Class of 2018

Biology major

My experiences as a Provost Fellow have allowed me to apply concepts and techniques I"ve learned in my classes to a tangible project in order to analyze real results, rather than just conceptually applying skills to practice problems. In particular, I"ve been able to apply statistical analyses and programs that I have learned about class to my data and have used these methods to discover that my findings were, in fact, statistically significant.

I grew a lot in terms of my knowledge of the field I’m working in as well as my ability to be self-motivated and work on a project. When I began my Provost Fellowship in the Fall, I knew I was approaching something I had never done before, and looked forward to that challenge. I surprised myself by being able to not only meet the goals I had set for myself with my mentor, but also being able to exceed them in certain areas. In addition, I learned new skills, such as a type of sentence coding we use, and was able to help train new members of our lab as well.  I also gained a new understanding of how much effort and time it takes to see a research project through, from coming up with a question, to being able to analyze data and find results that have the potential to be important in the field.  

I aspire to be a physician in the future, and have been reflecting on the kind of medicine I want to pursue. My experiences as a Provost fellow in the Bilingual Language Development lab have factored into some of my decision-making. Our research focuses on Language-Minority students, who are a growing portion of the U.S. population. Through my research I have learned more about the barriers these students face in education, and the subsequent effects these barriers have. My research experience has helped me translate what I’ve learned into what I hope to achieve in my future career. As of now, I am strongly interested in working with underserved populations, especially language-minority populations, in order to provide quality healthcare as well as to hopefully influence and create change in terms of public health education and policy. 

Learning Portfolio: https://www.taskstream.com/ts/iyer1/LUROP