OPINION: As I’m reflecting on my time at the University of Maine, there’s a few things I regret not spending time on. I wish I had the opportunity to go abroad. I wish I had changed my major earlier so I could’ve had a second minor. One missed opportunity I keep coming back to is research. I regret that I never had the opportunity to get involved with research in my academic career. I ended up dropping the Honors College before working on a thesis, which might’ve been my only opportunity to actually get out and research something. I think there were a few barriers I faced that kept me from research, and I hope efforts are made to bring more students on.
The first issue I faced was a departmental issue. Most of the research that’s seen and talked about on this campus is STEM research. I’ve seen people I know get involved with labs that do studies on ice cores or researching extinct animals. I’ve heard significantly less people get involved in research with humanities. For a long time I didn’t even know what research in the humanities looked like. I didn’t feel like my department widely publicized opportunities to get involved. As I progressed in the English Curriculum, I discovered that there are good opportunities to get involved with research in the Writing Studies field in my department. Unfortunately, I discovered this as a senior and it felt too late to pursue any meaningful project in that timespan. My department also didn’t know how to get involved in the Undergraduate Symposium so there was a lack of availability to showcase work there. As a Humanities student, research is not pushed to us on the level that STEM research is.
I also just wasn’t sure how to go about finding research opportunities, related to my department or not. I didn’t see any advertising on research or events telling people how to get involved. I had no idea how to pursue academia outside of the classes I was taking. There should’ve been some kind of major-specific programming pushed towards you early in your major that explains research, what kind of research you can do and how to get involved in that. Students should take the opportunity to get involved in research because it’s an excellent academic opportunity. The problem is, at least in my experience, we simply don’t know how. STEM students typically get involved in research by the connections they build with their professors. For Humanities, it might not be so simple. There might be fewer opportunities to get involved with fewer professors and some students just won’t encounter these professors.
This all simply boils down to education around research. I would imagine professors receive just as much benefit from students getting involved in their work. It would be mutually beneficial for both students and faculty to raise awareness around research within departments. I’m incredibly grateful for the faculty I’ve encountered in the English department and how they’ve encouraged my academic development. I simply wish I knew more about the types of research I could’ve gotten involved with early on.
