RI NSF EPSCoR

Once a week, May through August, Associate Professor David Taylor, Roger Williams University, and a small crew of undergraduates on his research team head down to the school dock and load their fieldwork supplies into a motorboat.

Following a schedule Taylor sets far in advance, based on the tide charts, they sample the Seekonk one week and the Taunton the next. Each trip, they visit the same spots and run through the same drill.

Wearing chest-high waders, one by one, Taylor and his students slip over the side of the boat and into the water, handing off a seine net, then a cooler, and a couple of white, five-gallon buckets.

Two students stretch out the length of the net, bound at each end with long poles, and start dragging it through the water. A third student follows, hugging onto the buckets and counting out the same number of steps. Taylor carries the large cooler to shore and then doubles back to help with the seining.

After dragging the net the prescribed distance, the group hauls it onto the shore and then crouches down and sorts through the catch. A sample number of juvenile flounder go in the water-filled buckets, their measurements taken and recorded on the boat before being tossed back.

A couple blue crabs go on ice in the cooler for marine biology major Molly Fehon, who is spending her summer working with Taylor. She receives a stipend from RI NSF EPSCoR as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) that allows her to focus full time on her research.

“Any project that I design, I always do with the mindset of making it feasible and worthwhile for undergraduate research. It’s what we do here at Roger Williams; it’s what I deem my responsibility.”

As the boat motors toward the next survey stop, Fehon sorts crab claws and bodies into plastic bags and records her notes. In the lab, she will dissect the stomachs and analyze their contents to provide a snapshot of what the crabs ate within a specific timeframe. Another process, stable isotope analysis, examines carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the claw muscle tissue and offers a more comprehensive view of foraging habits.

Kelly Cribari, also a marine biology major and SURF 2015 student in Taylor’s lab, conducts Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), an analysis tool that can determine what exactly is in the crab gut. PCR employs specific primers, or a chain of nucleotides, that only work on and detect the presence of winter flounder up to a certain point after the crab has eaten.

The undergraduate students in RI NSF EPSCoR’s summer research program contribute greatly to the project, said Taylor. In exchange, they gain unparalleled research experience.

“Any project that I design, I always do with the mindset of making it feasible and worthwhile for undergraduate research,” Taylor explained. “It’s what we do here at Roger Williams; it’s what I deem my responsibility.”

Taylor said there were many benefits to the approach of utilizing undergraduate researchers. From a practical standpoint, he can’t successfully complete his research projects alone. And, being at a small private school, he does not have post-docs or graduate students working in his lab.

“Instead,” Taylor noted, “I have a wonderful group of undergraduate students eager for research experience. Without question, their involvement in the research program is critical to its success. It’s also important to realize that the benefits extend beyond my personal research program.

“Students at RWU who have direct research experience are well-positioned, whether they’re going into the workforce or graduate school. The experiences they gain today are hopefully providing them the skills to succeed well into the future.”

Taylor, or DT as his students call him, selects the best and brightest from his freshman level biology classes, on average about five students a year. They do field and lab work, statistical analysis, writing, and contribute to local, regional and national scientific meetings, giving poster and oral presentations.

Joining the lab early in their academic career, the students benefit from mentoring by Taylor and his upper level students; by junior year, they are well trained and self-sufficient before graduating.

Fehon, a junior from Durham, Conn., said she began her research in Taylor’s lab her freshman year and building her data set holds significant importance — both for her and the project. EPSCoR funding has allowed her to continue the work throughout the summer months, she said.

What’s more, Fehon added, the experience reinforced that research is the field she wants to pursue: “Ideally, I would like to be a college professor and have research on the side. I think that would be perfect.”

Story and photos by Amy Dunkle