A research co-op was the payoff for undergrad who constantly put up her hand in class

Nicole Malette’s first co-op was in her wheelhouse while the second was way outside her comfort zone. Both proved to be amazing experiences, says Nicole.

First up for the Chemical Biology student was a stint as a community counsellor with McMaster Engineering Community Outreach. Nicole developed and delivered STEM workshops throughout Hamilton and the Greater Toronto Area for kids, tweens and teens who didn’t see themselves as future scientists and engineers.

Teaching is a family affair – both her parents are teachers. Nicole was a dance class assistant all through high school. She was a McMaster Science Society tutor and has worked as a teaching assistant for the past three years. “I absolutely love helping students learn and I personally learned so much from my TA supervisors Linda Davis and Rebecca Turner.”

Unlike teaching, doing research in a lab didn’t come naturally for Nicole or hold much interest. She’s that extremely rare Faculty of Science undergrad who didn’t arrive in first year dreaming of medical school and itching to do research.

Instead, she was a hesitant and less than confident student who always seemed to be last to finish experiments in her lab-based courses. “There were times when the lab techs and TAs were ready to turn out the lights and lock the doors while I was still working away.”

Yet for her second co-op, Nicole spent eight months doing nothing but research in a lab. She landed the co-op because she kept putting her hand up in Professor Mike Brook’s 4^th-year polymers course. To her credit, Mike asked lots of questions. “Dr. Brook’s class was less like a lecture and more of a conversation.  He worked really hard to keep students involved.”  To keep those conversations going, Nicole would chime in if her classmates weren’t putting up their hands. “I’ve never been afraid to give the wrong answer. I’m going to say what I want to say.”

Mike took note and invited Nicole to join his research group for a co-op work term. Nicole – who had zero research experience beyond her courses – said yes. “I had no idea what I was doing on day one.”

She proved to be a quick study and would eventually train new students joining the lab. Nicole gives all the credit to Mike and research scientist Dan Chen, along with freshly minted McMaster graduate Erin Donahue-Boyle. “They taught me everything I know about working in a lab and how to think like a researcher. It was such a great experience.”

Mike would continually remind Nicole that she was the world expert on her research project. “He’d tell me that no one else knew as much as me and to keep going.”

Nicole spent eight months in the lab testing recipes for recycling tires in ways that are both environmentally and financially sustainable.

She also took collaboration to a whole other level in Mike’s research group. “Nicole’s really, really good at building teams, networks and groups,” says Mike. “Nicole’s able to identify people’s individual strengths and then find ways to get everyone working together toward a common goal. I hope to use Nicole as an example to encourage others in my group to adopt the same approach.”

When her co-op work term wrapped up in December, Nicole joined Associate Dean Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu’s research group. She’s spending her final term as an undergrad studying photopolymers and various waveguide encoded lattice architectures.

This summer, Nicole will work alongside yet another faculty member in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. She’ll be helping Assistant Professor Lydia Chen on a teaching fellowship project that aims to bridge the gap between high school and university chemistry courses for incoming students.

So, what advice would Nicole give those students based on her five years at Mac? “Know that you’ll get better and it’ll get easier as you go. Don’t put pressure on yourself to be perfect right from the start.”

And don’t be afraid to put up your hand – you might have the wrong answer but, as Nicole shows, you could find yourself ending up in all the right places.