Undergraduate Research
Oct 21, 04:55 PM by Eric Allen
A number of my classmates last year told me that they had come to RPI in part because of the opportunities for “undergraduate research.” I thought that was crazy. Spending hours upon hours slaving away doing menial work for some stupid professor? All of these kids doing “Undergraduate Research Projects” (URPs) must be brown-nosers with no ability. Yeah, I seriously thought that.
Why didn’t somebody set me straight?? As I’ve now discovered, URPs can be really cool projects, even as cool as the stuff I didn’t do for credit! I’m now engaged in two projects: one for pay and one for credit.
I ran into my first URP when I went to my Data Structures & Algorithms professor asking for advice on open source licenses. He gave me a couple of books to read, and then asked if I wrote much open source software. Of course I do! One thing led to another, and now I’m developing a tool to help RPI students create customized plans of study and getting paid for it.
My girlfriend has been pushing me to meet her Circuits professor almost since the year began. I’ve been reluctant, since I really had no excuse to just walk into his office, but I finally contacted him and set up a meeting. He is currently working on a tool to change the way electrical engineering is taught, and he needs more researchers! As chance would have it, I actually worked with his one graduate student early last year, so Matt and I were already on good terms. Now I get to spend a semester sucking every bit of knowledge I can out of an awesome grad student! I’m going to be working on a few minor features this semester, but next semester and beyond I have opportunities to work on some big stuff that will have a lasting impact on education. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.
