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Episode Notes | Transcript | AskTheGuest

Hi Fives (5 Highlights) Click for 3-Minute Listen

Alexa Sand is a Professor of Arts History and the Associate VP of Research at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Prof. Alexa Sand joins us on our podcast to talk about UG Research at Utah State, the role CUR plays, the services her group provides Students & Faculty, their successes, and finally the skills and characteristics needed to do research.

Hi-Fives from the Podcast are:

Introduction to Mentoring Research
CUR’s Role
Students Driving Projects
UG Research Opens Opportunities
Skills and Characteristics for Research

Episode Notes

Episode Title: Prof. Alexa Sand of Utah State University: UG Research Engages Students across Majors.

Alexa Sand is a Professor of Art History and the Associate VP of Research at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

In particular, we discuss the following with her:

Prof. Alexa Sand’s Background
UG Research at Utah State
Student Successes in Research
Skills for tomorrow’s Researchers

Topics discussed in this episode:

Introducing Prof. Alexa Sand, USU [0:54]
Hi Fives - Podcast Highlights [2:16]
Professional Background [4:21]
Value of UG Research [6:35]
Assoc. VP of UG Research at USU [10:22]
CUR’s Role [11:45]
Research Liaison for Students [14:19]
Introducing UG Research at Freshman Orientation [19:19]
Broad Participation [21:47]
Student-Driven Projects [23:44]
UG Research Opens Doors [27:11]
What’s Ahead? [28:27]
Skills High Schoolers Need to do Research [31:07]

Our Guest: Alexa Sand is a Professor of Art History and the Associate VP of Research at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Prof. Sand graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Anthropology from Williams College. She received her Master’s and PhD degrees in Art History from the University of California Berkeley.

Memorable Quote: “ There's a Latin motto Ars Longa, Vita Brevis. Which means, like the work takes a long time. Yes, it's long, and life is relatively short.” Prof. Alexa Sand about Research.

Episode Transcript: Please visit Episode’s Transcript.

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Episode Transcript

Transcript of the episode’s audio.

<Start Snippet> Alexa 0:16

Venkat 0:54 [Introducing Prof. Alexa Sand, Utah State]

That is Alexa Sand, Arts History Professor at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Hello, I am your host, Venkat Raman.

Utah State started the Undergraduate creative opportunities and research grants program way back in 1975. The first 2 grants went to the Physics Department and English Department!

Today, nearly 1500 grants later, the awards span the 8 different colleges at Utah State!

Venkat Raman 1:31

Alexa Sand is currently the Associate VP of Research at USU overseeing this undergraduate research operation.

Venkat Raman 1:41

Before we jump into the podcast, here are the Hi-Fives, Five Highlights from the podcast:

Alexa S 2:16 [Highlights - Hi Fives]

[Introduction to Mentoring Research]

Utah State has an amazing history of encouraging interdisciplinary undergraduate research and the head of the program at that time, whose occur fellow Joyce Kincaid reached down she had a student she thought might be interested in working with me. And that's sort of how I got into it.

[CUR’s Role]

CUR provides so many resources for our faculty who want to become better mentors or who want to, to present their own mentorship in terms of save their promotion and tenure. Like how, you know, this is an effective practice. Well, there's all this research and CUR connects us to that.

[Students Driving Projects]

Well, I think you'd actually be really surprised how many of the students for example, I was talking about the Undergraduate Research and Creative opportunities grants, how many students are really, in the, you know, in the pilot's seat, they are really driving their own research project.

[UG Research Opens Opportunities]

Most people don't go straight into a Ph. D. program, right. I would say the majority of our students take what they've learned from their undergraduate research. And they might be thinking someday I might want to go to graduate school, but they go out and they get jobs.

[Skills and Characteristics for Research]

The first characteristic is curiosity. You just have to, you have to want to know things that you might not know why they're important yet.

Venkat Raman 3:53

These were the Hi5s, brought to you by “College Matters. Alma Matters.”

