Undergraduate research: A lab as a family enhances the experience

Lauren Donohoe QC’11, Ana Sofia Lucero QC’12, Sarina Katanov QC’10, Jennifer Weintraub QC’11, Rosemarie Ott QC’11, Anthony del Rio QC’11, Paulina Kulesza QC’12, Stacey Rimikis QC’12 and Jim Stellar 

This is a most unusual post in that I am writing with a group, not an individual (first time).  They are undergraduate researchers in the laboratory of Professor Lauran Calandruccio in the Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders at Queens College.  When I visited the lab recently as the new Provost, I was struck immediately by the way that they seemed to relate to each other as well as to how they were doing front-line science that is soon to be published and has been and will be presented at conferences in the field.  So, I asked them collectively to write a blog post with me.  Here it is.

My first question is a deceptively simple one. We used the analogy to a family to describe the way you interact with each other and the Professor in the lab.  Why is this important and how does it work to enhance your growth experience from participating in research with a professor?

In order for a research lab to work at its optimal level, it is imperative that everyone involved work well together.  We like to think of the SpAR lab as a “family” because we help and support each other.  As the Linguistics and Communication Disorders department’s first research lab of this kind, we want to make a great impression and get people in our department, and Queens College as a whole, talking.  We take every opportunity to share our research: at the CUNY Pipeline Conference, the Q.C. Sigma Xi research fair, and at our department’s alumni event. We received great responses from everyone and took into consideration any idea that was offered.

The most important thing to remember is just how we got to be so successful.  The answer to that is: teamwork!  We do whatever we can to help and always give 100% to everything they do.  Dr. Calandruccio is an amazing collaborator because she encourages us to do what she knows we are capable of and encourages us to partake in great opportunities, such as NYU’s Rusk Program that two of our members will be participating in over the summer.  All of the research assistants are extremely happy when we hear that our fellow lab members get the chance to do something great because we want the best for each other.

Another thing that is vital to our success is our outgoing personalities and that we are very comfortable with each other.  It is important to give and accept criticism from those you work with: it will only make your work better. Being comfortable facilitates this process.  Comfort relates back to the “family” analogy, because family means that you can just be the person you are and people will appreciate that.  We all work so well together because we all want the same thing: to see our lab thrive in the future. 

Very impressive. My own lab at my previous institution was much like a family too (e.g. we were on a first name basis, helped each other learn lab skills, master the literature, etc.).  I always felt that the encouragement from the members - one to the other - was very powerful, much more than the nice encouragement I could give.  That was because, lab members were the same roughly age and when one could do something, others just believed they could as well.  Another factor was that we had a very real job of discovering and publishing scientific phenomena within the budget of our grants. The lab may have been located in the College, but it functioned as a real-world company where production mattered, where things could and did go wrong, and where individuals just had to take responsibility.  How important is this comparable-age effect in forming a lab-family compared to the real-world effect of research production in getting the most out of undergraduates in a lab?

Our lab is made up of very different individuals: different backgrounds, different life experiences, and different ages.  Even though these differences exist, we all have the same attitude- we always give our best and work hard to reach our goals, both on an individual level and as a lab.  The age differences between us does not pose an obstacle, but rather, it helps us.  The older lab members are great mentors for the younger ones: offering up what they have learned throughout their research experiences as well as giving advice.  The younger members are grateful for the advice and use it to their benefit.  The younger lab members can also put in their “two cents,” and everyone’s suggestions are taken under consideration.   Dr. Calandruccio selected a group of individuals who are committed and determined not only with their research, but to helping out one another.

To all of us, there is no real “comparable-age effect” because we are all treated with the same courtesy and respect and that has a big impact on how our lab succeeds.  No lab member tries to “nurture” others, rather, we are all treated as individuals with our own responsibilities.  No one gets a smaller or larger workload: everything is evenly distributed.  Getting the “most” out of what we do involves teamwork, and being on a team means that everyone pulls the same weight.  Combining everyone’s efforts is what really makes our lab run smoothly and allows us to really go above and beyond with our work.  After all, families are made up of members of different ages, and like a family, the SpAR lab works for the benefit of all its members.  Our lab is not about each individual “getting ahead,” but rather supporting each other and wanting to see our lab do well. 

I want to end by pointing out that people do things for their families that they do not do for others.  We have that saying, “blood is thicker than water.”  Some of this loyalty may be knowing that biological families have shared genes that we all want to see in the next generation, but it is also the caring, the communication, the common purpose, the in-it-together mentality that calls us out to do better than we might otherwise.  As illustrated above, this happens in a lab family, and it can similarly have a high impact on the work a student does and even on how much this opens them to learning about the field and about their own professional potential within it.  The learning may be informal compared to a classroom, but it is also powerful for the individuals, not to mention how powerful it is for the professor and the College.  We in the higher education business need to better leverage such informal but powerful learning opportunities.