It's already a few weeks into the start of a new school year, but summer still lingers in the minds of Tufts students. For many, especially seniors, there was a sense of urgency about finding something to do over the summer that could help them succeed in getting a job within their field of choice.
Often, "real world" experience is gained through internships in which students are given grunt work, stereotypically carrying coffee and pushing papers in order to get ahead.
For students in the sciences, however, the world works a little differently. From chemistry to biology, geology to engineering, many students gained experience in fields of their choice by taking a hands-on approach, assisting with research or conducting it themselves.
Senior Jen Shusterman was enrolled in a program at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, working in her field of nuclear chemistry on a far more advanced level than she could have otherwise.
"I took courses in nuclear radiometry, got tours of the facilities and sat in on a lot of interesting lectures," Shusterman said. "One of our lecturers was Gerhardt Friedlander, who told us about his journey to the United States from Nazi Germany and of his experience working on the Manhattan Project and at Brookhaven."
Shusterman was one of the last students to have this experience, as Friedlander passed away this week.
According to its Web site, Brookhaven is "one of 10 national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy." Its research fields include physical, biomedical and environmental sciences, energy technologies and national security.
Though Shusterman was taking classes and not performing independent research, she still worked with radioactive materials as part of her lab work.
Shusterman's secondary research was on the ability of scientists to recover radioactive elements from nuclear waste.
"When we use nuclear fuel, the waste left over includes uranium and plutonium, which are highly radioactive. If we can separate these out from the rest of the nuclear waste, then there's the possibility that we could reuse it," she said. "It also makes for safer disposal and cleaner waste, which is better for the environment. Unfortunately it's very hard to do, so I was specifically looking at ways to do this using electrochemistry."
According to Shusterman, the internship experience changed her directional focus. "I had no idea before I started that I'd be interested in nuclear chemistry, but now it's what I want to do after I graduate," she said.
Senior Emily Weir stayed a bit closer to home this summer, working here at Tufts as a research assistant to a graduate student. She spent the majority of the summer studying urban ecology, specifically, how roof gardens and other urban plant life are pollinated in the city, where the natural ecosystem must adjust to rapid land appropriation.
According to Weir, the work sounded glamorous but started off with tedium as all research projects must.
"I spent a lot of time trying to get grants; I got part of my funding through the Garden Club of America and part of the funding through Colleen Butler [the Ph.D. student], who had budgeted for a research assistant," she said.
Weir chose this project because there was already a strong body of scientific work completed on the benefits of green roofs, stormwater retention and the urban heat island effect, but not much research on the potential for green roofs to house certain species.
"One of my methods was looking at a one-meter square of vegetation for two minutes and recording species that I saw. I would also follow a bee and record how long it spent pollinating which flowers [and] how long it spent flying from flower to flower. It looked pretty funny with me leaping over vegetation, trying to follow a bee," Weir said.
After aiding with Butler's research, Weir will now be utilizing the data she gathered in her own independent research project. "I would love to be able to do some outreach with my findings," she said.
For part of the summer, Weir also worked with another graduate student on a separate research project, looking at declining bird species.
"We were asking questions like, 'What's causing this?' and trying to learn more about the systems at work," she said.
From her second job, Weir remembers that there was less independent data collection and many more early mornings.
"We got up early to escape the heat of the day, so it was necessary to get up well before the crack of dawn," Weir said.
In the end, both students agreed on one thing following their experiences: While next summer seems far away, if research is appealing, figuring out what to do early on can be beneficial. Weir found it important to make connections with professors and graduate students throughout the school year, and Shusterman put a lot of weight on making sure to apply to competitive programs on time in order to secure a spot.
