Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: One of the empowering aspects of serving as a mentor is the space it provides for me to reflect on my own experience and to leverage my position to improve the often-hidden systems underlying academia for the next generation. Recently, it has been the undergraduates working in our group who have prompted me to take a deep look at how students access (and are compensated for) research in the laboratory. Here, I argue that it is time to reconsider the consequences of our norms governing undergraduate research, particularly in the United States. Specifically, we need to acknowledge how our current systems can reinforce inequity in the access to formative research experiences and, in particular, limit the participation of undergraduate students with limited financial resources.As an eager undergraduate at Brandeis University, I had the good fortune to find a home in the lab of Dr Susan Lowey, where my identity as a scientist was first formed. It was my privilege to carry out paid, full-time summer research supported through an HHMI-funded program, allowing me to mostly break even with my living expenses. There's little doubt that these summers were formative to my career. However, during the academic year, it was a different financial story. My laboratory work was structured as a mix of volunteering and research-for-credit, leaving me to seek out other employment to afford the costs of being a student. After holding a slew of on-campus jobs, from dishwashing in the dining hall to typing up notes for a professor, I chose to waitress, which naturally fit into nights and weekends and left my free ‘working hours’ for the lab, where I typically spent 20 h a week. Looking back now, one of my only regrets is making the decision to spend my time and effort waiting tables rather than immersing myself more fully in my research, even if it meant taking on a bit more debt. But it also begs the question, why wasn't there an easier way for me to get paid to spend those hours at the bench?In the United States, our federal scientific funding agencies, philanthropic organizations and institutions have built a rich network of paid summer research opportunities for undergraduates that introduce them to a career in science by providing critical exposure to the true nature of scientific discovery. Similar endeavors funded by institutions and research collaboratives provide research experiences for students across the globe (e.g. the Erasmus and RISE programs). As they were for me, such programs can no doubt be transformative for the participants. They further broaden participation of all groups and embed students in research laboratories with trainees and staff that, in most cases, are far more diverse than the faculty who teach at their undergraduate institution. Moreover, in the laboratory environment, undergraduates interact with others who are mere years ahead of them in their training and are from the same generation; this community is able to provide complementary mentorship to the faculty, who have not walked in their shoes for decades (or ever). While this exposure is fantastic, these experiences are short (typically ten weeks) and often under-resourced (that is, many do not provide room, board and a stipend equivalent to the pay that an undergraduate living at home and working full time could earn in a summer).In addition, while ten weeks provides important exposure to research, it can also leave students frustrated that the summer is ending just as they are hitting their stride. Let's face it, laboratory science does not often move forward on the timescale of weeks. Moreover, ten weeks is insufficient to build the type of deep relationships that maximize the ability of faculty to truly provide individualized mentorship and future detailed letters of reference. More longitudinal research experiences would likely benefit both undergraduates and the laboratories in which they carry out research. One solution? Academic year research that, although part-time, can maintain the intellectual and technical growth over sufficient time to reap maximum benefit. However, outside of the extensive summer research infrastructure there are fewer systematic approaches to identify potential laboratory opportunities, particularly those that are paid positions. Indeed, the de facto system that dominates during the academic year, particularly in the United States, is that of the undergraduate volunteer.A recent poll on X that I conducted, with all the limitations admittedly inherent to such a non-scientific survey, revealed that the most common mechanism by which students first access research experience is by volunteering (Fig. 1). On the surface, the currency of volunteer positions for undergraduates in the lab seems entirely reasonable: both the student and the lab mentor (the faculty advisor or another lab member) gives their time and energy. The student emerges with training, and, sometimes but not always, having contributed to new findings by the group. To be clear, these laboratory mentors deserve appreciation because there is little guarantee of a concrete benefit to them personally beyond ‘paying it forward’. But we also need to ask the question: who can afford to volunteer? And why are we so comfortable leaving the mechanism by which students access this important educational experience up to an informal system?Indeed, as research experience is critical for students to successfully be admitted into post-graduate educational opportunities in science and medicine, it constitutes a central component of their undergraduate curriculum. While formal laboratory classes can help build students' technical and intellectual skills, most do not recapitulate the research environment, where the outcomes are unknown. In other words, these students (and often their families) are likely committing substantial resources to pay their tuition, and yet one of their major educational needs is, on the surface, not being met. Here, ‘research for credit’ emerges as a popular solution, and in many ways it is an excellent one. As for all their courses, students can be expected to allocate time for research (typically on the order of 10 h per week) often augmented by other programmatic opportunities for learning, such as written research proposals, papers and