Becoming a research apprentice

Overview

Research experience is essential if you are considering graduate school. The experience of conducting research is invaluable, and you will acquire useful tools and knowledge that you perhaps were not even expecting!

The research apprenticeship involves supervised research with a faculty member. You will assist a professor (in this case, me!) on a research project. Depending on the project, your responsibilities may include reviewing literature, planning experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and writing research reports. Students at our school often even attend national conferences to present this research!

Generally, my research projects involve studies of how reading is affected by vision.

Minimum Requirements

• My permission. You will need to come talk to me before you can work in my lab. I'll want to know what classes you've taken, how you did in them, and most importantly how your interests fit in with the research I am doing.
• You should have completed PSY205, PSY206, or have programming ability in any of Perl, Javascript, Matlab, or R.
• Good grades — I am very unlikely to accept anyone with a GPA less than 3.30.
• Ability to work independently. I won't be looking over your shoulder every single minute. You will have tasks to complete, and I will expect you to be able to arrange your schedule so that they get done on time.
• You must be a responsible person. This course can be taken for 1-4 credits; you are expected to work about 3 hours/week for every credit hour (e.g. if you take the course for 3 credits, you are expected to commit about 9 hours of work per week). Please be sure you have enough time to devote to this apprenticeship!

If you are interested in being a research apprentice, please check with me during advising time for the upcoming semester.