Any student
is eligible to participate in the program, though some professors place
their own restrictions. Additionally, up to 30 low income students per
year are awarded $2,000 stipends through the UC Office of the President
for two quarters of SRP involvement. Upon fulfillment of the contract,
students receive a notation on their transcript.
Since the program was launched in 1985 ’86, student participation has
increased by more than tenfold -- from 162 contracts fulfilled in the program’s
first year to 2,086 in 1995 ’96. As always, participation is skewed toward
the sciences: More than half of the 1995 ’96 contracts went to students
for work in the College of Letters and Science’s Division of Life Sciences.
G. Jennifer Wilson -- who, as assistant dean for honors and undergraduate
programs in the College, oversees SRP -- notes that the laboratory provides
the clearest delineation of the tasks available to undergraduate students.
Nevertheless, SRP is attempting to encourage more humanities and social
science professors to involve undergraduates in their research.
Wilson believes the continued sharp rise in SRP participation is largely
attributable to positive word of mouth among both students and professors.
In 1996, the program’s directory, which lists faculty interested in sponsoring
students, along with the professors’ research needs, went on-line at www.students.lands.ucla.edu/srp/.
The Web site enables SRP administration to revise the list regularly.
Greater overall awareness of SRP among students adds to a growing sense
at UCLA and elsewhere that undergraduates fortunate enough to matriculate
at a university with a renowned research faculty should make the most of
what the institution has to offer them.
When Donald Morisky learned of the new SRP program in 1985, the School
of Public Health professor viewed the idea of sponsoring undergraduate
students as a way to help them understand the meaning of public health.
“This is an opportunity to provide students with the kind of hands on experience
that will enable them to arrive at a broad perspective on public health
through involvement in a community based program,” Morisky maintains.
Since his introduction to the program, Morisky has utilized six to eight
undergraduates per quarter in his research, much of which has been focused
on testing interventions designed to encourage medication taking among
tuberculosis patients in L.A. County facilities. Morisky’s current activity,
funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, focuses on Hispanic
and African American adolescents at two county clinics. The patients have
chemoprophylactic, not active, tuberculosis. “They need to take medication
for six months, or the TB can become active,” Morisky says. “Because they’re
experiencing no symptoms, they often fail to comply with that regimen.”
Morisky has designed the new study to include a control group and three
intervention groups — one educated by a peer member who has completed the
TB regimen, another receiving daily supervision from an adult figure who
offers specific rewards for compliant behavior, and a third receiving both
interventions. SRP students assist with the clinic record reviews and development
of culturally sensitive and appropriate educational materials. They also
enter into a database questionnaire data measuring subjects’ knowledge,
attitudes, beliefs and practices regarding medication taking behaviors.
Some go further. In 1994, when Morisky was in the middle of another
study involving adult TB patients (mostly Hispanic and non English speaking),
an SRP student helped develop a photo novella, in booklet form, for use
in the counseling intervention. The novella stressed the importance of
behavioral cues to facilitate medication taking — associating the task
with brushing one’s teeth, for example. The funding agencies, the National
Institute of Nursing Research and the Los Angeles TB Control Program, were
impressed by the initiative and are considering distributing the booklet
nationally for TB control.
“When undergraduate students are mature, directed and self initiated,
they can really add to your research team,” Morisky believes. “I feel I
have an obligation even to the less directed students, because early introduction
into research helps provide them with a better basis for making their graduate
career selection.”
Juliet Nabakka has published papers in a peer reviewed chemistry journal.
She has presented her findings at research conferences. She has begun work
on her third project in the laboratory of UCLA Professor of Chemistry Frederick
Hawthorne — and Nabakka won’t become a graduate student until the fall
of 1998.
The fourth year chemistry major has been a fixture in Hawthorne’s lab
since the summer of 1994, following her first year of studies. At the time,
Nabakka’s research experience was limited to the general chemistry labs
she had taken as a freshman. But while working 40 hours per week in a program
sponsored by the UCLA Center for Academic and Research Excellence (CARE),
she proved a quick study. A contributor ever since, Nabakka now works 10
to 15 hours per week during the academic year. In 1996, she was awarded
a two quarter SRP stipend for her research.