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Venkat Raman 4:03

Now. I'm sure you want to hear the entire podcast with Professor Sand. So without further ado, here's the podcast with Professor Alexa Sand!

-----------------

Venkat Raman 4:15

The best place to kick it off is to talk about your background. And then weave our way through the story.

Alexa 4:21 [Professional Background]

Sure, so I am a Professor of Art History. I've been at Utah State University since 2004. Before that, I worked at a couple of different institutions in California. I got my PhD from UC Berkeley art history. And my undergraduate degree from Williams College actually went there as a biology major and I thought I was going to be a marine scientist, but I took an art history class and it just sort of sucked me in able to do undergraduate research at Williams College and I think that really put the idea my head that I might want to continue to do that kind of research.

Venkat Raman 5:04

Tell us a little bit about Art History. I mean, why that fascinated you, just briefly so that we get some window into that?

Alexa 5:13

Yeah, you know, it's sort of it sounds like not the most natural shift from, you know, Marine Biology, yeah. to Art History. But I'd always been really interested, I grew up in Seattle, and I was really interested in this sort of intersection between, you know, the sort of natural world there and the way in which historically different cultural groups that inhabited that region had sort of represented that. And, you know, when I was a kid, I remember going out to an archeological site, on the Olympic Peninsula on the coast and seeing some of those artifacts and just sort of my imagination being fired by the fact that these are like physical traces of these people who lived here so long before. So I think I think I was always interested in those things. I just didn't know that it was a formal discipline that you could study, I went to a Science High School, nobody ever told me that, you know, make a scientific study of art history as well, as you could have, say, whales and dolphins.

Venkat Raman 6:25

You said that undergraduate research value at Williams sort of made a huge difference or impact. What was it? What was about that research? Or what what exactly happened?

Alexa 6:35 [Value of UG Research]

Well, I think, I mean, there were sort of two things. One was that I had the opportunity to design and curate an exhibition in the rare books library there. It was, it was a class based project. But every art history major got a chance to do a little curatorial project. And I worked on books that had some relationship to the first European contact. And it was just, I mean, sort of getting to handle these old objects and sort of decide how people were going to view them and see them that was really, that was really powerful. For me, the other thing, I wrote a senior thesis. And it was kind of a disaster, actually, and all of the things that went wrong in that process, I think really led me to think about what, you know, how is mentoring an important part of the undergraduate research experience, and like, sort of how my failure to communicate with my mentor and how my mentors failure to communicate with me, really, really frustrating, but also really important kind of learning? For me, so that when I did end up going to graduate school, I knew that communication was like the number one thing I had to have good communication with my, with my mentors.

Venkat Raman 8:05

So is that sort of the driving force behind your role as the Associate VP of research at Utah State?

Alexa 8:16

Well, I mean, I think I got involved in undergraduate research mentorship here early on, just Utah State has an amazing history of encouraging interdisciplinary, undergraduate research and the head of the program at that time, whose occur fellow Joyce Kincaid, reached out as she had a student, she thought might be interested in working with me, and that's sort of how I got into it. But, you know, a, I started to be able to apply sort of those lessons I'd learned as something of a failure as an undergraduate researcher, and I was able to think, like, you know, what would this student most benefit from like, What skills does she need in order to be able to succeed and to really get excited about this, what, you know, what sorts of things are out there? So I got involved early, and then we have a sort of faculty advisory board for undergraduate. I joined that and then I joined her as a counselor for arts and humanities, back in like 2008 or 2009. And just for a long time, I kind of did this work not because it was really necessarily required of me or part of my, you know, official job description. I just really enjoyed it. I love I love that one on one with students. I love encouraging students to sort of do their own thing. When the position came up in the Office of Research, I think I think it was a pretty natural fit. I had already kind of started a similar sort of program at our college level to To try to get students in the arts in particular to think about themselves as researchers. So I had a lot of experience, I had all of that connection with the council and undergraduate research and with the undergraduate research advisory board here, so I just sort of stepped into it pretty naturally, I think.

