One student researcher’s summer job is at In-and-Out Burger. She got home late at night, and by 8 a.m. was inputting research data.
“I just really like it; I put my headphones on and just go,” said Grand Canyon University psychology student Cierra Baca.
“I just really like understanding the things of the mind and constantly growing my knowledge, and this helps with that and is an outlet for my creativity.”
Baca, nine other psychology students and psychology professor Dr. Magen Branham are not taking the summer off, flipping the occasional burger while also conducting undergraduate research in GCU’s EPIC Lab in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, part of the Canyon Emerging Scholars Program.
The EPIC Lab was launched two years ago and its acronym explains a lot – examining positive psychology in communities. The research takes sometimes several years, so many wanted to continue through the summer.
“These projects take a really long time, so if we didn’t do anything in the summer, it would really set us back for the fall,” Branham said. “So when the group of some 20 get back in the fall, we can hit the ground running and the grunt work is behind us.”
The summer grunt work isn’t exactly digging ditches. It’s fascinating stuff.
“Most universities don’t really facilitate undergraduate research, especially formally, which is unfortunate because a lot of master’s and Ph.D. programs want you to have some type of research experience,” Branham said. “So this is giving them a way to get that on their resume and actually learn the skills and get publications out of it.”
One research project involves inputting and analyzing data collected by Red Light Rebellion, a Phoenix nonprofit whose programs in junior and senior high schools help students understand sex trafficking, identify health/unhealthy relations and give them the tools to navigate the internet safely.
The EPIC Lab created a survey to measure the organization’s success, and GCU students such as Baca are inputting the data to analyze the 400 high school freshmen responses.
The group meets each Monday morning, and during the week it carries out tasks to further the research according to their own skills and interests.
Senior Joseph Yepez said he’s not only furthering his knowledge of qualitative research, methodologies and developing research questions, but he’s become something of an expert in the group on the Institutional Review Board, which reviews and approves research on human subjects that is ethical and follows government standards.
He said research that could be harmful to a group might be rejected, for example.
“It’s kind of a gateway to research ethics and research morality,” he said.
Yepez said he often thought research was beyond him before joining the studies.
“I put research on this pedestal that was so above me, that I couldn’t reach it without climbing to some astronomical ranks. But interacting in the lab brings it down to a level where it was peaceful and really kind of solidified it,” he said.
Monday’s session explored how to move forward on another research project – pilot studies to determine the best way to elicit awe using virtual reality.
The group, led by the technology skills of senior Eli Richard, puts together videos in VR, one on a tour of space and another a tour of the inner human body, then measures subjects’ curiosity, pro-social behavior or impact of scientific material.
The group talked about how to measure curiosity, how to perform a task instead of doing a survey, what music to accompany the video, such as classical or other genres, and what controls to use.
Some are earning credit for a summer internship, and with GCU’s new program of free summer housing for students, it makes economic sense.
“It’s been an interesting way in an internship to learn,” said senior Jacob Spurgiesz, who is instrumental in the VR project. “I tend to be the control freak kind of guy. Obviously, the controlling part is important, but you can’t control everything.”
Everything can’t be the same, the lighting in the room, the facial expressions, voices on the video. “So it’s important for me to realize we can’t control everything, but also you can control some of that.”
They are also exploring ways to create control groups who would see the videos, for example, without music.
“VR is a great new technology that we haven’t really explored as a society very much, and it’s definitely not implemented in many places because of the cost and also because we haven’t studied it,” Spurgiesz continued. “I think there is a lot of potential for a lot of positive emotions to be elicited from VR experiences.
“Personally, I think a lot can be done in the classroom that would be beneficial, and watching these videos can really get you inspired or motivated.”
Branham said that the research will seek to find out if students exposed to it in the classroom are more curious, eager to learn, and if they spark inspiration or increase scientific thinking.
As they rolled the video of a tour through space and through the human body, it was clear the group was captivated by finding out.
“Sometimes we can talk for two hours,” Branham said.
Before someone must leave for that summer job.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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