Beyond Summer Research course
Course Overview
Learn self-advocacy and communication skills to tell your story in person, in college essays, and professionally of a research experience or other key extracurricular experiences.
Identify gaps in research communication you started or drafted (poster, paper, talk) or start a draft of a new one to finalize and present at a research venue (competition or conference).
Example Outcomes
Take this course and you can….
- Build or revise a skills-focused resume
- Identify key message and story of your experiences in essay format that showcase your skills
- Highlight your “brand” in short, brief elevator pitches
- Practice and refine key principles of good visual research communication
- Apply stronger planning skills to your communication
- Create, refine, share a poster or research paper based on your experience
Student Quotes
- “Learning the quality of my own soft skills, something that I probably would have not acknowledged on my own before hand.”
- “I found the practice presentations to be very helpful in developing the skills necessary for symposiums and competitions.”
Goals and Use
You gain critical skills in a research experience or other high impact extracurricular school or summer opportunity. This course teaches you how to identify, focus, and advocate the transformative (soft) skills that students gain in a research experience, and how to frame them in common recruitment tools like:
- A college essay
- Summer/scholarship program applications
- Interviews
- Resume
During this course you will improve key aspects of presenting student research, including explaining, diagrams/tables, identifying key messages and headings, and meeting professional standards for citation. This provides time to rehearse presenting your research at conferences or events such as NC Science and Engineering Fair, Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, State of North Carolina Undergraduate Creativity and Research Symposium, and similar events.
You will engage in a mix of skills-based activities (self-paced, can work ahead) and projects with fixed deadlines tied to our face-to-face meetings. The class is a mix of learning principles and applying and practicing them with examples embedded in the course, and producing your own work.
Audience (Who Should Take this Course)
- Students who want the time and space to identify their skills and goals, and tell the story to land the next opportunity–college admissions, internships, a research experience
- Students interested in sharing their research at a professional or competitive event or conference
Format
- Weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. via Zoom for 50 minutes (9 p.m. Oct 23)
- Approx. 3 hours per week of commitment
How to Enroll
Contact
