When Bayleigh Baldwin first arrived at UC Davis, she didn’t really know what it meant to be at a research university. She discovered right away that research is a world of its own.
Baldwin, a linguistics major and Letters and Science student ambassador, is now a senior and wrapped up graduate school applications in the fall. It’s been hard work on her part, but she also credits the mentors, both professors and graduate students, who helped her find her way.
“I had a lot of really great mentors here who showed me how they got to be graduate students and professors,” said Baldwin. “I followed after them and my goal is to be a professor someday.”
Taking first steps into research
Baldwin has been conducting research on autism in the CARE lab at the UC Davis School of Education with mentorship from the lab’s director Nicole Sparapani, an associate professor with affiliations in both the School of Education and the UC Davis MIND Institute.
Baldwin found out about the research assistant position by accident during her first year on campus. A friend at the dorms mentioned that a professor had spoken to the class about research assistant positions and asked if she was also interested.
She was nervous reaching out. Even meeting professors during office hours was a struggle. She didn’t feel confident in knowing the right way to be polite or the appropriate way to address them.
The professor responded to Baldwin’s message right away, and with enthusiasm. They met for a casual interview that immediately put Baldwin at ease.
“She was just so friendly and wanted to know what I wanted to learn from this,” she said. “Every professor I've met or talked to about research is just nice and really welcoming, and that was not something that I expected.”
Last year, Baldwin gave a conference presentation on her preliminary case study in which she observed two autistic children's language in structured play assessments. These observations expand how we can understand the results of past academic assessments. She is now leading a team of CARE Lab undergraduate research assistants to analyze the language of a much larger sample of autistic children, and hopes to publish a paper on this work one day.
Advice to get over nerves and wade in
Baldwin said that one of the biggest challenges for her has been getting over her nervousness about the social part of the research world. This past November she attended her first big research conference. It was an event for professors and Ph.D. students with very few undergraduates like her.
“It made me really anxious to have to network in person,” said Baldwin.
To make the most out of her time at the conference, she decided she would make goals about talking to people she didn’t know each day. She prepared by finding out what professors were attending and finding a chance to introduce herself and ask questions about their research.
“That was a very stressful experience but I'm so glad I did it, because I ended up applying to graduate programs where these professors teach and now I'm getting interviews with them,” said Baldwin.
Baldwin said that Ph.D. students have been fantastic mentors who were much more approachable than professors. Graduate students are not much older and were recently undergrads themselves. For her, they have been allies who helped her to network and navigate working in a research lab. Some even helped her with her graduate school applications.
Being a L&S ambassador has also been helpful, she said, especially for practice in public speaking. She applied to the program toward the end of her first year. Today she teaches a class to first-year students as a lead teaching assistant for seminars covering a range of topics, from mental health and study resources to internships and career planning. The experience is preparing her for the kind of work she will do as a graduate student.
“I feel like there's a lot of like really practical skills that I've learned there,” she said.
Right now, Baldwin is interviewing with graduate programs in linguistics and has already been accepted to one. She plans to study sociolinguistics, which covers how people use language as part of a much more complex social interaction. She has been working since her first year to make her time at UC Davis only the beginning of her research career.
“I love reading and I love writing and I never want to leave school,” said Baldwin. “This feels right.”
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