Warren, for example, is first author on a research paper recently submitted to a professional journal in the field in which she is majoring, speech and hearing science. That means she is considered a primary researcher on a project that analyzed five years of data on discourse produced by Alzheimer's patients. She began working on the data at the end of her freshman year under the direction of Kathryn A. Bayles, associate professor of speech and hearing sciences. She still works on that project as well as with Pepperberg. As a result of that paper, Warren will also present her findings at the November convention of the American Speech Language Hearing Association in Atlanta, Bayles says.
Few students achieve the distinction of being a first author even during graduate school.
Students in the Undergraduate Biology Research Program have published 24 journal papers since 1988, five of them as first authors, says Carol Bender, senior program coordinator. The sheer quantity of breakthrough research under way in UA laboratories accounts for undergraduates such as Warren having access to work that could lead to getting published. But without faculty support to underpin the program, few students could make such headway. The amount of talent, analytical ability and independence that characterizes undergraduates who join the program may account for the faculty's general enthusiasm for hiring them, Bender says. Isaias, a molecular and cellular biology major, plans a career in medicine or biological research.