Jackson and Warren are part of a research team working under the direction of Irene M. Pepperberg, and ethologist and UA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, who compares parrots' mental powers to those of chimpanzees and dolphins. Few undergraduates at any American university are allowed to work alongside faculty doing productive research. They are participants in the Undergraduate Biology Research Program, an energetic effort to get UA students excited about biology by giving them a real-world research experience. As a bonus, they get paid to do it. UA faculty in science, agriculture, and medicine for years have hired undergraduate researchers, paying wages entirely out of their own grant funding.
Faculty pay the other half.
The program started with a pilot project funded by the Biochemistry Department in 1988 with just 19 students working in the labs of 13 faculty. It has grown quickly since then, in part because additional funding was secured from the National Science Foundation, the deans of science, agriculture and medicine, and University-affiliated units such as the Center for Insect Science. There are now 140 potential faculty sponsors for students. The program's growth underscores the effectiveness of teaching science by letting students actually do it, says Edgar J. McCullough, dean of the UA Faculty of Science. Clearly, science has anything but a reputation for fun and excitement in this country.