Written by 2022 REU Fellows Sarajane Smith-Escudero and Laura Allen For the REU fellows that did not go to UAB during Week 6, Friday, June 24th was the 12th day straight in the lab, and we were hard at work collecting data. Some R&R was sorely needed. Before Week 7 began, we decided to take a trip to the beaches of Dauphin Island. The coast … Continue reading Flooring it to the Finish Line: The Final Days of Data Collection

Written by 2022 REU Fellows Sarah Caminito and Maddy Hull It’s Week 6, and we are full steam ahead with data collection. As we look more closely at the bones, we have been perfecting our methods and completing interobserver error assessments. When two or more people are working together on a research project, it’s important to establish that everyone is collecting data in the same … Continue reading Put it in Practice: Persevering and Perfecting our Methods

Written by 2022 REU Fellows Abby Sargent and Janeth Cabañas It’s the fifth week of the program, and we can’t believe how much we have learned about the extensive process of preparing for data collection. We’ve spent hours carefully crafting our hypotheses, methods, and data spreadsheets with guidance from Dr. Gregoricka and Dr. Ullinger, and after numerous stages of revisions spanning almost two weeks, we … Continue reading Calm & Collection: Keeping it Cool for Week Two

Written by 2022 REU Fellows Angelique Lindberg and Caden Rijal After a whirlwind two weeks of intensive instruction in osteology, pathology, and sex and age estimation, we have finally delved into our research! Our theme for this summer is activity patterns and their effects on skeletal morphology. Each group is tackling a different topic and using different skeletal elements to evaluate this theme.  Time is … Continue reading Research In Action: The First Week

Written by 2021 REU Fellow Alyssa Bolster Upon arriving in Mobile after nearly a year and a half of anticipation, energy was running high; two weeks of intensive osteology instruction and the start of independent research seemed to excite each of us and make time fly. Now, as we transition into our final few days here in Mobile and wrap up our projects, I am … Continue reading The Final Countdown: The Last Week of 2021 NSF-REU BoBA

Written by 2021 REU fellow Brittany Clark What a whirlwind these past six weeks have been. I never thought coming into this program that I would gain so much knowledge in such a short span of time. From the first two weeks of osteology boot camp to now in week seven running statistics on all of the data we have compiled, it is truly astonishing … Continue reading A Whirlwind of Research

Written by 2021 REU fellow Christian Berends This week has consisted of a great amount of work as we continued our data collection and were advised by professionals in our field from across the United States to help in our project design. We were first advised by Dr. Zuckerman, a bioarchaeologist at Mississippi State University. She shared with us various ethical guidelines at the forefront … Continue reading Learning Through Laughter

Written by 2021 REU Fellow Hannah JeanLouis I’ve never had a strong affinity for math – numbers jumping off of the page and arranging themselves into differing equations and values. I understood the importance of math, but applying it to my everyday life was something that I actively avoided. Out of sight, out of mind, I thought. Little did I know how much math and … Continue reading Shaking in Our Bones: Data Collection

Written by 2021 REU Fellow Rachael Orkin As an undergraduate who had never participated in research before, I wasn’t sure what to expect when we began searching for evidence to make a substantial hypothesis. I had vague ideas of what research was from working on research papers for class, but this was the first time I’d be creating a hypothesis and collecting data to support … Continue reading Fleshing Out Research to First-Timers