Undergraduate student Hannah Olson ‘27 published her first article in BMJ Open, an impressive achievement she credits to her perseverance, the encouragement of Dr. Carrie Dolan and the support of W&M Libraries.
What began as a class assignment in a COLL 150 course on global health turned into a months-long journey to publishing. For the assignment, Olson researched the treatment of paediatric endocrine disorders in low to middle income countries. Her professor Dr. Carrie Dolan saw potential in her research and suggested that she start a full scoping review. Olson couldn’t believe it at first.
“I don’t have a Ph.D. next to my name,” Olson said. “I have no title, I don’t have a bachelor’s degree, so I thought [Carrie Dolan] was just encouraging the exercise of submitting an article to a journal, but she really saw the potential in me and poured into me.”
Olson hit the ground running; she began work on a full scoping review during winter break. She quickly realized she needed to embrace the art of learning as you go. Dr. Dolan helped Olson improve her scientific writing, find and source data, and acquire funding.
She also dealt with the tough realities of submitting work to journals.
“The process was so long that it got to the point where I questioned why I was doing it or whether I would ever get published,” she said. “I learned a lot of perseverance and was thankful to have the encouragement of Dr. Dolan, the Libraries, and others.”
At W&M Libraries, the research librarians are no stranger to the lengthy and challenging process of publishing. Dr. Dolan advised Olson to ask for help from library staff like Head of Research Candice Benjes-Small, who she credits in her acknowledgements.
“Candice was super important with providing more databases to use to bolster the evidence, fact checking things, and the data acquisition process,” Olson said.
She also received support from Mary Oberlies, Interim Head of Publishing & Open Access, who taught her how to use Zotero for citation management, and from the Writing and Communication Center for editing and tone.
“The people were so thoughtful,” she said about her faculty mentors and library staff. “Asking your professors more and finding out what possibilities there are can take more time out of your day, but it can be fruitful to make those connections and be curious.”
Her curiosity and the skills she acquired during this process gave her a head start for future projects, something she realized during an internship.
“I already had that foundation and could recall those skills in another project,” she said.
In addition to her publication, Olson is a recipient of the W&M Libraries Undergraduate Research Award.
While she has much to be proud of, Olson is focusing more energy on gratitude for the people that opened her eyes to the opportunities ahead.
“The W&M campus inspires this kind of work and intellectual thinking and I’m grateful to be proof of that in publishing my work.”
You can read Olson’s full scoping review on BMJ Open