Summer of Research: How SURP Energizes Students And Readies Them for Success
SDSU’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) provides students with the opportunity to further engage in undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activities.
Students are supported by SDSU’s finest mentors to ensure they stay on the right track and are guided through the process. SURP is open to all majors and allows a diverse body of students to deeply explore their passions and interests while also providing a great aid for undergraduates discovering new possible career paths.
Students not only interact with and watch those who have been in the field for awhile, they also participate directly in field work. Students are given hands-on projects by mentors and organizations who assist them along the way.
Four of the Seven 2023 CAL SURP-Funded Projects
“Navigating the Path: Understanding the Social and Identity Factors that Shape Undergraduate Career Decisions”
Daniel Davis, Department of Sociology
PROJECT SUMMARY
This project explores the many sources of influence that contribute to undergraduate career decision-making. At the most basic level, to pick a career path, students must both know about the career and determine that it is desirable for them to pursue. A non-exhaustive list of social contextual influences include family, friends, mentors, teachers, course work, campus organizations, and media exposure. A non-exhaustive list of identity factors include race, gender, class background, age, college major, religious identity, political identity, self-efficacy, and first-generation status. A non-exhaustive list of work features include pay, autonomy, work activities, work environment, and past work-experiences (e.g., internships, college jobs).
KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR STUDENTS
The goal of the project is to determine which of the many factors listed above show the most robust influence on influencing students' career choices and why. Also, we will examine variation across groups of students based on major and demographics. The significance of this project is to increase our understanding of how students sort between the many messages they receive about potential career paths to craft their own preferences.
Implications will be of interest to scholars of higher education, occupations and work, and vocational preparation professionals across disciplines. Career center professionals will find this study particularly useful in developing more targeted programming to support student career choice formation. The student researchers will get hands-on experience with sociology research and a project presentation of their own, in addition to support in applying to graduate school.
“I am eager to find out which emotions characterize various sub-groups of students' job searches, as well as which variables influence their career pathways,” Davis said.
“Effects of a CAL Humanities and Humanistic Social Science Major on Career Outcomes”
Alvin Henry, Department of Asian American Studies/Dean’s Office Award
PROJECT SUMMARY
In popular culture, majoring in English is often equated with working as a barista postgrad. This controlling myth paints an incorrect picture of how the humanities and social sciences can be the foundation for a satisfying and successful career. This project asks how SDSU alumni in the humanities and social sciences translated their majors into career success. This information will inform future students and their families on why students can follow their passions--and be successful.
Two undergraduates, via the SURP program, will assist Henry and College of Arts and Letters Assistant Dean Aileen Taylor-Grant.
“Remote-controlled Boat for Mapping Water Quality in the Tijuana Estuary”
Trent Biggs, Department of Geography
PROJECT SUMMARY
The Tijuana Estuary experiences frequent sewage spills and high sediment loads from the Tijuana River, but maps of the plumes under different ocean conditions are not well documented. Water quality also varies between the main channel and the tidal tributaries; an existing sonde (an environmental monitoring tool) is continuously recording data at the “Boca Rio” site, but no data has been collected in the main channel to the south.
The objectives of the project are to design and test a remote-controlled (RC) boat system to map water quality in the Tijuana Estuary; compare water quality mapped from the sonde with water quality mapped using satellite imagery (Landsat with 30 meter resolution and Sentinel with 10 meter resolution); and quantify spatial patterns in turbidity, chlorophyll and tryptophan in non-sewage and sewage release events (pending site conditions).
Sewage releases into the estuary from the Tijuana River occur relatively frequently during summer months, but sampling will be opportunistic; useful data can be gathered regardless of sewage vs non-sewage conditions.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR STUDENTS
Students will learn about remote controlled sensor systems, including telemetry; water quality sensors, including their maintenance and calibration; water quality data gathering and analysis in the statistical software R; use Google Earth Engine to calculate turbidity from satellite imagery; engage in statistical analysis to compare satellite imagery-derived turbidity with in situ monitoring; and learn leadership skills.
A total of three students will be working on the project: one M.S. and two undergraduates.
One graduate student who has worked with PI Biggs on a related project, will help train and mentor a student in sonde operation and data analysis. Biggs said he is most looking forward to “mapping water quality where no data exist.”
“The Socioeconomic Effects of Migrant Age of Arrival in the United States”
Hisham Foad, Department of Economics
PROJECT SUMMARY
Immigrants have traditionally been classified as 1st generation (born abroad) or 2nd generation (native born to immigrant parents). However, these classifications are likely too coarse and miss critical differences within these immigrant generations. For the 1st generation, age of arrival has been shown to have significant effects on socioeconomic outcomes later in life. In particular, teenage arrivals have been found to have significantly worse outcomes than those who migrated at younger ages. I explore explanations for this in two papers that consider the role of language acquisition and social integration as measured by intermarriage rates. For the 2nd generation, children with two migrant parents may have different outcomes than those with one migrant and one native parent. I study this in a third paper that also considers how the gender of the migrant parent in intermarriages can have significant effects on outcomes due to both parental involvement and access to migrant/native networks. The results from these studies have important implications related to how policy resources should be targeted for migrant integration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR STUDENTS
Students will learn that we need to be careful not to think of migrants as a monolithic group. Rather there are many differences, even among migrants from the same origin country that influence the degree of success migrants may experience in the destination
Students will learn that Identifying the key impediments to migrant integration allows us to better focus policy. For example, if language acquisition is only a major problem for teenage arrivals, then we should focus ESL resources in high schools rather than at all grade levels.
Foad said, “I am looking forward to working with students on data collection and estimation, but mostly on discussing various explanations for the results we find. I really value the insights that our students have as they bring different perspectives to issues I've been thinking about for years.