In the words of our scholars...

"During my internship at the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, I have gained important skills that are going to be very useful in my career as a researcher. I was part of a vibrant interdisciplinary research team that was highly supportive and open to everyone’s varying experiences and worldviews. Although the internship was online, I had a strong sense of being part of a community and made connections with highly knowledgeable professionals and students of very diverse backgrounds."

"The personal development presentations were very helpful to me as every topic that was presented had something I could put into practice in order to help me with my personal and professional skills. Before being part of ACE I had no experience with R, I am very happy I was exposed to R and I am able to do very basic things, and it has encouraged me to enroll in a class for next semester that touches on R and data visualization."

"I feel like the ACE Scholars Program, other than helping me and moving me towards achieving my goals (gain research experience, learn R), it built a sense of community. Through this community, we can support each other and help each other grow together. And I felt that was really unique compared to what I have experienced so far."

"Extracurricular activities like R programming lectures given by Zach Compton, as well as career and professional development lectures given by Cristina Baciu were an important part of my internship. As a student, who is going to do a master’s in computational biomedical engineering, I gained important knowledge about the specifics of R and was introduced to useful programming tools. Especially invaluable to me were my one-on-one sessions with Cristina Baciu during which she gave very helpful recommendations related to a wide range of professional development topics. These included important advice on how to ask for letters of recommendation, how to improve time management skills, choose graduate school, compose a good CV, network and so much more. An important distinctive feature of this program was that the personal well-being of the students was valued as much, as their research contributions. I feel confident that I will be able to transfer the skills acquired during this internship to my future research endeavors. Even more importantly, I feel that I have gained friends with whom I hope to stay connected and possibly have new collaborations."

"As an older undergraduate in an unrelated online degree program, an opportunity to join a research program can be considered a rare opportunity. The ACE Scholars leadership team has developed an excellent support system and incubator that encourages growth, allows flexibility, and prides itself on continuous feedback regardless of academic goals. The experiences gained over the last four months will advance me light-years beyond where I would be without this group."

"I learned a lot through the ACE Scholars Program. Coming into the program, I had the professional goal of pursuing more research and I also had the development goal of meeting new people and networking. As I was applying to the ACE Scholars Program, I thought that these goals would be hard to accomplish within just one semester and that I needed more years of experience to build these skills. But the ACE Scholars Program proved me wrong. Within the several months of being in the program, I learned a lot about research and the intricacies of investigating science – I even wrote a manuscript and am looking to publish it in a journal. The bi-weekly R tutorials have helped me progress my data analysis techniques and skills in the project that I am working in. I also made immense strides of progress towards accomplishing my career development goals through the bi-weekly workshops of the program. I also have met a wide variety of individuals with diverse academic and personal backgrounds that allowed me to grow professionally and personally."