10th annual poster session for First-year Research Immersion brings undergraduate research to the forefront

Binghamton University will celebrate a decade of course-based STEM research for undergraduate students with the 10th Annual First-year Research Immersion Poster Session from 4-6 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 4, in the Mandela Room, Old Union Hall and UU-120.

The poster session will provide first- and third-semester undergraduate students the chance to present the research they’ve completed so far in a public forum, an opportunity that many undergraduates don’t receive until well into their college careers.

“They’re getting to see what a scientist really is and does instead of reading about it,” said Megan Fegley, MAT ’13, PhD ’14, director of the First-year Research Immersion (FRI) program. “We’re giving them the opportunity to be a scientist, from day one. When they don’t have these opportunities, they can’t always develop their science identity.”

FRI is an honors program for first-semester (new) students; invited students are enrolled in one of 11 research streams — biogeochemistry, biomedical chemistry, clean energy, community and global public health, ecological genetics, environmental visualization, image and acoustic signals analysis, microbial biofilms in human health, molecular and biomedical anthropology, neuroscience and the most recent, drug discovery.

Once placed in a stream, the students progress through three semesters of course-based undergraduate research experiences — known nationally as CUREs. In the first semester, students learn the basics of the scientific process: finding resources and developing research questions. These students will present their pre-proposals during the poster session, synthesizing the data they’ve collected from the literature they’ve engaged with.

In the second semester, students are provided their first opportunities in a lab and/or a field setting, where they learn about instrumentation and proper techniques while developing a full-team research proposal and begin conducting their projects.

In the third and final semester, they continue to conduct the research they’ve proposed. After months of hands-on data collection and analysis, the students present for a second time at the annual poster session, sharing their research and what they’ve found with attendees.

Each stream enrolls about 30 students a year, so the program has a cohort of 330–350 students, all of whom have an opportunity to earn credit, both in general education and often toward their major, in addition to a unique, multifaceted research experience and staff dedicated to improving their learning.

“Our streams span science and engineering disciplines. They’re all very interdisciplinary,” Fegley said. “Each research stream also has a team of faculty stream collaborators who help on various projects, and then each stream has a dedicated faculty member, or research educator, who teaches all the courses and mentors all the students in that FRI stream.”

Fegley started with the program in 2014, a few months before it became available to students. She holds a doctorate in chemistry from Binghamton, and so is well-equipped to helm the program and maintain its mission. She has seen the program grow from its humble beginnings — when neuroscience, clean energy and microbial biofilms were the only research streams, and there were about 90 students.

Through grant funding and support from University administration and faculty who oversee each stream, FRI continues to expand. This year, the poster session will include nearly 600 students presenting more than 100 research projects.

The poster sessions allow students time with their peers and teachers to continue refining and focusing their research, in addition to growing their skill sets.

“Throughout the program, we really try to focus on workforce-type skills that students need, no matter what career path they choose, like public speaking,” Fegley said. “If a faculty member with lots of background in that topic comes up to them, or if it’s [Binghamton University President Harvey] Stenger or somebody’s mom, they need to know how to talk to different types of audiences, and we help them prepare for that.”

Caitlin Light recently became assistant director of the FRI program but has been involved in the program since 2016 as a research educator for the microbial biofilms in human health research stream. Light, also a Binghamton alumna, earned a doctorate in microbiology in 2017.

She sees the program as a “springboard” for students and hopes more colleges will adopt this teaching style in the future.

“We really feel like this model is where education should be moving, to experience-based opportunities,” Light said. “On paper, our mission is to get students excited about research and keep them in STEM, but really, it’s preparing them for their futures, working with other people, meeting deadlines, managing projects and files — what it requires to be a functional adult and professional.”

In addition to research opportunities and the associated skills, students receive prospects for networking. For example, the program hosts a student-alumni panel each fall featuring past FRI students who discuss where their careers have taken them. Former FRI participants have moved on to careers in labs on and off campus, and many go on to publish in peer-reviewed journals or present at national conferences.

“We’ve got more than a handful of student-authored publications. These students are putting out research that’s making it through the legitimate scientific peer review process of important journals,” Light said. “Most of our victories are small, but that makes those big ones even more special.”

The FRI has good reason to celebrate: For students who graduated in 2022–23, 46% conducted research after FRI, 39% were peer mentors for FRI and 26% disseminated their research at conferences or via publications.

88% of FRI participants receive a bachelor’s degree within four years, and 96% earn one within six years, which exceeds the University’s overall graduation rates. 93% of these students graduate with a STEM degree — in stark contrast to national data, which indicate that half of students intending to major in STEM never graduate with a STEM degree.

Over the past several years, FRI has become widely known on campus, largely thanks to these results.

“We have built a reputation that this training is real and meaningful, and our research with these students is real and meaningful,” Light said. “It has taken time, but we finally feel our roots have locked into place, and we’ve got a program people value.”

But growth nationally is slow-moving. Only three other national programs maintain a similar three-semester structure, though pieces make their way into national curricula. In the meantime, Binghamton remains on the vanguard and continues to find ways to innovate. CUREs have been implemented into several introductory and advanced-level courses, providing even more students with research experience. The Source Project, a version of FRI for the humanities and social sciences, is also growing. The pedagogy is helping thousands of students each year.

Students leave the program with five or more semesters left in their college careers. This provides ample time to pivot or reframe if needed, while also maintaining the skills and lessons learned from an early research opportunity.

“Experience is the best way to learn, and research is one of the best places to get experience because it’s riddled with failure, but it’s filled with teamwork and collaboration,” Light said. “It’s the most real-world learning that you can do. And it’s just a giant sandbox to play. For it to be embedded into your education in a low-risk way is so cool. We tell them all the time that we’re so jealous of them — I mean, who knows where we would be if we did research earlier?”