McKay School of Education > News > CPSE Undergraduates Benefit from Collaborating with Professors on Research
CPSE Undergraduates Benefit from Collaborating with Professors on Research
Undergraduate students in the McKay School of Education are assisting professors with real research, an opportunity highly valued in the McKay school and encouraged and subsidized throughout BYU.
In February of this year alone, students from the Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education (CPSE) made seven presentations on research they had conducted as undergraduate mentored students. The topics for presentations varied, including “Learning Disabilities in Juvenile Literature” and “Using Peer Tutors to Provide Accommodations in the General Education Classroom.”
Betty Ashbaker, a CPSE professor who mentors many students, appreciates the bright and capable students she works with. “They are amazing. They haven’t needed a lot of supervision,” she expressed. Ashbaker mainly helps the students set up their research and then find places to present and publish. One student Ashbaker helped last year doubled the size of her resume as a result of her experience as a mentored undergraduate with three national presentations, three publications, two local poster sessions and three grants.
Katherine Way, a CPSE student who is working with Tina Dyches to study how characters with autism are portrayed in children’s literature, recently received a mentoring grant from the Office of Research and Creative Activities to cover the expenses involved with presenting her research. Way is grateful that this experience will help her understand more about students with autism. “It’s not an assignment, but something I chose,” she explained.
Dyches described how teacher-student collaboration enhances student learning as well as strengthening the research. “It is a rare opportunity for an undergraduate student to work one-on-one or even in small groups with a professor,” she stated. Students who present or publish their research have an advantage when applying to graduate school or for a job.
This opportunity for undergraduates to help professors conduct research extends across the university. Freshman Sam Dittmer, nicknamed “Mr. Math” for being the best math student in the state and the American Region Math League National individual round champion in 2006, was accepted at Stanford and MIT but chose to come to BYU, in part because he would have opportunities to conduct research as an undergraduate in the Department of Mathematics.
29 June 2009