Undergraduate student's summer research experience

Loading player for https://video.vt.edu/media/1_wed7sh60...

research 1:28 Undergraduate student's summer research experience

By:

Clark Dehart

3 Sep 2025 179

Lucy Gehman is an undergraduate student conducting research with the Virginia Tech Shorebird Program run by Dr. Sarah Karpanty. Students who engage in undergraduate research opportunities gain experience to jump start their career after graduation.

So I was interested in coming to Tech because of the faculty. Dr. Carpentier was high on that list. I liked how she was looking at imperiled species and as a student it was really cool that I'd get the opportunity to work hands-on on a project like that and kind of participate in a longer-term study. Over the summer when I was doing fieldwork we did a lot of point counts which is basically walking up and down the beaches on these barrier islands and and then looking through a sighting scope and counting birds manually. And that gives us an idea of just population size. And then now, in my current position in the lab, I do a lot of GIS work, which is using aerial imagery to look at maps of the barrier islands. And then looking at all those things together, we can kind of get an idea of how habitats changed and then also how maybe the birds are changing in response to that. Through my internship in the Carpentry Lab, I got to present at my first conference in the fall, which was a really exciting opportunity for me as a sophomore. I also got the opportunity to be a co-author on a research report and a publication. So for any undergraduates coming to Tech who are interested in getting into research, I definitely recommend to look at the faculty page, potentially even read a couple papers, just so you have a jumping-off point to start building some relationships with professors and their grad students and maybe get your foot in the door, because that really helped me a lot.

Academics

Campus Experience

Culture

Impact

Research

Global Impact