By: Tyler Miller
The COVID-19 pandemic has
changed a lot of things for people, over the past year. It has especially
changed how STEM professors and students have conducted their scientific
research within the field. Especially when it comes to doing their research at
Georgia Southern University since it’s tough with all the COVID-19 restrictions
and barriers put in place.
Jamie Roberts, an environmental biology professor at Georgia Southern, has his own research program that he’s worked on and has specialized in. “My research program takes three main forms: 1). Field studies of fish and other wildlife in their natural habitats, 2). Lab-based molecular studies of population genetics, and 3). Synthesizing existing data and using models to access species’ extinction risks,” Roberts said in an email.
Roberts also said that since COVID-19 has hit, he has placed a hiatus on all of his ongoing field projects because they always require multiple people working together in close proximity and riding in vehicles together to remote sites. He went on to say that the overall change he’s had to make due to covid is “close my doors to taking on any new undergrad researchers, because I have no way to safely supervise them, until the covid threat is over.”
Hillary Sklar, a teaching
assistant in the Biology Department at Georgia Southern, said in an email that
she didn’t have much research herself since she just recently started being a
TA last year. She said that she was in a bit of a weird position when she began
grad school last semester and didn’t have an advisor when she started.
According to Sklar, she
didn’t have an advisor until a few weeks into the semester, and due to that, she
decided to wait to start her research until after this semester. She also spoke
to other colleges, graduate programs, and other graduate students, and said the
research wasn’t heavily impacted by the pandemic.
Many of her peers do
research either independently, or with one or two others assisting them with
the research. If there were issues, she said that it could have came from
shared office/lab space that could have halted the research being done there. She
also added that if someone tested positive for COVID-19, the people they were
working with, had to get tested and quarantined, and that would also halt the
research being done during that period of time. It would take a bit of time to
start that research back up, if some of the researchers were affected by COVID-19.
As for students in the STEM
field and how their research has been affected by COVID-19, it is quite similar
to teaching assistants and professors.
Ethan Layne, a STEM major
at Georgia Southern, said that he has several clubs that would do research on
campus before COVID-19 impacted it. They would get together in one of the stem
buildings twice a week, and talk about their ideas and what research they would
do for that next week.
According to Ethan, ever
since COVID-19 happened, they have had to shift their club meetings online to
zoom. He said it was because they didn’t want to risk it and wanted to take the
safe route, and just shift to online club meetings for their research. They
didn’t want to go online, but “felt like they had to because everyone in their
clubs wanted to be safe about it,” said Ethan.
The COVID-19 pandemic has
really affected students and professors in unique and different ways, and has clearly
been shown the past year.