Cleared for Takeoff

by Robert Ross

Editor

A child tosses a pebble into a pond. Seconds later, the ripples she created touch the other side. She smiles.

She has discovered research.

At Embry-Riddle, students are doing grown-up versions of chucking stones into the water.

Three freshmen in Prescott labor for weeks creating a remote-control robot they will enter in a contest.

A student in Daytona Beach spends hours in a hospital watching doctors repair hernias and remove gall bladders.

Other students are testing an experiment to reduce the wobble of spinning spacecraft, modifying an SUV engine to improve mileage and cut emissions, and designing living spaces for scientists who will take up long-term residence on Mars one day.

Like the child, who is just having fun, these students enjoy what they are doing. But their research also adds knowledge that in the future will save lives and advance science.

Unlike at other universities, where research is open only to graduate students, at Embry-Riddle undergraduates are working alongside their professors and conducting research in summer internships arranged through the university’s Career Services office.

They’re learning how to design objective scientific experiments and discovering that learning doesn’t come only from textbooks, but from their own quest to investigate and create new knowledge.

When these students are ready to graduate, their research experience at Embry-Riddle makes them all that more attractive to employers.

And the ripples they create touch us all.