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Research at Juniata: Sharing your passion with the world

Writing a thesis is hard. It is the culmination of all the hard work and late nights that you put into your research project to make it the shining testament to your will power, work ethic and ability to muscle your way through writer’s block and procrastination. It’s a long and arduous task and at the end of each day your head is spinning from all the scientific papers you’ve come through just to provide evidence for on paragraph. Yes, it’s difficult and at times all I want to do is crawl into my cozy bed and watch the snow fall outside of my window, dreaming of my childhood where my greatest worry was if I was going to have enough snow to build an igloo. Having the opportunity to write a paper that brings together the project you have been working on for months or years is rather unique, at least from my perspective.

Hard at work making figures for my thesis.
Hard at work making figures for my thesis.

You see, once I complete my thesis and defend it at Thesis Night in late April, I’ll be submitting it for publication to a bonafide science journal. That isn’t something that most undergraduates can do, especially if they attend a larger institution where most of the research projects are carried out by graduate students. Thankfully, Juniata doesn’t have any graduate students, barring those accountants, so young aspiring researchers or doctors, or even literary scholars and future orators all can conduct graduate level research at the undergraduate level. If you continue your project long enough, or compile enough evidence to draw a conclusion from your data you can compile it into a thesis and maybe can submit your manuscript to a journal within your field. Graduate and medical school admittance committees look very highly on that. It shows you are highly motivated and exceptional work ethic.

An additional benefit for the aspiring researcher that is considering Juniata is our annual Liberal Arts Symposium (LAS) which we will be hosting on April 19th this year. Students doing research in every department have an opportunity to present on the progress they have made on their projects either through a poster or through a presentation. When you wade through the masses that crowd around the posters and you sit in on presentations throughout the day, you really begin to understand the scope of research that is offered here at Juniata. One of the most beautiful aspects of Juniata, to me at least, is the ability for anyone in any department to conduct research on a subject that is near and dear to their heart. And they can present their findings to the school, and sometimes the rest of the world. At Juniata we are all about writing our own story and part of that, for many students, is the ability to write the story of their research.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another stack of papers to read through.