Students discovering the beauty of doing research — long before graduate school
By Elizabeth Bettendorf</p>
<p>…Chase, along with a cadre of current and former students, recently published a research paper with surprising new results in the peer-reviewed journal DNA and Cell Biology. Five authors were undergraduates and two were high school students in FSU’s Young Scholars Program when they worked on the research project. (The paper, titled “Interaction Between Troponin and Myosin Enhances Contractile Activity of Myosin in Cardiac Muscle,” is available online; the print version will be published this fall in an issue of the journal that focuses on undergraduate research).</p>
<p>Sharing a byline with the chairman of the biology department has proved an auspicious start for these undergraduates, who get to see their names splashed in an academic journal — a thrill usually experienced at the graduate level.</p>
<p>Such kudos, however, are not uncommon at Florida State.</p>
<p>These days, an increasing number of FSU undergraduates are partnering in substantive ways with professors to move important research forward. And Chase wants the world to know that his research — which is “all about trying to understand how the healthy heart works, and changes that occur in heart disease” — has been supported for years by enthusiastic undergraduates.</p>
<p>“When you think about undergraduate research, it’s an investment not just in that project but in the future of science,” he said. “You never know where these students will go and what interesting career paths they will follow.”</p>
<p>Undergraduate research is flourishing not only in FSU’s biology labs but in myriad disciplines campuswide: The 2011 spring semester marked a milestone for undergraduate research with the inaugural publication of The Owl — the university’s first-ever journal devoted solely to showcasing an eclectic mix of undergraduate research and creative endeavors, from poetry to religion to science.</p>
<p>In his own department, Chase has documented a spike in undergraduate research in recent years, a finding he has quantified and written about in a paper he hopes to publish soon.</p>
<p>“There has been a tenfold increase in the last decade,” said Chase, whose gentle manner and encouraging spirit has inspired many FSU biology majors to pursue their own research.</p>
<p>He attributes this youthful research bubble to burgeoning student interest, as well as “the growing realization that there are many opportunities available.” Chase also credits a new generation of research-driven faculty, as well as more federal and state funding for science, engineering and biomedical research at the university level.</p>
<p>The Owl is named for the bird pictured in the official seal of West Florida Theological Seminary, the earliest predecessor of Florida State, which existed from 1851 to 1901. The new journal highlights undergraduate research on such weighty topics as “Applications of Artificial Neural Networks in Mushroom Edibility Classification,” “Religion and Modernity: The Fire Sermon,” and “Yemen: Al-Qaeda’s Next Fortress.”…</p>
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