presentations. However, most students in their early years at university or college have a full course load to meet the requirements of their major and/or pre-professional program, causing them to necessarily defer this opportunity until their third year or beyond. Yet accessing lab experiences early on can have numerous benefits: it can help cement a career vision, provide access to formal and informal mentors, and offers the opportunity to contribute in a substantial way to an ongoing research project that may take years and result in co-authorship during the undergraduate training period – a currency highly sought after by post-graduate admissions committees. But for students who cannot fit a formal ‘research for credit’ course in during the early years, the expectation is often that they will seek out a volunteer position.So, we are back to needing to acknowledge that volunteering is a prevalent mechanism to enter research. Consider the academic balance that undergraduates wishing to engage in laboratory research are trying to strike. Attending classes, extensive independent work, studying for exams, and, yes, getting into the lab. It's a lot. For students from lower socioeconomic status (SES), however, there is another major burden – the need for income. Inherent in the culture of volunteerism is therefore a stark inequity. Financially privileged students can spend their available time in lab whereas those that must earn money to financially survive cannot, at least not without the further burden of having to hold both unpaid lab work and a job. The outcome? By buying into this system of volunteerism, principal investigators are inadvertently biasing access to the critical career development currency of laboratory research. Moreover, students from higher SES are more likely to have parent(s) who are college graduates, able to pay for test prep, and guide their children through the other aspects of the hidden curriculum necessary to navigate the volunteer landscape.When I started my independent group in 2009, despite my own personal experience, I did not think twice about accepting students into the lab who wished to volunteer. I did, however, have a strong feeling that volunteers should not be doing service work for the lab, and therefore I also posted a job on our student employment website to recruit a student to make our yeast media. I was shocked when my first job ad received over 100 applications from scores of compelling candidates. The demand for paid work in a laboratory was clearly overwhelming, while the opportunities were, I realized, incredibly rare. In the United States, the Higher Education Act of 1965 founded what is commonly referred to as federal ‘work–study’, a program that from its inception has sought to provide a mechanism for low-income students to work their way through university. This program provides institutions with the funds to substantially subsidize (up to 75%) the pay of more than half a million eligible students in the US annually engaged in work at the school. While the scope of work–study has not kept pace with the increasing cost of higher education in the United States, and it might even be seen cynically as a way for institutions to benefit from federally funded student work, its second objective was always to provide ‘educationally relevant jobs’, that is to say paid positions that were preparing students for their future career. Which begs the question, why aren't more principal investigators using student employment at their institution and federal work–study as a system through which to provide paid research exposure?One obvious issue is that the resources available to an individual institution or laboratory varies tremendously. However, putting a number on the cost of providing a paid research position to a work–study-eligible student reveals that it might be less of a barrier than one might think. At Yale, our students earn a minimum wage of $15 per hour and typically spend ∼10 h in the lab weekly. The work–study program provides 50% pay, lowering the cost to the lab to $7.50, or $75 per week; over the ∼15 weeks per semester, this amounts to $1125 – the realm of the cost of an antibody or two with shipping. Research is an incredibly expensive endeavor in which $1000 does not hold much buying power, yet earning $2000 a semester through research activity can be transformative for a student. And while even this cost might still be out of reach for some, even simply acknowledging the reality that asking students to volunteer can be a financial burden can open up a valuable dialogue. In many cases, a student who enters the lab in a paid position will become self-supporting because they are in a stronger position to compete for summer research fellowships or will engage in research for credit later in their career, all of which ultimately benefits the lab. It is also important to note that there are also different rules governing pay for undergraduate research across countries, including places where volunteering is not the norm that it has long been in the United States.As I suspect is true for many others group leaders, I did not question the inertia of the culture of volunteerism in undergraduate research when I launched my independent lab. It is my undergraduate students who deserve the credit for opening my eyes and reminding me of my own experience 20 years ago, rushing from the lab to my waitressing job. Now, however, I am in the position to intervene. Academia can be a frustratingly slow environment in which to effect change, but it is also a place of autonomy. I am not an expert on the workforce or educational programs, but I am an experienced undergraduate mentor at an institution with a robust student employment system. I have agency over the approach I take when providing opportunities to young scientists and I can ensure that I do so in as equitable a fashion as possible.I am indebted to the over fifty undergraduates I have mentored in the King and now LusKing lab. I would like to specifically acknowledge my first student, Dr. Henny Bennett, and soon-to-be Drs. Lily Mirfakhraie and Hang Nguyen. Without you this article would not have been written.
Source: Journal of Cell Science
DOI: 10.1242/jcs.261865
Author: Megan C. King
Institution: Yale University
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4390447531