Venkat Raman 10:18

So what do you have to do? So what, what is the role, What's the role entail?

Alexa 10:22 [Assoc. VP of UG Research at USU]

Oh, well, it's kind of a funny role, like most undergraduate research program, directors just directed undergraduate research program, like that's their whole, right. But because I'm an Associate VP, I have kind of a, a slightly more diverse set of things I'm responsible for, in addition to our very, very large, university wide undergraduate research program, which includes events and, you know, scholarship support, and a whole range of other things. I run a doctoral research fellowship program, which is really, these are some of the best PhD students at the university, and they are from all over the world, their thing but and I really get inspired by them. And, and one of the things I really like is that they're sort of like the, the big brothers and sisters to our undergraduate researchers, and a lot of them get their first taste of Undergraduate Research Mentoring through our office. So that's fantastic. I also, weirdly enough, am responsible for the microscopy core facility, so that back to my biology route.

Venkat Raman 11:38

Tell us how CUR helps you with what you do or your operation with what you do?

Alexa 11:45 [CUR’s Role]

Well, I mean, really, CUR is, so many things, it's, I mean, first of all, it's a great community of people. So trying to find a way to do something, or I have a problem as the, you know, undergraduate research program director, or I'm trying to figure out how to, you know, pivot our events to virtual events during the middle of a pandemic, just for example. Yeah. This is the community I turned to immediately. And there are just so many smart people with such great ideas and such a wealth of experience. So I would say like, as a resource for an undergraduate research program director, as an undergraduate research mentor, those are my people, I learned so much from them. And I really like them too. And I think one of the things that, that I've missed during the pandemic is really the sort of camaraderie and and esprit de corps of the Kerr community. But that said, I mean, also, CUR provides so many resources for our faculty who want to become better mentors or who want to, to present their own mentorship in terms of save their promotion and tenure, like, how, you know, this is an effective practice. Well, there's all this research and CUR connects us to that. You know, different things that CUR institutes and the the conferences are always fantastic learning opportunities, there's actually quite a lot of students support to the National Conference on Undergraduate research is one of our favorite events every year, it's been online for the last two years. But But actually, that's made it really affordable and accessible. And I think CUR is always thinking about how to how to reach those broader audiences. And this sort of necessary turn to the virtual has been, has been good for us. So, you know, we do like to get together in person and, you know, of course, of a happy hour after the after the serious businesses completed.

Venkat Raman 14:01

So which kind of leads me to what, what kind of infrastructure do you provide the students and faculty at Utah State? What what do you guys offer them by way of both infrastructure and resources?

Alexa 14:19 [Research Liaison for Students]

Well, we have been supporting undergraduate researchers directly since 1975. When were they a program called the undergraduate creative opportunities and research grants. So that grant is I mean, it was pretty radical at the time that a student could apply for money to undertake a mentored independent research project outside of their classes. And, you know, produce something whether it was, you know, research outcome of a sort of more conventional stem type or whether it was a poem, or whatever. And it was an array from the very start the pilot year of the program, the two departments that participated were the English department and the physics department. So that gives you a sense. So we've given out, we're probably closing in on 1500 of these grants at this point in time. We support all kinds of amazing projects.

Alexa 15:30

We also have a fellowship program that was started in 2004. This is a scholarship essentially, that supports students who want to be deeply involved in research from the start. So they're mostly incoming freshmen and rising sophomores and a few transfer students as well, for those students, through a scholarship, and then through different kinds of trainings and opportunities that we provide to them.

Alexa 16:03

So those are our two main and we also, you know, support, like students going to present their work at conferences, that kind of thing. Or have events as well, we have a fall and spring Student Research Symposium every year, well, except during the pandemic, but we'll bracket that out. Most years, we have, you know, total participation between the fall and the spring, close to 750 students.