Her first project involved “Venus Flytrap” Compounds (VFCs), which have
been used for binding radiotransition metals and monoclonal antibodies
in preclinical trials for cancer radioimmunodetection and radioimmunotherapy.
The VFCs’ carboranyl cages are linked together with a polymethylene group,
which is then conjugated to a cancer specific monoclonal antibody. While
alkyl or aryl chains had already been used as linking groups, Nabakka’s
project successfully introduced the use of oxygen atoms within the chain
to allow for easier synthesis and increased flexibility. Out of the project,
a paper was accepted for publication by the Canadian Journal of Chemistry,
with Nabakka listed as its second author. A second paper, with Nabakka
as its first author, is being prepared for the Journal of Inorganic Chemistry.
Nabakka’s current project seeks to synthesize novel macrocyclic “carboracrown”
structures. Metallacarboracrown structures consist of a metallacarborane
compound attached to two cyclic polyethers. The polyether loops form a
“sandwich environment” conducive to the capture of metal cations such as
cesium and strontium. The metallacarborane forms the negative ion and is
complemented by the cation within the cyclic polyethers.
“In the past, these two components have been used individually for the
extraction of metal cations from nuclear waste,” Nabakka notes. “This project,
however, uses the components jointly for the liquid liquid extraction of
metal ions from nuclear waste.”
When she entered UCLA, Nabakka had no plans for graduate school. As
far as she knew, research was confined to medical studies. After nearly
three years in Hawthorne’s lab, though, she’s decided to pursue a Ph.D.
in chemistry.
“This has given me so much confidence,” she says. “I learn through direct
experience in the lab. Then, when I encounter the same material in my classes,
it all makes sense. I still make mistakes, but now I know that no one has
all the answers. Research is about having the confidence to try things.”
As a sophomore premed student looking forward to practicing medicine,
Sha’Shonda Revels thought she would look for a hospital based research
project through SRP. Then her interest was piqued by a flier recruiting
research assistants to a Department of Psychology project examining stress
and anger as possible risk factors for hypertension and other cardiovascular
diseases.
Growing up African American in a small, segregated Arkansas community,
Revels knew from an early age that she wanted to attend medical school.
In her hometown hospital -- where to this day, she says, there is not a
single black physician -- she observed the staff’s lack of compassion for
her uncle, who was recovering from a heart attack. She resolved to become
a physician specializing in cardiology. Eventually, she says, she would
like to practice in a hospital located in an economically disadvantaged
minority community.
Revels was drawn to the research of a group headed by Dr. Christine
Dunkel Schetter, an associate professor of psychology, because of its focus
on how certain stressors affect hypertension, a particular concern among
African Americans. For the pilot study, Dunkel Schetter’s group is collecting
data on how stressful and anger provoking circumstances are related to
cardiovascular reactivity. Included is an examination of the physiological
effects of racism.
After their baseline blood pressure has been determined, subjects watch
videos designed to induce particular emotions. The clips consist of neutral
material, along with racist or otherwise anger provoking images. The subjects’
heart rates are measured throughout the experiment. Their blood pressure
is measured during and following the scenes, then after they have answered
questions about what they viewed.
Revels is one of six research assistants “running” subjects — administering
blood pressure exams and taking the volunteers through the videos and the
question and answer period. “Since we have direct contact with the subjects,
our input on how things are going is important,” she notes -- particularly
when it comes to detecting problems in the pilot study’s design. For example,
between videos subjects are given time to rest while their blood pressure
returns to baseline. Revels and the other research assistants noticed that
classical music and “neutral” magazines were not having the intended relaxing
effect. “People would get antsy,” she says. The SRP students suggested
new exercises that may be incorporated in future studies.
Revels has enjoyed working on the project so much that she is now considering
entering the UCLA School of Medicine’s joint M.D./Ph.D. program, designed
for medical students interested in pursuing research. “It’s important that
I’m getting experience working with people in this way,” she says. “My
social skills are improving. I’m learning more about what I want to do
in cardiology. This is something that I never imagined myself getting involved
in before medical school.”
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