Episode1Podcast

Research at Pingree is a podcast highlighting research at Pingree. The podcast features interviews with faculty who oversee research in the sciences, humanities, and computer science. The faculty discuss what research looks like in their disciplines and the importance of problem-solving skills. They also explain how research programs at Pingree offer opportunities for students to engage in research at a high level, even before college. The programs help students develop critical thinking, analytical thinking, and teamwork skills. The differences between humanities research teams (HRT) and interdisciplinary research teams (IRT) are also discussed, with a focus on the types of sources used and the experimental setup. The faculty members share the benefits of participating in research programs, including inspiring further research outside of Pingree and providing students with insight into how knowledge is created. The application process for joining a research team is described, highligh Welcome to the first episode of Research at Pingree, a podcast dedicated to highlighting the exciting research taking place at Pingree. My name is Chloe Huang, your host for this episode. Today we have the opportunity to speak with faculty who oversee research in the sciences, humanities, and computer science. Faculty, please take a moment to introduce yourself. Good morning, I'm Dr. DeCilio. Good morning, I'm Dr. Jolly. I'm Mrs. Longo-Johnson. I'm Dr. Longo. Great. Now for my first question, I want to ask for one of you to tell us about what research looks like in your discipline. I run the research program for science research at Pingree. And science research is really about experiencing what it means to be a scientist. We learn a lot of science in the classroom, through textbooks, through YouTube videos, whatever it is that you're learning science, but doing science is a very different thing. And scientific research is really all about asking the next question, so taking the information that you know and then figuring out what the next question is going to be. And then once you do that, you have to figure out how you're actually going to answer that question, which is a huge challenging problem that we try to help our students to face when they're doing research here at Pingree. In the humanities, it's also about asking questions. The types of sources that we're looking at, though, might be a little bit different. So our students are looking at texts very often, or at experiences that have been recorded in some way, and they're trying to make meaning out of it as they analyze the primary sources that record some of those narratives or experiences, and then begin to craft their own narratives in response to a question. In computer science, it's a little bit different also, where students are trying to solve a problem and they're going to implement some code to solve the problem, and then they're going to have to test whether their code is working and is actually... So for example, in my drover team, they're trying to have a rover communicate with a drone for exploring areas that are not known. So in those cases, we need to actually implement the code to do that and see if it's working correctly. And why did you guys want to advise a research team in the first place? For me, I think a big part of it is about giving students the opportunity to do work that a lot of us did not get the chance to do until college, or maybe even graduate school. There's such incredible critical thinking and teamwork, and especially in the humanities where I think students don't really have a very strong sense going in of what research looks like. So it was really exciting to be able to introduce them to the methodologies of humanities research. In science, one of the reasons that I really like to help students learn about scientific research and do scientific research is, I mean, also I would agree it's partially because these are opportunities that we are being able to give students that we didn't have until much later in our careers. For me as a scientist, I didn't work in a lab until I was at the end of college. And so some of the techniques, some of the ways of thinking that I teach my research students and my IRT students are things that I learned much, much later in my scientific career. And the hope is that these students will be able to take that away and become productive scientists as early as now, as early as high school. So that is a great opportunity that we offer here at Pingree that I really just haven't seen anywhere else. So IRT and HRT both have that common ground of like critical thinking, analytical thinking, working together. But what would you say are the main differences between HRT and IRT? I would say one key difference has to do with the way that our students are interacting with the sources or even the data that they've gathered in some way. So that data very often comes from some kind of primary literature. Many of our research teams are rooted in literary subjects, although not all of them are. And so students will take a text and ask certain essential questions or apply a critical lens to those texts. And then they will also turn to secondary sources to try to understand what others have said about their text or about their question, and then try to find a place for them to pose their own unique answers to those questions. That very often is quite qualitative and descriptive. So I think that's one key difference. Yeah, I would agree with that. I feel like the experimental setup is different. At least in computer science, there's a lot of trial and error and try something and understand why it didn't work and fix it and try something else. And your question was about the differences, I think, between HRT and similarities. And one of the big similarities, I think, is so absolutely primary literature, right? Every research team, no matter what your subject area is, has to go to whatever the primary source of the information is. But I would also say problem solving. So to be a researcher in any discipline, you have to problem solve. You have to figure out what the question is and figure out how you're going to find the