Research Skills Workshop Series
The Biological Sciences Senior Leadership Committee offers a Research Skills Workshop Series Certificate program in order to provide an opportunity for undergraduates to obtain additional research and laboratory skills supplementing those gained during from lab courses. A primary aim of this program aims to augment participants’ research portfolios to give our students a competitive edge in applications for internships and summer research positions. This series will consist of five 1.5-2.5 hour workshops, held over the course of five weeks in the second half of the spring semester.
To obtain a Skills Workshop Series Certificate, students must accumulate 4 of the 6 total workshop credits by attending sessions and participating in the respective workshops’ activities or projects. This workshop series will be available to all undergraduate students in the biological sciences and environmental sciences majors.
ADVANCED UNDERGRADUATE LABORATORY SKILLS (2 workshop credits)
Saturday 3/25, 9:30 AM-12 PM
- An opportunity for students to further develop basic lab technique skills to better prepare them for undergraduate research positions.
- Students will Learn to:
- Passage cells using sterile technique
- Understand the process of immunostaining and become comfortable using a fluorescent microscope to image stained samples
- Troubleshoot techniques to make the skills more applicable to future lab work
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN WORKSHOP (1 workshop credit)
Tuesday 3/28, 6 PM-7:30 PM
- Model projects will demonstrate different experimental systems and the importance of experimental design in the field of biology.
- Important research design skills
- Identifying knowledge gaps in a research field
- Proper controls
- Use of databases
Statistics and Figure Making Workshop (1 workshop credit)
Tuesday 4/4, 6 PM-8 PM
- Students will solidify their understanding of when to apply various statistical tests and improve students’ abilities to construct figures and tables with proper formatting.
- Key statistical concepts that will continue to appear throughout undergraduate and post-graduate careers: replication, randomization, interaction, and transformation.
STATISTICS AND FIGURE-MAKING WORKSHOP (1 workshop credit)
Tuesday 4/11, 6 PM-7:30 PM
- Opportunity to strengthen communication skills in preparation for entering and succeeding in research laboratory conference preparation.
- Essential research communication skills
- Purpose of research talks
- Poster and slideshow design
- Question asking & answering
MENTORING UP: LEARNING TO WORK WITH YOUR MENTOR WORKSHOP (1 workshop credit)
Tuesday 4/18, 6 PM-7:30 PM
- Students will actively learn how to interact with their mentors to establish the most productive relationship possible.
- Allows students to understand the varying levels of mentorship between principal investigators, graduate students and post-docs, and undergraduate lab members.
- Opportunity to “role-play” in groups to address common situations that individuals face in mentorship relationships