Learning research from the inside out
Associate Professor Heather Campbell-Enns (left) works alongside research assistants Kayden Brown and Rachel Neufeld on dementia and family caregiving research projects at CMU.
As part of Research Month at CMU, stories throughout May are highlighting the people, partnerships, and projects shaping research across the university. For students working alongside faculty as research assistants, that work means gaining hands-on experience while contributing to meaningful research projects.
Behind the scenes of any published academic paper is an army of research assistants (RAs) who help aggregate, organize, and shape the research itself.
At CMU, RAs are playing an increasingly important role in the work being led by Heather Campbell-Enns, Canada Research Chair in Families and Aging and Associate Professor of Psychology.
From cleaning interview transcripts to coding qualitative data and helping identify emerging themes, RAs are deeply involved in projects examining dementia care and family caregiving.
Campbell-Enns sees RAs as collaborators in the research process, not simply assistants completing assigned tasks.
"They are not just worker bees," she says. "The research is their work too."
Campbell-Enns is currently leading several dementia-related projects, including one exploring the experiences of adult children caring for parents living with dementia and another focused on dementia care within the Filipino community. While the research tackles serious and often emotional topics, the work itself is highly collaborative.
One of those collaborators is Kayden Brown. Brown originally began working as an RA during his undergraduate studies at CMU and now works for the university as the Families and Aging Research Coordinator.
"As a coordinator, part of my job is to coordinate the work that the research assistants do, and to be a bit of a liaison between Heather and the research assistants," Brown said.
Brown says the transition from student researcher to coordinator completely changed how he understands research work.
What once felt like completing individual tasks now involves balancing timelines, managing teams, and helping connect the "big picture" across multiple projects.
"One of the lovely things about qualitative research is to see different people's perspectives on the same data.
"We're reading the same things, listening to the same interviews, but everybody's coming up with a slightly different direction," he says.
Brown credits much of his professional development to mentorship from Campbell-Enns. Through the work, he has presented research at conferences, contributed to published work, and developed skills he hopes will translate to future graduate studies focused on PTSD research.
For recent CMU graduate Rachel Neufeld, working as an RA has offered a chance to keep up with academia while completing a Master of Social Work degree at the University of Manitoba.
Neufeld graduated from CMU in 2024 with a psychology degree before joining Campbell-Enns' research team earlier this year.
Much of her work has involved analyzing interviews connected to family perspectives on dementia care. That means cleaning transcripts, coding interviews, and helping identify themes emerging from participant experiences.
"I think it's really incredible to be able to see everything come together now," Neufeld says.
"We're now able to break things down and see what this might be able to point towards."
Neufeld says one of the biggest surprises has been seeing how collaborative qualitative research can be.
"We've had some team meetings altogether, and that's been so nice to be able to chat with everyone and talk about things that we're noticing in what we're analyzing. We talk about themes that are arising and are able to get a fuller sense of the work that's happening," she says.
Campbell-Enns believes these kinds of experiences are essential for students and recent graduates preparing for future careers or graduate studies.
"Ultimately, my job is to be training people for this kind of work," Campbell-Enns says.
"What's the skill you need to be working on? What do you need on your résumé so that you're going to get into that grad school program? So, if I'm writing a paper, research assistants are on the paper too. If I'm doing a presentation, they're on the presentation too."
As research work continues at CMU, students like Brown and Neufeld are part of the day-to-day work that keeps these projects moving, gaining experience that reaches far beyond the classroom. They get to help shape meaningful research that is doing more than building résumés, it's shaping how they see research, collaboration, and their future careers.