Undergraduate Student Engagement

Are you a current undergraduate student at Colorado State University? If you are interested in joining the Ruegg lab, please first read through the Home and Research pages, and the background information below. 

Undergraduate students can engage in the Ruegg lab and Bird Genoscape project in a variety of ways. We receive thousands of feather, blood, tissue, and DNA samples from our collaborators across the Western Hemisphere every year. We would not be able to get these all added to our database without the help of our amazing undergraduate students! Each semester, we have a limited number of volunteer and work study positions available. Volunteer and work study positions are focused on helping with curatorial work (intake of shipments, formatting of metadata) and learning more about the project. Exceptional students may be able to move on to learning molecular lab work and developing independent projects. Typically, new students accepted into the lab will start with a volunteer position learning curatorial work. Once a student has shown dedication, commitment, and a strong attention to detail, they will have the opportunity to apply for a work study and get engaged in lab and fieldwork if positions are available.

Additionally, students involved in the lab are invited to participate in lab meetings, learn during a professional development series led by the lab manager, go bird banding with graduate students, and more!

If you'd like to volunteer or apply for a work study position, please send a current CV and letter of interest to birdgenoscape@gmail.com