Career preparation through research engagement

Art McDonald, Nobel Prize winner and professor emeritus of Queen’s University:

It’s very important to engage students in basic research.

What we find is that the sort of thing that we’re dealing with — and that is understanding your universe more completely — is something that students absolutely love to be able to be a part of.

In fact, in our case, we were able to give a eureka experience to a large number of graduate students and undergraduates who participated in summer programs or co-op programs and so on.

It’s the sort of thing that students can really get inspired by and the training that they get in basic science is of value if they go on to be a basic scientist, but it’s also general training with respect to how to do research, and it’s something that the country needs.

Highly qualified personnel is a substantial component of – of all the funding agencies’ objectives, and rightfully so.

It turns out that the – that the variety of different things that people who have worked with us have ended up doing is very broad and not just restricted to being a university professor.