USU English Department undergraduate Preston Waddoups was selected as a Summer 2023 Peak Fellow, part of a cohort of undergraduates performing research with faculty mentors.

The Peak Summer Research Fellowship is a program which funds a select cohort of CHaSS undergraduates, supporting full-time summer research. Selected students spend ten weeks actively engaging in research with faculty mentors, have access to special trainings and workshops, and come out of this fellowship poised to succeed in competitive applications for graduate school and national fellowships and grants.

Preston chose to focus his research on novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett. “I focused in particular on Beckett’s connections to philosophy and the way the body is portrayed and functions in his writings, and how these things are relevant to broader movements in 20th century literary history,” he says.

“The most challenging part of the program was definitely setting up the project and organizing my time throughout it,” Preston notes. “It put a lot more responsibility on me to decide what I should do than in coursework or smaller research projects, but this was also a helpful skill to develop.”

Preston worked on his research project with faculty mentor Associate Professor Michaelann Nelson. On the experience Preston reflects, “Working with faculty was wonderful! I got so much more out of what I was researching and developed a much better sense of direction in my project through working with my mentor, Dr. Nelson.”

For prospective students, Preston highly recommends the program and emphasizes planning ahead: “My advice would be to start thinking of the specifics of what you’d be researching and start talking with professors about your project as early as you can.”