Alexa 16:34

So, we have a lot of supports, because we're part of the Office of Research as well. So we have this amazing church communications team. Those folks are available as a resource for our students. So when they're putting together a poster, say to present at the spring legislative session, we bring a bunch of students down to the Capitol, and they talk to legislators about their, their research, the research communications team works with them one on one to to develop the best possible research communication poster on it, like they, they're, you know, really great editors and, and sort of visual consultants on these posters. So we have that, that whole sort of, group.

Alexa 17:23

And then we also provide a lot of mentor supports, trainings, different resources on our website, and through the library. Opportunities to be recognized, you know, we have cash prizes for the best undergraduate research mentors from each college every year, we have eight colleges. And then one of those is selected as the university wide winner. We also have like a summer mentoring program where the faculty members get a little financial compensation for being being summer research mentors.

Alexa 18:02

Oh, you know, the other thing that I think is really so important is that in our university code and the standards for promotion and tenure, the mentorship of undergraduate researchers is specifically called out and recognized as a component of excellence in teaching. And I think that's really, really key. Across the board institutions that have that. And more and more of them do see that faculty are much more willing to engage as undergraduate research mentors, because they don't have to ask themselves, Well, what do I get out of this? You get ahead. That's right. That's the big part, right, that everybody's after. So yeah, I think we have a lot of ways that we support, support it institutionally.

Venkat Raman 18:50

Now, that's awesome. I think I really like the part about mentoring as requirements, so to speak, for tenure ship kind of track.

Venkat Raman 19:03

Two questions. So when students come in as freshmen, how did they find out about this undergraduate research? Is there some way that they would naturally all hear about it? Or is it something they kind of stumble upon?

Alexa 19:19 [Introducing UG Research at Freshman Orientation]

No, that's a great question. We we have a sort of freshman orientation, like most universities, and it's a course actually four credit course they take connections. And my office works really closely with the connections faculty to make sure that at least get an introduction to the idea of you know, some buddy, often a student researcher comes in and talks to them about that or they're provided with, you know, information about how they can learn more. So that that's integrated into that Experience for freshmen, we also spend a lot of time at the beginning of every academic year, sort of inviting students into the fold, we go to the big, you know, it's called day on the cloth and all the student organizations are out there, giving away freebies and stuff, and we're out there too. Handing out whatever our swag is, but really drive people to our website and to get them to learn more. You know, we we also particularly try to do outreach to specific groups of students who may not think of themselves as potential researchers. So we are part of the recruitment day, for example, for Latin X students. And we partner with a externally funded grant that support students from our regional campus in Blanding, Utah, which is about 70 or 75% Native American, so we put that program which is called mesas to to get those students aware of the opportunities that we have here on the Logan campus, that the sort of the system and, you know, to, to really, like, make it possible for them to come up here, you know, be employed as research assistants, and get the kind of support that they need.

Venkat Raman 21:37

Now, how broad is the participation? I mean, I know, I mean, across disciplines how, how wide and broad is that?

Alexa 21:47 [Broad Participation]

Well, I'm really pleased to say that in the last five to 10 years, we've seen a pretty significant shift from a much more stem focused ation to participation across all eight of our colleges. And I mean, you know, personally coming from a College of the Arts. Yeah, that was sort of my agenda was to ensure that these sort of less represented disciplines, had some space had to play. Well. And I think now, you know, when I was in the College of the Arts, as a faculty member doing this, there was no formal sort of recognition of this or, or sort of institutionalization of undergraduate research. But now we have an Associate Dean for Student Research. And he's great, you know, he organizes events, he gets the students to participate in the campus wide events, they have a summer fellowship for these students. So I think it's a partnership really, between the central office and the colleges. And I'm seeing the needle move even in the colleges where it hasn't historically been a big part of what they do the business college, for example, now, always send students to our events. And I think it's great. I really like what I'm seeing, because I think people are starting to realize this is, you know, it's a real selling point for our university and and it really helps us retain the best students.

Venkat Raman 23:29

I'm guessing that lots of these research projects, if you will, come from faculty, how often do you find students, student driven ideas in this?

