Check it out. Fukushima in the Together Podcast.

In this episode of Together: A Higher-Ed Podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima and Dr. Alexa Sand to explore the transformative impact of undergraduate research. Dr. Fukushima and Dr. Sand share their journeys into academia, the mentors who shaped their careers, and how they now empower students to become researchers, innovators, and leaders. They discuss the importance of fostering curiosity, embracing failure, and breaking barriers to make research accessible to all students. We also dive into the upcoming 25th Anniversary of Research on Capitol Hill, an event showcasing the best undergraduate research from Utah’s top institutions. Learn more here https://our.utah.edu/roch

“It builds resilience. From being wrong, to failing and falling on your face. And then getting up and doing it again, and again, and again until you find something. Every sort of limb that they are loping off question is actually part of the discovery of new knowledge… The mentoring, it is not a straight line. The mentoring piece of it builds this community.” – Alexa Sand.

“It’s all about the question… when we really care about our society and our communities, we want to ask questions so we can solve problems. And there are many questions we can ask. And it’s really hard to find the question you really want to ask and find the answer. And when I teach my students in methods, in ethnic studies methods, one of the things we start to navigate is we start with this framing. That research happens the moment we have a question and we seek to find an answer. We as communities are always doing research, but there’s different ways that research happens in different environments. Disciplines might create more structure and necessitate that because there is such a deep history of people who have worked to answer that question… we’re building on things that exist” – Annie Isabel Fukushima

“I think about that connection to the impact that our universities have on the citizenry. Not just our state. But the region, the nation, the world. Empowering people in someways, what I hear you both describing, tell me if I am wrong, but people who are less fearful of asking critical questions to challenges that maybe other folks have contributed to the historiography or the body of knowledge that precedes us. And in some ways being less fearful of saying ‘that person tried to answer the question and I take issue with how they have answered that question. I think the answer is actually over here.’ That gets at the heart of what great research universities do” – Chase Hagood