Community (A MUST!!!)

Well howdy and welcome back to the Resilience in STEM podcast. I hope everyone had a pretty nice April at least. Mine was very busy filled with a lot of midterms, and final projects before finals. Overall it was a bit stressful. But a lot of nice things happened. I guess you could say a lot of good and bad things happened. Kinda happy for finals to be over. Most likely when this episode comes out I should be done with my finals and a lot more relaxed. 

 

I wanted to start things out with a graduate school application update. After talking to my faculty mentor in my research lab about applying for graduate school, she gave me some really good advice I thought I would share here. That advice was, “You want to choose the faculty and people, not just the program and the name”. This is mainly because the program's history and prestige are very important to consider, which can lead to future job opportunities and training for their students. However, at the end of the day, to do a Ph.D. or a research-based Master's program you need a good faculty mentor and someone active in their mentorship and work in the lab. So she’s kinda looked at my application list so far and looked for faculty that follow these two criteria:

 

1. Have recently published

2. Are the last author in their recent publications

 

Currently, publishing shows the faculty is still active in the lab and working to publish research papers. The last author shows that the research came from their lab. So it shows they and their lab are active. In addition, it also shows that the faculty is currently mentoring members of the lab to keep them involved in research. These are both very important criteria to consider. When talking to my faculty mentor, she suggested that I implement this criterion and I should have at least 5 faculty members within the programs I want to apply. This helped narrow down my list of applications. Starting I had a rough list of 15 programs I would apply to. But after applying this criterion and looking more in-depth, that application number has moved down to about 10-11 programs. That might not seem like a drastic difference, but it helps slightly narrow and find certain faculty I would like to be mentored by and learn about their labs. In addition, it helps bring specific details about each program into my applications so they are more specialized for each program I apply to. So doing this research has been very beneficial. I encourage you all to look at the faculty doing research, not just the program description or its name. 

 

I feel this advice applies to the episode were going to talk about today, which is called “Community: A MUST”. So this goes over who is surrounding you, who is your group, who is going to mentor you, and why that is all so important to be successful in a research career. So I thought I would kick it off with my story first as an undergraduate and how having a community has impacted me thus far. Even though I haven't gone to graduate school yet, I feel having a strong community has already impacted me and its contributed to my success. I feel everyone listening here has their own story as well. 

 

So there are three components to this as to which communities have helped me be successful. The first one I’m going to talk about is my major. As you all know I am a biomedical engineering major and in terms of gender, I would say we are pretty evenly distributed. So 50% male and 50% female (actually we might have more females than males in my major). While that is a nice environment, unfortunately, the racial and ethnic distribution of our major is not the best in the world. For this major being quite tough I wanted to make sure I had a group I could vent to and would support me along the way. Even though there wasn’t much of a gender disparity, I couldn’t see professors that had a similar background as I do, which can be a little discouraging. After going to some classes and finding people who were in my same major, it helped me build a strong sense of community within my classes. It feels like I’m not going through this all alone and there’s someone I can talk to. I now know if I just talk to my friends in biomedical engineering, we can just grab dinner and we’ll go over the problems together. Even when working on projects, I know I will have someone who will contribute to the work, which is so important, especially in group projects. Overall it’s allowed me to be academically successful and it’s made me feel more comfortable. Every time now when I go to class, it’s a time when I can learn with my friends. 

 

Next, I want to talk about my research lab and the impact that community has made on me. So usually when people think of a research lab they think of someone just walking in to do their experiments and leave. When I started in my lab, I thought the same thing. But when I first joined, I was paired with a graduate student mentor so I could shadow and work on her thesis project. While I did do that, she was a great source of mentorship for me. She coincidentally did her bachelors in biomedical engineering so she often gave me advice on what classes to take or what professors she recommended. It's helped improve my academic experience. Socially, every time we finish an experiment, we often go to Starbucks and talk about life. In addition, there are a lot of undergraduates in my lab. Even though they're not the same major as I am it still feels comforting to be in the same group of people who are passionate about this topic of research. It's good to have strong friendships with the people in my lab. Even the lab members who have already graduated, I still keep in touch with them, Having that community within the lab has motivated me to come more often and be more involved in my lab. Not only is the research very rewarding, but I also have a strong community that pushes me and supports me since I was a freshman. 