Alexa 23:44 [Student-Driven Projects]

Well, I think you'd actually be really surprised how many of the students for example, I was talking about the the Undergraduate Research and Creative opportunities grants. You How many students are really in the, you know, in the pilot seat, they are really driving their own research project. Okay. They may have started, as you know, a lab assistant, you know, washing, sure, washing the glass.

Alexa 24:14

I'll give you an example. We had a student who just graduated. I guess like 18 months ago, she came knowing she wanted to major in engineering thinking she wanted to be a mechanical engineer. She worked for a year in a mechanical engineering lab, didn't really it was taking a biology class at the same time, and sort of sidled into a biological engineering lab as a sophomore, and started working on a project with a PhD student in that lab. Well, two years later, she was the principal author so the you know, the lead researcher on a project with using this is like one of those crazy things using spiders silk matrices to grow retinal stem cells. Wow. And she developed this technique. I mean, she was she invented the technique. And the technique has really significant implications for, for research on on different kinds of vision loss. So she's now getting a PhD. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Alexa 25:27

You know, we have, we have students like that all the time, we had these two students from the music department a couple years ago, who wanted to compose an opera. Like a small thing. Yeah, so not only did they compose this opera, well, they work with a composer, and they they brought this opera completely through the whole process from like, conceptualization, to composition to performance in the middle of the pandemic, so they had to figure out a way to perform their opera. You know, they and they, they did it, they, it was a project, they're both now pursuing graduate degrees in music at I think one of them's at Berkeley, in Boston, and the other one said, Iowa.

Alexa 26:20

And in like, there is a pretty clear pipeline between students who do this and graduate school, but but the point being these students are completely these are their own ideas. They're inspired, of course, by their mentors, but but I think they see, can do their own things. Like that's the beauty of undergraduate research is like, you start out thinking, Oh, I'll work on my professors project. But after a few years, you're ready to, you know, do your own thing.

Venkat Raman 26:52

I would also imagine that the benefits of doing undergraduate research is not necessarily limited to go into grad school, but, you know, going off into industry, or what have you after your bachelor's degree, and making an impact and the way, you know, you do your work, right.

Alexa 27:11 [UG Research Opens Doors]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, most people don't go straight into a Ph. D. program. I would say the majority of our students take what they've learned from their undergraduate research. And they might be thinking someday I might want to go to graduate school, but they go out and they get jobs. So being you we have to who's Goldwater scholar, he's amazing young man who's working for the National Park Service now. And I mean, that was his dream job. And he would have that job if he had not done undergraduate research. Because they basically hired him for his skill set on. I don't know exactly what, what it involves, but it's like these knights sensing cameras that track wildlife movements. It's it's very technical. But in any case, you know, he was hired for a set of specialist skills that he developed as a researcher here.

Venkat Raman 28:10

So what's ahead? I mean, what are you guys looking to make happen over the next few years? It sounds like it sounds like this is going really, really well, for based on, you know, both the coverage and the types of students and the traction that you're getting.

Alexa 28:27 [What’s Ahead?]

Yeah, I mean, so I've been in the role, what four, four years now, here, I think. And I think when I took the job, I thought, I'll do this for five years. And they'll hand it off to like the next excited, energetic person. But I think because of the pandemic, partly and because some things take longer than you would imagine, think next thrust, we've really got to focus on accessibility and inclusion. You know, it's easy to recruit students whose parents are highly educated, who themselves, you know, may have had an undergraduate research experience or a research career, even those students are no brainer, they're really, really easy to attract to the program. It's harder to get students whose, you know, family background is not one in which a research career is even something they're familiar with. Or students who maybe struggled a little bit in high school. Just because, you know, they had other pressures on them. So how do we get those kids empowered to do research? And so we have a number of initiatives underway to try to address that based on, you know, successful initiatives that other institutions, similar institutions. We're really really keeping our fingers crossed and hoping to get included in the next round of Federal Trio funding for the McNair Scholars Program. Hmm. Which which supports undergraduate researchers from basically first generation students from the from those backgrounds. And we have a lot of first generation students here, we're an ag school, we're in a rural part of the country. You know, the head of the NSF has recently talked quite a bit about the missing millions. And these are the students, the people who would make great research professionals, great tech innovators, but we're missing. And I think one of our jobs here as a land grant institution is really to get those students to find that mentor to invite them in, and to give them the kinds of experiences that they can build on.

