99th Annual Take-A-Prof

The Student Center Programs Council will be hosting the 101st Take-A-Prof on April 12th from 11am-1pm in the Student Success Center Presidential Suite. This is an opportunity to invite a professor or staff member to a nice luncheon for Take-A-Prof to Lunch Day. The luncheon is an excellent opportunity for students to develop professional relationships with their professor or staff member of choice. The price of the tickets is $7 for the pair, and you can get your tickets at scpc.gatech.edu. Hurry up! Don't wait till the last minute!

SABUR (Student Activities Board for Undergraduate Research) - Mentors Needed

Dear Advisors,

Sorry for the multiple e-mails but it was just drawn to my attention that we planned the meeting for the same time as the first football game! Please send this revised version with a later date out instead of the previous! Thank you so much!

SABUR (Student Activities Board for Undergraduate Research) will be having it's first meeting on Thursday September 8th, 7pm in Klaus room 2447. SABUR is a student organization dedicated to increasing participation in Undergraduate Research on campus and promoting a culture of research in the Georgia Tech Community. If you are involved in research or looking to get involved in research come to our first meeting and learn more about how SABUR can help you! Membership dues will be $15 for the year. There will be Free Food!

SABUR Mentoring Program- MENTORS NEEDED- SABUR facilitates a mentoring program that connects experienced undergraduate researchers with inexperienced students trying to get involved in research. Mentors will help mentees gain insight into the research culture at Tech and give valuable advice on how to obtain a research position. Also, throughout the year SABUR will host events to facilitate mentoring such as ice cream socials, coffee houses, and climbing the rock wall. If interested attend SABUR's first meeting (see above) or e-mail gt.sabur@gmail.com by September 15th. Please include your year, major, and brief description of your research experience.

Katy Hammersmith

Georgia Institute of Technology

Biomedical Engineering

McDevitt Stem Cell Research Lab

SABUR, President

Finding Guidance from Older Peers

James O'Dea - Grad Student, University of California, Santa Barbara

Well, here I am, three months out from my thesis defense, and finally, in the last nine months or so, I’ve felt like I have things under control. In some regards, that took way too long, in others, that’s probably why it takes more than a few years to get a Ph.D. It’s funny to look back on how your approach to research (and life in general) changes over the course of graduate school

Personally, I was way too uptight at first. Data had to be perfect, I tried to keep current on way too many journals, and I even thought I was so busy that that I had to turn down the older guys down the hall when they asked if I wanted to go out to lunch. I thought I couldn’t spare an hour for a leisurely meal and would instead just plow through lunch, dinner leftovers in hand, while I tried to get some work done on the computer.

After a couple years, I finally got sick of my cooking and started going out with the guys, who at that point were getting close to finishing. I quickly realized that in between small talk and jokes, I had been missing their conversations about thesis writing, postdoc searches, and research ideas. As I approach the end of my graduate studies, I can only imagine how much harder it all would have been without the unstaged guidance I’ve received from some older friends.

James O’Dea is a senior graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is wrapping up his dissertation on scanned probe techniques to study proton exchange membranes.