answer. And that problem solving skill is important, probably one of the more important components that I hope that students will take from this in every aspect of their life, not just as a researcher. Dr. Asilia, before you talked about how you really feel like IRT, HRT offers opportunities that some people might not get until the college level. But if you guys could expand on that, what do you feel that these programs really add to a student's experience at Pinkery? I think there are a number of things. I'll say from my own experience, I have worked with students who, as a result of the work that they've done in HRT, they've sort of used that as a springboard for their own research, even outside of HRT, even outside of their team, and have made contact with college professors and started to really delve into research at a much higher level. And I don't think for those students who do that, I don't think they would have been inspired to do that without the experience of doing research with a team at Pinkery. I'll say the other thing, and this is as an English teacher, our students in the upper school interact with scholarship all the time. But I don't know necessarily, when they do that, I don't know how much of a sense they always have about where that scholarship came from, how those scholars came to those determinations, how a body of scholarship is created. And I feel like one of the things that a research mindset does is it gives students insight into how we know what we know, and that that is helpful regardless of discipline. I would also say that, you know, the students who come through the research program at Pinkery many times have come back to me. Many of my students have come back and said, you know, learning this at the high school level helped me so much get my foot in the door at the college level and beyond. I had a student recently who actually shared their molecular biology lab notebook with a potential employer, saying, look, I know how to do all these things, and the person was so impressed that this was a five-year-old lab notebook that this kid had brought with him, and it was, you know, it helped get him the interview, right? So that's obviously not the main reason why we do this, but it does, I do think it's something that comes out of all of this research, is that you have this experience that many, many of your peers do not, and that helps you to be more successful down the road. So obviously these teams are very, a lot of students want to be a part of them, and I guess the application process must be really intense. So could you guys kind of go through, like, how a student joins a research team, what you guys are looking for? So we actually just instituted an application process for humanities research teams this year. We have a series of questions that students will answer in response to their own particular interests in research, why they might want to join a certain team. We do ask for a writing sample, and then we'll confer with prior teachers to find out what kinds of critical thinkers and writers those students are, so that we're, you know, trying to work with students who might not yet be at the highest level, but they are willing to learn and grow, and then that application process will give them the chance to try out new skills that they might not have been able to do before. The IRT application process is quite extensive, and we've been doing it for many years. One of some, there are 13 teams currently that we run in IRT, and we are looking in, during the application process, often for students who have problem-solving skills and also time. Time is a big thing. What we find is that we really are looking, the kids who are the most successful in doing research are ones who have time to do it, because especially with science research and really any other discipline where you're doing intense research, you're spent, you really, that's your full-time job as a researcher, and we recognize that that's not possible in our environment here, but the people who have the time to dedicate to the work are going to be the most successful. They're going to get the most out of it, and through the application process, we do try to look a little bit for that time. Is this a student who's going to really have the ability to commit to being successful in research or at least just trying? We're also looking for students who understand setbacks. Research is not always successful from the first time, so we want to make sure that the students are ready to fail, let's be honest, and are accepting of it and are willing to learn further to be able to succeed. So Research Week is quickly approaching. Could you guys even talk about what is Research Week and how does it add to our community? So Research Week is a week every April where all of the research teams get to not only, it's not simply a matter of displaying their work, but it's truly a celebration and a showcase of all of the work that students have done throughout the year. The process of research is so extensive, and these are students who are working so hard outside of the regular class time in order to engage in this kind of inquiry and critical thinking, and so we want to be able to celebrate that and share that with the community. And that's one of my favorite parts about Research Week. And I think it's also fantastic that the teams get to share with each other what they've been doing because in that way they really are a community of learners, a community of scholars. So Research Week this year will be April 8th through the 12th, and every day we will have an opportunity for our student researchers to share their work to the community. We will also kick off the week with an alumni speaker who's going to come back and talk to us about her work in industry. She's a scientific researcher focusing on biotechnology research. And then we will also have some student speakers, so we're really excited to be able to share all that there is in research at Pingree with everyone who is involved and also with the rest of our community. Well, thank you guys so much. Unfortunately, that's all the time that we have today, but I'll see you guys at the next episode. Thank you.