On campus, off campus. Wabash College, big university, industry. The diversity of research internships in Chemistry was very apparent at the Summer Research Symposium held on October 8. Four students gave oral presentations on how they obtained their research positions, while others gave poster presentations summarizing their summer research experiences.
 

Brandon Hirsh ‘10 used a contact made with a Chemistry Department seminar speaker, Dr. Srini Iyengar, to create an opportunity to do computational chemistry research at Indiana University last summer. His work was funded by a Dill Grant, a competitive Wabash award for independently arranged internships.  Andrew Alexander, ‘12 also used contacts to obtain an internship at Ball State University.

 Jake Lee ‘10 worked with Career Services to land an industrial research position at Valspar. Without contacts, industrial internships are hard to obtain, but Career Services connected Jake to an alum, and he had a great internship as a result.

Gabriel Stancu ’10 talked about his experiences working with Wally Novak here at Wabash.  Chad Sorenson ’10, Forrest Craig ’11, and Lucas Evans ’11 also did research in the Chemistry Department this summer.  These were all paid positions, funded either through the Haines Funds for the Study of Chemistry or Biochemistry and/or through external grants awarded to chemistry faculty members.

There are also nationally competitive Research Programs for Undergraduates, often sponsored by the National Science Foundation, called REU’s (Research Experiences for Undergraduates). Kenny Coggins ’11 sent out many applications, and landed a position at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Nathan Line ’11 had a similar position at The Ohio State University, as did Merlin Liu '10 at the University of Minnesota.

If you’d like to learn more about their research experiences, plan to attend the Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work in January, and watch for announcements about this summer’s research opportunities here at Wabash!