Venkat Raman 30:48

So now, Alexa, as we sort of start winding down here, I'd love for you to sort of give us some advice to students who are going to walk in the door there about the kinds of skills they should be developing, so that they can do research in college as an undergrad?

Alexa 31:07 [Skills High Schoolers Need to do Research]

Oh, it's such a good question. I mean, I think there are two things, their skills and then they're sort of characteristics that cultivate write our most successful undergraduate researchers to sort of define what they thought, made a great undergraduate researcher, they came up with a couple of things. The first characteristic is curiosity, you just have you heard about the world, you have to want to know things that you might not know why they're important yet. So just a curiosity, resilience was another one, they came up with the idea that like, it's okay to fail to follow is to mess up, you just get back up and you try again, try it a different way. And all our really successful students talk about all the times they failed and fallen on their faces, you know, and I think that our ability to get back up. And also a work ethic, like, research is hard work. It's fun, hard work, but you have to work really hard. And so the ability to really apply yourself and to like, you know, turn off your social media account, and off all of the fun distractions for a little while, and just like, zero in on the research work, I think that's those are characteristic skills. I mean, being organized, being a good communicator, you know, knowing when to ask questions, those are skills that you need to have as a researcher, or really just as an adult.

Venkat Raman 32:40

Definitely, definitely. You know, in the characteristic area, I might add perseverance, because you just mentioned something that, you know, you just not in addition to work ethic, you know, you you have to stick with it. Right. You never know when you're going to get that outcome or get a good result or what have you.

Alexa 33:03

Yeah, so as an Art Historian, there's a Latin motto that Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, which means like the work takes a long time. Yes, it's long, and life is relatively short. So yeah, anything done, you got to, you got to work. But like work is not a bad thing. Work should be fun, work, work. And play can be the same thing sometimes. In research, like you're playing with ideas.

Venkat Raman 33:38

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you love what you're doing, you know, you get what you want. And that sense, you know, work becomes fun.

Alexa 33:45

Yeah, exactly. I'm not gonna say I've never been bored doing.

Venkat Raman 33:51

Yeah. Fabulous. So Alexa, this has been fascinating, wonderful conversation, and I hope to talk to you more I obviously, as we talked on the phone earlier, I would love to talk to students and faculty and, you know, grab more stories. That's a great start. And I thank you for all the insights and the information that you provided. So take care, be safe, and I will talk to you soon.

Alexa 34:21

Cool. Yeah, talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye.

Venkat Raman 34:25

Bye. Bye.

--------------------

Venkat 34:31

Hi again!

Hope you enjoyed our podcast with Prof Alexa Sand at Utah State University about their Undergraduate Research.

Specifically, Prof. Sand covered:

UG Research infrastructure and resources available to their students and faculty;
The impact of UG research across the university;
Student Successes across disciplines;
Finally, advice to budding researchers on the skills needed.

I hope you take a hard look at research during your undergraduate years and explore Utah State further.

For your questions or comments on this podcast, please email podcast at almamatters.io [podcast@almamatters.io].

Thank you all so much for listening to our podcast today.

Transcripts for this podcast and previous podcasts are on almamatters.io forward slash podcasts [almamatters.io/podcasts].

To stay connected with us, Subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify or visit anchor.fm forward slash almamatters [anchor.fm/almamatters] to check us out.

Till we meet again, take care and be safe.

Thank you!

Summary Keywords

Podcast for High Schoolers, College Majors, US Colleges, College Podcast, Undergraduate Research Podcast, High School Students, College-bound UG Research, undergraduate research, Utah State University, USU, Arts History.

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