GUROP Offers Students Opportunity to Conduct Research
Students read posters that describe research work accomplished by undergraduate GUROP participants. (Courtesy Sonia Jacobson)
Students read posters that describe research work accomplished by undergraduate GUROP participants. (Courtesy Sonia Jacobson)
Students create posters demonstrating what they've learned through GUROP. (Courtesy Sonia Jacobson)
"GUROP aims to benefit individual students and faculty as well as the university as a whole by strengthening the connections between faculty and students and emphasizing that we all comprise a community of learners and scholars."
--Sonia Jacobson
By LiAnna Davis
The Georgetown University Research Opportunities Program, or GUROP, provides students like Kara Garrity financial support to conduct course-related research. Garrity, a Georgetown senior majoring in Psychology, spent her summer working in Dr. Rachel Barr’s Early Learning Program lab under the prestigious GUROP fellowship.
“If I did not receive a GUROP fellowship, I most likely would have gone home to Philadelphia for the summer and found a random clerical job that paid well, but had nothing to do with my future,” Garrity says. “Instead, the GUROP fellowship allowed me to gain valuable research experience and gave me the opportunity to see if psychology research was really the path I wanted to take with my life.”
GUROP provides funding to students in two ways: semester-length assistantships during the school year and competitive summer research fellowships. Students with assistantships help a professor with his or her research for a total of 70 hours in the semester, earning a $400 honorarium and an “Undergraduate Research Assistant” notation on their transcript. Summer fellowship recipients work full time for 10 weeks, receiving a $5,000 honorarium and an “Undergraduate Research Fellow” notation on their transcript. Summer fellowship recipients primarily assist their faculty mentor’s research and also frequently conduct an independent project specific to their intellectual goals. Garrity, for example, is assisting with Dr. Barr’s research on infants’ learning and memory and is also conducting her own study on how well infants are able to learn from books and television. Her summer study forms the basis for her upcoming honors thesis.
“GUROP aims to benefit individual students and faculty as well as the university as a whole by strengthening the connections between faculty and students and emphasizing that we all comprise a community of learners and scholars,” says Sonia Jacobson, director of GUROP. “Research assistants develop specific research skills as well as a better understanding of the nature of research and of the wider research community. Faculty mentors advance their own research projects via the assistance of motivated students, and they have the satisfaction of introducing individual students to the excitement and challenges of their life’s work.”
The program grew out of the Teaching/Research Nexus Initiative, a coalition to enhance teaching and research at Georgetown by integrating the two disciplines in various ways. Jacobson estimates that 800-1,000 students have participated in GUROP since they awarded the first assistantships to eight students for the fall semester in 1997. Students from all four undergraduate schools can receive assistantships or fellowships, but currently about 60 percent of recipients are College science students like Garrity.
GUROP allows students to experience what it’s like to be an academic researcher. According to Jacobson, this not only benefits students already interested in academia or medical school, but it also offers students who are less sure of their ultimate goals a crucial glimpse into that life. In her years of working with the program, Jacobson relates that she has seen many students who come in wanting to enter the professional work force re-evaluate their plans after their experience with GUROP. Many realize how much they love research and choose to attend graduate school. Even for those who continue on a more work-oriented track, the skills learned through GUROP—performing independent library research, coming up with original questions, interviewing, writing, and analyzing—are invaluable and applicable in a variety of settings.
For Garrity, participating in GUROP has confirmed her career goals of working in the psychology field and given her a taste of what graduate school will be like, as she intends to pursue her studies at the graduate level. Additionally, she says, GUROP has provided her “a rare and valuable opportunity” to develop a mentor relationship with Dr. Barr.
“Dedicating so much time to research has shown me that it is something I really do enjoy, and so I am more confident than ever that this is the field I want to pursue in graduate school and in my future career,” Garrity says. “I have been able to actually go out on my own visits and collect data myself, which is very interesting and exciting. I have a new-found respect for the patience needed to collect data, and I have learned a great deal about the many, many factors involved in creating a successful project.”
Any undergraduate who wants the experience of working with a professor on his or her research should apply for an assistantship, Jacobson says. Although GUROP can’t fund everyone who applies, students can still participate in the program on a volunteer basis for the same opportunity it provides.
Jacobson says one of the best aspects of her job is interacting with students participating in GUROP.
“We have a lot of great, smart students, and it’s fun to see them grow intellectually,” she says.