Ahead of the Curve
At Hartwick, connections are made quickly and run deep.
Autumn Pope ’23 and Professor Stephanie Carr ’06, PhD, clicked even before Pope enrolled. “I visited Hartwick on Accepted Students Day and went straight to Johnstone Science Center,” says Pope, who comes from Mount Vision, NY. “Dr. Carr showed me around and we talked about my interests and hers. Now I’m on her research team and she’s helped put me on a path.” Pope declared a major in biology, excelled in her classes, and reconnected with Carr in her interdisciplinary Bioinfomatics course. When Pope demonstrated what Carr looks for in a research assistant—“curiosity, motivation, reliability, resilience, and initiative”—she earned an invitation to join her professor’s team.
The team developed into Pope’s first professional network. “We brainstorm issues together, talk about ideas, mull things over, and try different solutions,” she says of her researcher peers. They also become each other’s mentors. Carr paired Pope with Tylisha Gourdine’21, a biochemistry major now doing biomedical research with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Montana.
As a student, Gourdine accompanied Carr on a National Science Foundation-funded field study aboard a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute research vessel. The experience became a credential that helped Gourdine land the coveted NIH opportunity. Creating professional opportunities for her students is one thing Carr loves about teaching at Hartwick. “My own research projects are collaborations across the country,” she says, citing the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, and Colorado School of Mines, among others. “I like to get my students involved, so invite them to collaborator meetings. They don’t get credit; they have to want to put in the extra time.” Carr tapped her connections to help Pope take a professional leap forward last summer when she was accepted to Bigelow Labs. As a research intern for 10 weeks, she immersed herself in her future career of microbiology. “I learned to pare down complex information and became good at both scientific writing and presenting my work,” says Pope, who is eyeing a career in teaching and research. “These are skills I’ll need in the future.”
It’s all part of the plan. “I work with my students on developing skill sets that they can use anywhere,” says Carr.“When they leave Hartwick, I want them feeling confident that they belong wherever they go from here. Graduate school, the NIH, anywhere. ”Confident in her future, Pope says, “I started early and now I’m ahead of the curve.”
"Now I know I belong as a research scientist."
Autumn Pope '23
