More than an Internship
Students gain hands-on research experience with IPR faculty

Summer undergraduate research assistants, here with program director James Rosenbaum (far right), and IPR Director Fay Lomax Cook (upper left), gain valuable research experience.

Although Anne Nash still has one more year before matriculating with her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she has already collaborated with IPR fellow and social psychologist Alice Eagly on a major research project. Through IPR’s Summer Undergraduate Research Assistants Program, Nash was able to work one-on-one with Eagly to study the relation between feminism, gender, and psychology.

“The setup parallels the work a lot of graduate students do, and I really liked the feeling of having a job and an office to come into every day where I was valuable. I was immediately treated like an equal,” Nash said.

After a one-day training session on statistical methods and software at the beginning of the summer, Northwestern undergraduates work full-time on research projects led by IPR faculty. Being part of a sustained, ongoing project shows students how the skills they have learned in textbooks can be applied, but the faculty also benefit from the new ideas the research assistants bring with them.

“The students are indispensable because they’re always thinking and coming up with new questions, as well as new ways to look at old ones,” said James Rosenbaum, who currently directs the program, now in its 13th year.

This summer, IPR hosted 26 undergraduates who worked full-time with 21 IPR faculty members on a variety of projects in several disciplines, including political science, education and social policy, and anthropology.

The skills students learn from working with the faculty are useful for much more than just conducting research. The experience often makes an impact on their future education and career plans.

“The whole project has really changed my perspective on how research is done,” said Bill Russell, a senior majoring in economics who worked on a research project with IPR economist Burton Weisbrod that examined performance measurement in the public and non-profit sectors, “but it also helped me learn more about what I’m interested in and how I can find a job doing something I enjoy, which is really what’s most important.”