High schoolers Shadow a Scientist at Carolina

The program is called Shadow a Scientist, and high schoolers from across North Carolina come face-to-face with Tar Heel researchers on these daytrips to UNC-Chapel Hill.

Students like Rohan Chakrabarty from Cox Mill High School in Concord, North Carolina, learn about the structure of labs and how research is published. They ask Carolina graduate students about their careers and see how concepts taught in their own high school classrooms carry real-world value.

“What surprised me was how friendly the atmosphere was,” said Chakrabarty, who spent part of his day in a pharmaceutical sciences lab with doctoral student Alita Miller. “When you think of a science lab, you think of a serious environment, but I really was impressed how well everyone knew each other and how friendly they all were.”

Chakrabarty and his classmates — juniors and seniors in teacher Lauren Burgess’s Advanced Placement biology and chemistry classes — spent a March Friday with graduate students from Carolina’s health sciences schools, primarily the UNC School of Medicine, who volunteer with Shadow a Scientist.

Founded in 2019, the program brings scientific research into focus and puts a face on it. The graduate students leading it host a handful of daytrips each semester, providing information and insights they wish they had themselves years ago.

“None of my family comes from a scientific background or had graduate education,” said Katherine Degner, Shadow a Scientist’s administrative coordinator. “It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college where I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what you can do with a PhD.’”

Degner is a fourth-year neuroscience doctoral student and began volunteering with Shadow a Scientist soon after arriving in Chapel Hill.

When she and her peers host high schoolers — students have come from counties like Duplin and Randolph to Person and Surry — she makes sure they understand “there’s no linear” path in research.

As Cox Mill students began their day with a tour of campus, Degner chatted about her initial plans to be a doctor. Those plans changed once she shadowed a physician as an undergraduate and realized she’d rather work in a lab.

“There’s no perfect way of doing things,” said Degner, who studies the genetics of substance use disorders.

But it isn’t too early for students to explore careers and research focuses. Through Shadow a Scientist, they’re exposed to many at Carolina, with students breaking into small groups and visiting labs related to their interests.

Topics range from rare viruses and peanut allergies to structural biology and early heart development.

“I think it’s really great for them to actually see the variety of things out there and all the opportunities in labs,” said Burgess, in her 11th year teaching at Cox Mill.

The interaction is also beneficial for graduate students. While giving six high schoolers a tour of her lab in the McAllister Heart Institute, fourth-year doctoral student Rachel Szymanski found herself wondering, “How do I properly communicate this to you?”

“Part of it is trying to reach them, but part of it is also helping myself work on communicating with the public,” Szymanski said.

In between lab visits, the Cox Mill students ate lunch and talked with Shadow a Scientist ambassadors. These graduate students asked about their academic and extracurricular interests and reflected on their own journeys.

One ambassador asked the high schoolers, “Can you guess what year we graduated high school?” before saying, “I think I’m in 22nd grade.” (No UNC graduate students were called unc.)

As a high schooler, Chakrabarty said some of this work can feel inaccessible. But he said the visit was worthwhile because it was “great to hear insights from people” in careers of interest to him.

His teacher thinks the day in Chapel Hill will stick with her students.

“It’s going to give them a focus and understanding of what they’re getting into,” Burgess said, “and possibly even inspire them to look into more things.”