Biomedical engineering senior Myra Epp has taken two fluid mechanics classes at U-M. “In class, you learn the principles and apply the equations,” Epp says. “But in the lab, you actually see fluids moving through a channel and can calculate and verify pressure drops. You gain a deeper understanding.”
Epp is working on a modified version of a thoracic artificial lung for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome and chronic respiratory disease. As a first-year student from Grand Rapids, Epp began working in Keith Cook’s laboratory on the Medical School campus through the nationally acclaimed Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP).
Like many who start in UROP, she has continued working in the lab through independent study. She also is active in the Biomedical Engineering Society, landed two prestigious summer research internships at the National Institute of Health and is applying to the master’s degree program in biomedical engineering.
Epp’s success is not unusual, says UROP Director Sandra Gregerman. Research has shown a positive benefit of UROP participation on students’ retention and academic achievement, behavior, and post-graduate educational and professional activities.
Epp is one of 2,307 U-M undergraduates enrolled this fall in one or more independent study courses, including guided research programs, research seminars and original research.
To thrive in a knowledge-based economy, students must understand what they need to know and how to acquire knowledge quickly. Independent or informal study, guided by a faculty member, is a step in the right direction, says Philip Hanlon, associate provost for academic and budgetary affairs, who notes interest in independent study is growing. Fall term a decade ago, 1,518 first-year students took advantage of such opportunities, according to the Office of the Registrar.
Reasons students enroll in independent study include to:
• Explore topics not contained in a single course or in more depth than available in lecture courses;
• Resolve a scheduling conflict;
• Make a more informed decision about whether to go to graduate school;
• Develop a relationship with a professor who will write recommendations.
“Informal courses also are more fun, and students can work on a project they are interested in,” says Theresa Lee, chair of the psychology department and a champion of informal study options.
One of her former students, Heather Menard of Garden City, who graduated in spring 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in brain, behavior and cognitive science, studied the effects of sleep deprivation on the diurnal degu, rodents that normally are active during the day and sleep at night. “Using gentle stressors to keep the degu awake six to 12 hours, we would study their sleep patterns after deprivation,” Menard explains. “I spent a great deal of time scoring sleep data that we recorded after the sleep deprivation. The research has implications for jet lag in humans. It is nice to work in this kind of lab because you’re actually making a difference.”
Working in Lee’s lab also provided Menard, a world-class roller dancer, the flexibility to practice and compete with her skating partner who lives in Houston, Texas. The pair won a bronze medal in the Senior World Class Dance competition in 2006 in Spain and a silver medal in November in Australia. The next goal: A world championship.
Informal or independent study is important, Lee says. “It involves students in real academic research, including collecting data. Listening in class is not the same as doing it yourself.”
Virtually all psychology department faculty members are involved in independent or informal study. Each year about 800 undergraduates take 1,300 courses registered as informal or independent study in psychology; many faculty-student matches are arranged through UROP.
Lee estimates that the average assistant professor in psychology works with 10 students per year. Associate and full professors work with 15 or more, depending on the size and structure of their labs and if they meet with students in groups or one-on-one.
The department has had a number of students from other campus units do independent study, including a cellist who went on to medical school and a professional dancer.
Andrea Horton, a Lake Orion senior concentrating in social anthropology, spent two months in Vietnam last summer studying child and infant malnutrition with the U-M student group Crossing Borders, which organizes research opportunities abroad.
Horton and four teammates lived with a doctor and midwife at Van Khuc Commune in Phu Tho province, an hour north of Hanoi. There, the students measured and weighed children 5 years of age and younger, looking for correlations between low birth rate weight and growth rates with the diets and child care practices of the mothers. “Most of the children are malnourished because of a lack of diversity in their diets, which consist of rice, tofu, spinach, pork and water,” Horton says. The goal is to find a nutritious weaning food for children to eat after breast-feeding and before moving on to rice, pork and other solid foods.
Horton earned one credit from the sociology department for her summer internship. She decided after working in Vietnam to apply to the School of Public Health master’s degree program in health care management.
East Hall, home to the departments of psychology and mathematics, represent the extremes of independent study, says Robert Megginson, associate dean of LSA and professor of mathematics. “You see more undergraduates doing independent studies in mathematics than you once did. But we have a long way to go to reach the standard set by psychology, where independent study by undergraduates has become an important part of the culture and a standard part of the undergraduate experience.”
John Hagen, professor of psychology, who has taught at the U-M for 43 years, pioneered service-learning courses at the University. One, “The Child and the Institution,” began in 1967 as an upper-level psychology course and allowed students to work with children and adolescents in five or six institutions in southeast Michigan.
“I got into independent study because I recognized the learning environment is much broader than the classroom,” says Hagen, whose current work focuses on cognition and motivation in students from preschool through college age.
For students, the extra effort required to arrange and participate in independent study is time well spent. Menard describes her work in Lee’s lab as “the best experience I had at Michigan.”