 

Lastly, I wanted to talk about my advocacy work, which is from the student senate. In Senate, there can be some differing opinions and it can get hard to sometimes be in the minority opinion. However, being part of this organization has allowed me to connect with people who have a similar background as I do, such as being Latino/Latina. This has allowed me to explore different cultural events and my friends have served as mentors to help me succeed, being a stronger advocate for my community, and support me on the projects I work on. I know when I first started, one of the biggest supporters of my student senate town hall idea my sophomore year was someone in the same senate friend group as I was. In addition to his support, he gave me a lot of ideas to expand on this concept I had. Overall having that strong community has been a great experience and transformed me into the leader I am.

 

Overall all of these experiences have helped my path to succeed. For my major, it’s made me a stronger academic, and feel like I’m not going through my degree alone. In my research lab, it’s pushed me to be a stronger researcher and a friend group, which motivates me to come to the lab and enforced me to have a very strong passion for research as a career option. Within Senate, I have been pushed to be a strong advocate for my community and get the resources to make this possible. In these three components of my undergraduate education, having a community has made my undergraduate experience so much better. It’s made it solely from just attending meetings or classes to being more involved, engaged, and having friends that I can talk to. Sometimes it’s good to have people who can relate to you or give advice for the future. 

 

So why am I mentioning my communities and how they impacted my undergraduate experience? This is also really important for graduate school. So in a study I have looked, at in the past two decades learning communities (or communities in general) have positive impact effects on all students, which includes graduate students. You must have a group that will support, help you through hard times, encourage, and challenge you to be the best researcher you can be. While having a community can give a sense of security, it also lets you try new things and get those new challenges out of the way. Like I said for my advice for graduate school, having a good mentor to guide you on doing a more complex project or giving you the resources to be successful in your research career is what makes the difference between being a stronger scientist and continuing the field. The latter would be future students not feeling supported and walking away from the research field entirely. That’s the impact a strong community can do. 

 

In addition, having a community will make your overall career more successful. It doesn't matter if you go into research, industry, or whatever it is, you’re going to need a strong community. As people move up in their careers, a lot of work tends to be in a team. This applies to academia as well. So even if you’re the main person working on a research paper, there will be a lot of collaborators. You will have to work well with your team or collaborators to make sure that the project goes well. 

 

When picking a graduate program, pick the faculty that will provide the best learning environment, pick the happier graduate students, and pick the program with the best campus resources. 

 

Let’s start with the faculty. From my very short experience and talking to graduate students, the faculty that provide the best learning experience has the most successful graduate students and are most motivated to succeed and continue in that particular field of research. That’s what makes the difference. When you have faculty that doesn't promote the best learning environment, creates more competition between graduate students/other labs, or creates problems within the lab, that isn’t the best environment you want to be in. 

 

When looking at graduate programs, you want to be with the graduate students who are the most happy. Although these programs will be challenging, the graduate students can have a good work/life balance, are motivated to come to the lab every day, have improved mental health, and are overall happy. You want that graduate student community that will support you and make sure you are doing well within the program. Make sure the graduate students at prospective tours or interviews aren’t reading from a script, but are genuine with their words. You can see that through their actions when talking to them. 

 

Lastly, picking the program with the best campus resources is very important. This is more for advising and making sure you will graduate on time with your degree, whatever it may be. Make sure the campus resources are there to help you and ensure you will succeed. Even though it is a tough path, a good resource is having a writing center. This is to make sure poster presentations or research papers sound and read well. Another example would be to have resources for showing scholarship opportunities and how to apply for them well in advance of the deadline. It is important to know that your campus is looking out for you and that you're not just fighting for yourself. When you go through things alone, it tends to not be that successful. I feel a lot of people listening (or reading) this podcast episode can relate to that. Having a group of campus resources that are meant to support you will allow you to get farther than just on your own.  

 

One of the biggest mistakes I see or can think of is when students pick a big-name school that doesn’t support their success. When you go to graduate school, you want to make sure that you will succeed and graduate. Make sure that even if the school is very prestigious, go do some research on their campus resources, their faculty, and how the graduate students are. Are the graduate students happy? Are the graduate students feeling motivated? Are the graduate students being challenged? Are the professors promoting a good learning environment? Are the faculty mentors challenging their graduate students while still being very constructive? Does the campus support what you are doing? Does the campus provide resources to ensure you succeed? These are some of the important questions. 

 

So yeah, this may be more of an advice-related episode for graduate school. But I feel community (it doesn't matter what you do) is so important. You need a strong community to succeed in anything.