The Next Expert Leaders
Strome Student Management Research Lab
How do people cope with and recover from the stress that comes with work? How do students manage learning new skills for new or multiple jobs? These are the kinds of interesting social research questions that Andrew Bennett and Emily Campion, Assistant Professors in the Management Department, are studying with their student research lab.
Emily Campion has had experience facilitating student research at the University at Buffalo where she co-taught an undergraduate research methods course (Fall 2016) and co-led a social entrepreneurship experiential learning program in Ghana, where she supervised nine undergraduate students and three MBA students' projects (Spring 2018). She is currently supervising six undergraduate ODU students on a research project on interviewing techniques. Andrew Bennett has supervised undergraduate research at ODU for an honors contract course (Fall 2018) and was the graduate assistant for the Workplace Well-Being Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University that included the supervision of 10 undergraduate students.
The goals of the lab are to expose and provide undergraduate students meaningful research opportunities from the beginning to the end of their degree experience and enhance the pipeline of students with scholarly interests to graduate school programs. The initial lab, started in Spring 2018, included seven students who met bi-weekly and researched two projects related to work: one about migrant labor and skill development, and another about work stress. "I am learning how to read and conduct valid interviews, synthesize information and how to code findings. I like how we are treated as equals when developing these research projects," said Kenya Thompson, a senior majoring in management.
The research lab positively impacts the students, the college and the university. Students get a deeper understanding of the research process while enhancing their communication skills during conference presentations. "I learned how to properly extract information in the most efficient manner possible" said management major, Nicholas Curtis. Students' experience in the lab benefits the Management Department by yielding additional support for research projects. The additional participation from Strome in the undergraduate research program along with increased student engagement in the scholarly program is the kind of footprint that ODU wants students to make in the community as expert leaders and decision makers.
The research questions will change yearly. This year students will research the effectiveness of different stress coping techniques of people who work multiple jobs. The lab is an extra-curricular, non-credit lab. Students are expected to spend approximately 2-4 hours a week on the research before meeting bi-weekly with Bennett and Campion, who "lead from behind" to discuss each researcher's findings in a group format where students can interact, share, and learn from one another.
To learn more, please visit Campion's and Bennett's website!
