NORTH DAKOTA: “I learned too many new skills to count:” dREU students share what they learned and what’s next

The Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates (dREU) program lets selected North Dakota undergraduates fast-track their research skills by giving them an opportunity to work under the supervision and guidance of faculty researchers from the New Discoveries in the Advanced Interface of Computation, Engineering, and Science (ND-ACES) Center for Cellular Biointerfaces in Science and Engineering (CCBSE). The program is designed to strengthen North Dakota's STEM ecosystem by catalyzing bioscience research and career development opportunities for undergraduates.

Participating students get a salary for the time they spend doing research, professional development, and associated tasks. In addition, dREU students are required to participate in virtual professional development seminars which enhance their career readiness by teaching them skills like writing a resume, applying to graduate school, and preparing and delivering presentations.

Some dREU students participate at their home institutions, while others spend time at research institutions. For students from primarily undergraduate institutions, “a dREU experience at a research-intensive university such as UND and NDSU is a great opportunity because it broadens their horizons and gives students the opportunity to meet and work alongside graduate students, broaden their scientific network, work with equipment that is not typically available to them, and learn new technologies they can bring back to their home institutions,” says Dr. Hilde van Gijssel, Professor of Science at Valley City State University (VCSU). “An additional benefit is that it strengthens and fosters collaborations between the faculty at the students’ home institutions and the research universities.”

We talked to this year’s group of dREU students to find out why they joined the program, what they learned, and where they will take their new skills next.