What do undergraduate RAs do in research labs?

Most professors/researchers have a specific area of research, and they have a team of researchers working together on this specific area. This group of people working together, under the leadership of a professor, is typically known as a “lab.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that these people will be working in a laboratory (e.g., white coats and goggles). Your potential role as an undergraduate student within this lab is known as an undergraduate research assistant (RA). RAs engage in a variety of tasks and activities that can support the process of knowledge creation. The tasks and activities benefit students by offering them the opportunity to engage in experiential/hands-on learning and benefit researchers / professors by having students' complete tasks that may be time consuming or tedious. These tasks and activities are learned through the participation process and mentoring. That is, students are not necessarily expected to know how to do them prior to becoming a research assistant; researchers/professors will train them as necessary. However, professors may use other indicators to assess students’ potential in completing these tasks and activities (e.g., performance on research methods and/or statistics courses) to decide whether to invite/accept a student to become an RA. Below, we highlight some tasks/activities in which RAs typically participate.