My advising position is a bit different from others on campus. (I don’t have a list of requirements that students have to check off with me in order to graduate; my program is completely voluntary. Any student coming to me has total control over the way they choose or choose not to engage with the program.) As such, I get the opportunity to focus primarily on the content and suggestions of the Dream Phase of Appreciate Advising.
Students come to me for information on how to become a part of the program and for suggestions about how best to engage with the program, but after that, it is totally in their hands. I have no control over the projects they engage in or the quality of the work they produce; that is up to them and their faculty mentor. (I am available for guidance and assistance whenever they need that, but they owe me nothing after being accepted into UROP. There is no set of skills they MUST develop, no forms they MUST fill out for graduation or registration for the next semester.) This is initially uncomfortable for many students, as they come expecting limitations and hurdles to their engagement and, to some degree, they want me to tell them that they have very limited options. And I think this difficulty is seen in the stilted and frightened responses we get to the request that students dream about their bigger picture goals in general. The structure of my office and our programs provide students with a real opportunity to explore themselves and to identify their dream(s).
When students come to ask about what steps they have to take to start a UROP, my first response is to say, “Think about what you are interested in – anything that you are interested in – not just your major.” To have a UROP project, the student does not need to be doing research in their major or minor. Students can do projects in any field or department they want as long as they have a faculty mentor. This allows us to think about projects in a variety of fields. We think about research opportunities in their major, in fields peripherally related to their major, in fields that could be new majors, in projects that facilitate some personal interest or development, in projects that may feed into their larger - long term, big picture, dream job - career goals. When students are having a hard time with this, and students DO have a hard time with this (“What are you interested in?” “I don’t know... Biology?”), there are any number of questions that can help them re-frame the project in their mind so that we can make some exciting connections and build a list of possibilities that actually lights a fire in the student and gets them pumped about research instead of thinking about it as just another step they have to take in the long and arduous process of getting into Med School, for example:
- What do you like to do when you are not doing school?
- What TV shows do you watch or books do you read?
- What you do you want to be doing 2 years from now? 2 years from graduation?
- When you envision your perfect day, what features of your job seem most salient?
- What are your strongest personal features?
- What are some personal attributes that you know you have, but that maybe other people might not know about?
- When you picture research as part of your life, what role does it play for you?
The list goes on. Any question to prompt the student to see the larger potential for research and thereby for the project they want to undertake for UROP will do. This part looks a lot like the Discover Phase, but the intention is a bit different. Changing the discussion from “What projects are there in your major” to “Which projects do you think are cool” re-frames the whole endeavor. This re-framing helps to identify whether they are trying to structure a meaningful experience or establish research as a continued feature in their lives, professionally or otherwise. And any of these is GREAT. Not every student who comes through the U or my office wants to be an academician for life. Students have a wildly varied set of personal goals and my office can help enrich any one of these pictures. We just have to figure out what suits each individual student best.
We also talk about features of the projects other than the topic and department – what is the time commitment, what style of communication does the professor in charge have, what skills will the student develop through participating in the project, etc. We do this to both ensure that the student pick a project that will best facilitate their goals and to reiterate that they can do whatever fits them best – not their major, not the DARS, but them as whole people with big dreams. I want them to know that they do not need to participate in a project that will not serve their purpose(s) because there are too many opportunities and too many ways to benefit from undergraduate research to commit to something they don’t really want to do.
To help provide students with context about how research can help guide their lives holistically, but does not need to determine their path, I like to drop in little anecdotes about my own twisty path. I studied Philosophy for 10 years. I collect hobbies like shelves collect dust. And I recently got a job (THIS job) that doesn’t fit in with my prior plans or directly with the focus of my 10 years of study, but really fits with my larger life goals perfectly and all of those years of a particular type of study are informing me in this job brilliantly. I point out how many of the projects we are looking at would fit into my wide array of interests or would have facilitated my life as it has developed thus far. This helps give them an idea of how research can weave itself into their interests and overall development and allows them to think beyond the structure of their majors to how many possibilities there are for them.
Again, my advising position is an anomaly. But the role of dreaming in the success of and quality of life for my students is not. It is important that our students all have the chance to see their own big picture, whatever that may be, and to allow themselves the chance to build it however best suits them. They might need some guidance to see that picture and they might not have another space to engage with it. So creating that space and prompting them to look at themselves from several angles is imperative to my advising.
Thanks!
Stephanie Shiver
Undergraduate Research Advisor
Office of Undergraduate Research
801.587.2189
