St. Thomas engineering professor Brittany Nelson-Cheeseman was awarded the 2018 Undergraduate Research Award for demonstrating impactful faculty-student collaboration in undergraduate research.

The St. Thomas Undergraduate Research Opportunities program gives out the award and a $1,000 grant annually to one professor.

“I, personally, see (undergraduate research) as really mentoring and making sure that you’re having your students do research that’s meaningful to them–that’s meaningful to the greater world,” Nelson-Cheeseman said.

This is Nelson-Cheeseman’s sixth year as a professor after receiving her doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley nine years ago.

Nelson-Cheeseman has already conducted undergraduate research with 29 St. Thomas students.

“I’ve kind of morphed (research) to try and focus more on things that really get the undergraduates involved, and have them have projects that are their own projects that they feel a sense of ownership about,” Nelson-Cheeseman said.

According to Nelson-Cheeseman, a lot of her students come from her 100-level courses, but the work she gives first-year students tend to be different from the work upperclassmen do.

“It’s kind of an array of different projects, I would say, which is kind of fun and exciting to be able to go in all these different directions,” Nelson-Cheeseman said.

Her main goal when conducting undergraduate research is to help set students up for their future.

“It really is about their development and making sure that im setting them up to be successful in whatever they end up going into, and that they’re learning good skills,” Nelson-Cheeseman said.

One these students that Nelson-Cheeseman has influenced during her time at the university is senior mechanical engineering major Mike Patton.

Patton first had Nelson-Cheeseman in an engineering course in the fall of 2016 and began doing research with her in January 2017.

Patton thinks how much Nelson-Cheeseman cares about her students is what made her so deserving of the Undergraduate Research Award.
“She spent so much time helping me with the whole graduate application process, and helping me figure out what I actually do want to do after school. She will help you on all ends of the spectrum,” Patton said.

Patton will be going to the University of Wisconsin, Madison for graduate school.

Nelson-Cheeseman hopes to conduct research with smart materials, where a material’s property can be changed by an external force, with undergraduates in the future.

“She hasn’t been here too long and she already has a pretty big impact on the engineering department,” Patton said.

Althea Larson can be reached at lars2360@stthomas.edu.