My experience with the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program (PURM)

Every summer, Penn offers first and second year students a chance to stay on campus and work with faculty on their cutting edge research projects, as well as a generous stipend to mitigate costs of living. Last summer, I was lucky enough to participate in the program as a student in the Annenberg School of Communications’ Health Equity Lab. Under the tutelage of Prof. Andy Tan, and his incredible team of graduate students and research advisors, I investigated the connections between religiosity and vaping/smoking retention.  

PURM allows undergraduates to apply for three ongoing research projects, from fields like medical physics to historical archival work; the breadth of the programs offered is truly astonishing and seemingly endless. Personally, the hardest part of applying was choosing which topics I wanted to pursue! But in the end, I couldn’t be more grateful for the project I was accepted into. More so than the actual hard research skills I learned, the soft skills of collaborating with labmates, working on presentation skills, and attending daily meetings with the lab, turned out to be the most rewarding part of the experience. Whenever I was given tasks to complete throughout the week, the environment was never tense or stress-inducing, but my professor would always ask “How can I help you accomplish this goal?” or “What can I do to make this feasible for you?” which greatly eased the anxiety I had entering the lab. I was honestly astonished by the kindness of the staff, which makes sense since faculty who enroll for PURM do so on a volunteer basis. For all prospective students who desire to do research at Penn, please do not hesitate to look deeper into PURM’s program as it is one of the university’s most esteemed and reputable.

 - Seyoon C.