FIRST-YEAR RESEARCHERS

FIRST-YEAR

RESEARCHER

Research is a crucial part of any college student’s undergraduate experience. It can boost your resume, deepen your knowledge of a specific field and help you explore a future career path. But as a first-year student at UF, I didn’t know how to get involved in what I knew could be a great opportunity. To help answer this question, I decided to interview first-year students who are already involved in research about how they found a project and what research has taught them so far. This article is the first in a three-part series on first-year researchers, specifically in the Honors Program. Throughout interviewing these intelligent and creative students, I was amazed at the fascinating research that they’re conducting in only their first year of college. I hope that this series can inspire and motivate others to get involved on campus and to find research opportunities in fields that they’re passionate about. My first interview was with Amy Lao, a first-year Honors student who is majoring in music and art history. Outside of research, she enjoys making croissants and tiered cakes.

Q: What kind of research do you do? A: I’m in the University Research Scholars Program and it helped get me interested in undergraduate research. So I applied for the Emerging Scholars Program and found a faculty mentor around November of 2019. Her name is Dr. Laura Dallman, and she’s a musicologist. I actually met her through a board I was on last semester (the College of the Arts Meta-Strategy Board, specifically in the Curriculum Working Group). I was with five other UF faculty arts members and we created a five-year plan for the College of the Arts’ curriculum moving forward. Through working with all of them, I got to know Dr. Dallman really well and I went to her office and said, “Hey, there’s this Emerging Scholars opportunity and I’d really like to do some research under you.” She’s really into new orchestra programming and how we can present classical music in new ways that are more interesting to people and more fresh. Our research project is looking into 21st century symphony programming and how orchestras are finding different ways to implement visual aspects such as displaying paintings or using projections to enhance the music experience while also making classical music more accessible to the general public. The University Research Scholars Program is a four-year program where students are exposed to different opportunities that help them build their research skills, including researchcentered courses and peer mentoring. The Emerging Scholars Program helps first- or second-years with no previous research experience to conduct a research project with the help of a faculty mentor. This program culminates in the undergraduates presenting at the University of Florida Undergraduate Research Symposium.

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Q: That’s really cool! What do you do for your research on a daily basis? A: So unlike STEM research, we don’t have a research lab or lab hours, but we have a game plan where I contact each of the seven symphony orchestras on my list. It’s a lot of emailing, contacting, asking for archive access. I’m asking for all their programs from 2010-2020 and I’m going to categorize every symphony event that uses a visual aspect in some way. We’re also drawing audience members, and potentially demographics, to see how the visual aspects impact those numbers. We’re seeing if adding extra elements impacts the audience and increases the sensory experience. People are coming up with new things all the time and some are really crazy.

Q: What’s the most challenging part of your research? A: Before, I would spend an hour sending a single email because I would agonize over every single word! Now it’s easier to communicate with people I’m not familiar with. Q: What is your favorite part about being involved in research, especially as a first-year? A: I think my favorite part is getting to work with one professor really closely who is in a field that I’m interested in. It’s nice to have someone to guide me, to have that mentor. We also get a little bit of funding, so I’m using mine to go to Boston for five days. I’ll be doing archival stuff there, looking at the Boston Symphony and digging into New England Conservatory’s archives to see what they have.

Q: That’s so exciting! Is there anything else that you want to add? A: This research is making opportunities for me, because I would love to do some artistic directing for a symphony orchestra someday where I create the programming. I want to show that visual arts and music can belong in a place together.

Story by Miranda Ingram Design by Courtney Chalmers Photo courtesy of Amy Lao

Amy Lao

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