Brayden Binder ’22: Getting Started
Hello everyone! My name is Brayden Binder, and I am a rising-senior Business Economics major and Finance minor at Providence College. Over this summer, I performed research for Providence College under the mentorship of Dr. Fang Dong of the Economics department. Even while my research process is not finished, I still wanted to share my experience as an undergraduate researcher and give some insights and comments on my journey in three blog posts. The first blog post will talk about the start of the project, how I chose what I was going to research, and more preliminary topics. The second blog post will talk about two major difficulties that arose, and the third will discuss the last issue I encountered as well as my plans going forward.
First, I want to thank the Center for Engaged Learning at Providence College for allowing me the opportunity in the first place to do a deep dive into my field of interest. Oddly enough, there have not been many students from the different Economic majors who apply for a summer undergraduate research grant, much to my surprise. Essentially, what I did over the summer was an accelerated and much more in-depth version of PC’s Economics Capstone class. In fact, the paper I made in my Capstone class—which you can read on the 12th Annual Celebration of Student Scholarship and Creativity page—created a topic of interest for me that I felt I could research further in independent research.
Specifically, while brainstorming ideas for what to center my project around in the Capstone class, I had an idea to study the effects of education on an economy. This broad topic made me read multiple academic Economic journal articles surrounding education, and I stumbled upon the subsection of economic literature on education that studied “human capital.” The idea of human capital in Economics can be defined as “the relative skills and knowledge of a population.” Thus, for my Capstone class, I found a specific model and issue I wanted to explore in human capital literature, in so laying a foundation of knowledge about the field for me to use and explore in the future.
With that said, I cannot really give much advice on how someone can come up with a summer research idea completely from scratch. The topic or subject you do choose needs to have a lot of substance to it to be able to dedicate up to ten weeks of your summer to work on it. Luckily, I had the background knowledge and work from my Capstone class, so I knew where a large gap was in the literature for my field. What I can say about picking a research topic is that it should be something that you have an opinion on or want to develop one on. If you do not care about your work, those weeks spent on it are going to be difficult. So, start thinking about broad ideas that interest you, and work down. Read about other work people are currently doing or past academic articles, look at current events to think about timely topics that you would be interested in exploring. For me what sparked the interest in education was something my professor in my Intro to Macroeconomics course, Fr. William Marquis, said a few years ago regarding the relationship between the long-run aggregate supply and education when discussing the policy proposal of free college for all. The question stayed with me for a long time—how exactly does educating a populace on a range of topics in higher education translate to higher long-run economic growth?
When looking for research topics, I would encourage other potential students interested in researching to try to remember things discussed in class that made them question why something was the way it was, or how something came to be. The advice is broad, I know, but that is personally how I brainstorm. Start broad, and work to narrow your paper topic. Then, when choosing a mentor, you should most likely choose a professor you have a working relationship with how knows your work. I had my mentor twice as a teacher beforehand, so she knew how I worked, and had already discussed the topic with me as she was my Capstone teacher. Choose a mentor who already knows you and knows about the field you are interested in, so the working relationship between you two are quick and productive.
Again, it does confuse me why more Economics majors do not try to take the opportunity to deep dive into research. As I am studying abroad my full senior year, I took the senior Economics Capstone class as a junior, so my paper in that class gave me the idea for my summer research. For a student who is taking the class in their senior year, it could be the opposite—your summer research done after your junior year could inspire your senior project. That way, you will already have a jump start in the class, and you could produce a higher quality paper in the end. Further, all the tools you need to perform Economic research are provided for you by the PC library online. Every day, I would hop on the library’s website, go to the databases tab, go to the Econlit page, and begin researching.
Not only do you most likely have the resources necessary to begin researching, have numerous professors at PC who would love to help students research, and would give you a topic of interest to look at in future research, if the work is good enough, it could get published. This is a wonderful opportunity for your career that gives you experience and proficiency in your field of interest. While it is not an internship, being published in a professional academic journal is not something every undergraduate student can put on their resume. As an added benefit, you get paid to research the topic you love! This is my first experience being paid to research a topic that I am incredibly interested in, and now, the publication side is what I am working on. While I cannot speak for other journals, Economic journals can take up to 3-6 months reviewing your work, then more months to choose when to use your paper in one of their issues.
Researching as an undergraduate student for Economics majors gives you a leg up in the senior Capstone class and a leg up knowing possible realms of interest in Economics to pursue a career in. For all undergraduate students, it provides time to deep dive into your major and an incredible professional opportunity to help you moving forward.
