This Monday, Alpha Lambda Delta (ALD) hosted a STEM Research Panel aiming at stressing the importance and fulfillment one gets when partaking in research with a professor and why Bucknell is the perfect place to do so. The panel was moderated by academic co-chairs, Tyler Thrutchley ’26 and Sam Rodriguez ’26.
The panel started by introducing three professors on vastly different areas of the curriculum spectrum, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Keegan Kang, Presidential Professor of Biology DeeAnn Reeder and Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering James Arthur, as well as three students who assisted in conducting research.
After that, each professor explained their area of research, with Kang diving into his interest in advanced statistics, Reeder explaining her intrigue in biology and disease and Arthur explaining his research in mechanical engineering flows.
Each professor was asked why conducting research is important. All of them sang the same tune with Arthur saying, “You will be able to think critically and solve problems,” and Reeder saying, “It gives you a hands-on experience that cannot be matched at many other big institutions.” The professors stressed to the audience to take advantage of research opportunities Bucknell has because it will help them find interests, see what they like to do and “understand what it is like to fail,” which Kang pointed out is very important.
Because it is such a daunting task, the panel explained how to contact professors who conduct research on campus, how that process works and how it can be different for everyone, due to differing sizes and types of research professors do. They also went in depth regarding Bucknell’s Presidential Fellowship, financial obligations that may come with research both on and off campus and how to manage the additional research with commitments as a Bucknellian.
In terms of what students get from researching, Arthur mentioned that “Students are able to gain a lot from working with other people, coming from different avenues and ending up in the same destination.” They explained that conducting research will give students great resume skills and could, in fact, change their career choice. Students also gain personal connections with their professors, which will help with future letters of recommendation.
The second half of the panel was dedicated to questioning the students who were conducting research across campus with various professors. Many of them explained how they either reached out to their professors or their professors reached out to them to lay out goals, establish a schedule and see if they’d be a good fit to work with.
Each student explained how they really enjoyed working with professors and conducting research, while both collaborating with their peers and working individually. They shared that conducting research is a great way to meet new people and broaden horizons.
Each student explained their schedule, as well as how many hours they worked each week, which could vary depending on the time of year.
They each explained that the main takeaways from conducting research were organization skills, getting comfortable with the work, managing time and developing critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills. They stressed that each student should endeavor to try to conduct research if they can because it will definitely be worth it.
After that, the panel engaged in a brief Q&A, where the students mainly discussed how weird and fun it can be to stay at Bucknell over the summer to conduct research and what it is like.
