It was last minute, but we are going to take a summer student for the Stephenson Cancer Center program.
The program is an 8-week course (5/21-7/13) for lab experience/training, completed with a poster presentation/competition.
Link to the website:
http://stephensoncancercenter.org/Research/ResearchEvents/CancerUndergraduateResearchProgrm.aspx
"The Stephenson Cancer Center established the Cancer Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Program to enable outstanding undergraduate students to work alongside experienced cancer investigators to encourage their interests in and preparation for careers in cancer research and medicine'"
Not all labs have sufficient space or manpower for taking a student. For many Principal Investigators (PIs), June is one of thrice-annual deadlines for major national grants, and May-June is a busy time for grant preparation, if applying for the June cycle.
Also, training is a tricky process.
Incoming summer students are at very early stage in this career path in medicine (undergraduates). They may be passionate, but no experience of course. Usually (naturally) they know very little about the industry.
For professional development, student's passion alone doesn't do. The trainee needs to acquire specific skills for the discipline, and be able to produce results. His/her productivity is what counts to take them further.
Think musicians. Even if you are passionate about music, you need training and practice to play music, before you can play your own music and appeal to others.
Lab experiments do take some physical skills. Some are more adept at them from the beginning, others take longer time. It is just how it is.
Today I spent some time for planning and making list for reagents for his project. At this stage, training is a guided trip for what we do in the lab. To travel with novice, the guide needs some prep, too.
The project itself should yield something interesting for me as well. If he can channel his "passion" to productivity and interesting results, that is great.
At this moment I am not sure if he is well-prepared. We know where they likely are now. Let's see how it goes, hoping for the best. ....This is much shared sentiment among mentors of this program.
Personally, I like "win-win" situation, and I don't like wasted efforts. Since my policy for authorship is "making contribution that appeared as a Figure in the manuscript", previous students, research assistants, postdocs and volunteers who worked with me and generated key results that appeared as a figure in the manuscript have gotten authorship in the paper. It is much easier for me to recommend someone with tangible results.
For publication, certainly there is some luck involved. But I'd rather be prepared for the better outcomes.
