The student can help develop these from other courses in other areas. Dr. Schandel has found her students to be quite motivated and hard-working. They expend a lot of effort, and they tend to manage their time well. I am impressed that our students are often motivated to explore topics in detail, to look at tangentially related ideas. Many of Dr. Schandel's students, like Shannon Mission '99, have been involved in internships and independent research projects.
Independent research is done on campus and is a great steppingstone to graduate school.
In fact, it has become a prerequisite for graduate school. The students are able to work in the lab and formulate a question that can be answered with some type of experiment. Internships are done off-campus. She was very excited about the lab-based research, and then realized a career in this area was not for her. Research can be slow going, and you're very isolated when you're doing it.