What to Expect at This Year’s Lab Crawl

Large research posters hang on walls on either side of you as you make your way to class. You see peers deep in concentration hovered over laptops and lab equipment as you pass by laboratories. Your professors talk openly and often about the students assisting them with their research. You’ve seen signs of student research everywhere on campus, and now you want to know how you can get in on the action.

Lab Crawl, happening from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, October 30, is the place to start.

An annual event presented by the Center for Learning, Education, and Research in the Sciences (CLEAR), Lab Crawl is designed to help students learn more about the college’s research facilities, to discover research opportunities available to them, and to help them find faculty mentors in an informal and fun way. The event has the added bonus of giving current student researchers the opportunity to discuss their research, which can help them in future conference presentations and other related events.

This year’s crawl features 35 stations representing 10 academic departments: anthropology, biology, chemistry and biochemistry, classics, computer science, geology, neuroscience, psychology, and physics and astronomy. The crawl also features lab safety and career center stations, as well as stations for the club OC3D and the contemporary music major TIMARA. Stations will be located throughout the Science Center and the Wright Lab of Physics, King and Rice, Carnegie, Severance, Wilder, and Bibbins.

To get an idea of what to expect from the various stations, see the photo gallery above. Photos and descriptions for stations representing the classics and mathematics departments and lab safety and career center stations are not included in the gallery.

How Lab Crawl Works

To participate in Lab Crawl, pick up a passport from a table in the Science Center, Carnegie, or King, and then visit the various lab stations of interest. After discussing current research and future research opportunities, show your passport to faculty or student researchers to collect stickers.

Each sticker collected from the Science Center gets you one entry in a raffle for gift cards from The Feve and Slow Train. Stickers from stations outside of the Science Center are worth four entries in the raffle. Return your passports at pizza stations located in Carnegie, King, or the Science Center. Collect at least three stickers to redeem pizza at these stations. Candy to help fuel your crawl will be available at stations in Bibbins, Carnegie, and Wilder.

For more information about Lab Crawl, contact CLEAR Director Marcelo Vinces or Rosalind Soltow by emailing clear@oberlin.edu.