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Undergraduates Gain Valuable
Experience As Research Fellows
Healthcare digitization. Radical organizational change.
Mutual fund governance. These are just a few of the research
topics that will give undergraduates a taste of the
nitty-gritty details involved in a research career. The
Smith Research Fellows track, now in its second full year,
allows 27 juniors and seniors to assist Smith faculty and
graduate students on a variety of research projects. The
program has been enthusiastically embraced by students and
faculty alike.
“The Smith School values research and provides students
with countless opportunities to participate in it,” says
junior Corey Martin. “We are able to apply what we learn in
the classroom to real world situations right here at Smith.”
Martin, with Smith PhD candidate Vandana Ramachandran and
assistant professor of information systems Siva Viswanathan,
is studying the online behavior of the Top 500 e-commerce
Web sites and analyzing what makes them successful with
consumers. The study looks at firms’ retail and advertising
strategies on the Internet and consumers’ search and
information seeking patterns in order to better understand
the behavior of online agents.
Research Fellows get to pursue a broad and fascinating
range of topics. Junior Dara Khan is working with Debra
Shapiro, Clarice Smith Professor of Management and
Organization, to determine why different regions and groups
of people reacted to government efforts during Hurricane
Katrina, to explore why different demographics perceived the
same leader differently. Junior Lindsey Ander Schwalb is
working with assistant professor of marketing Myeong-Gu Seo
on emotional intelligence research. The three-part study
allows Schwalb to conduct surveys and gather and analyze
data.
This hands-on learning is what most students find
valuable about the Research Fellows experience. “I’m
learning a lot about the research process,” says Schwalb.
“Now data analysis and market research are things I’m
interested in studying during my career.”
Research Fellows work within academic departments and in
the school’s specialized research centers. This year four
Research Fellows will work with the Smith School’s
Center for Health Information and
Decision Systems (CHIDS) to conduct research projects
related to healthcare IT, like safeguarding the privacy of
patient information and the global adoption and diffusion of
electronic medical records.
Smith Research Fellows is part of the
Smith
Undergraduate Fellows Program. The Fellows program
consists of groups of specialized tracks that cut across our
academic majors, so that all Smith School undergraduates can
participate in an intimate small-school environment while
enjoying the options and opportunities only a large school
can provide.
For a complete list of projects and more information
about Smith Research Fellows, visit
www.rhsmith.umd.edu/undergrad/researchfellows.html. |
