At Saint Anselm College, small class sizes and low student-to-faculty ratios provide students with unique access to their professors, enabling them to not only study, but delve into what interests them the most.
Opportunities for one-on-one instruction and connection mean students are ahead of the game in developing critical research skills, setting them up to compete with students from large institutions for undergraduate research opportunities.
Take Andras Bencze ’25 for example. Receiving not just one, but two Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs), and presented with a poster award at a national physics conference, the recent Saint Anselm graduate has set himself apart.
A Physics major and Chemistry and German Studies minor from Nashua, New Hampshire, Bencze will attend Boston University in the fall where he will obtain his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering.
With the flexible liberal arts curriculum at Saint Anselm, Bencze took classes in almost every area that interested him, including Chemistry and Biochemistry - and this exploration led him to his focus: Physics.
As he progressed through his academic career, Bencze won numerous research opportunities both on-campus and off-campus, a notable achievement at the undergraduate level.
His two REUs, which were provided by the National Science Foundation, were held at theUniversity of Alabama and Yale University. Both opportunities drew determined, accomplished applicants from doctoral universities with high levels of research activity, or R1 institutions. In the face of tough competition, Bencze earned a spot in both programs.
At the end of his sophomore year, Bencze completed biology research at Yale, where he investigated the mechanics of cell division in yeast cells, a process that lends a greater understanding of cancer cell division.
The summer before senior year, he went to the University of Alabama where he engaged in a research internship on computational fluid dynamics.
He carried over his work in computational fluid dynamics into his senior year, building it into his thesis project with the support of Saint Anselm Physics Department faculty.
Bencze took that thesis to the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. Up against students from expansive research institutions, he won the APS Student Poster Award.
“I was surprised to win a student poster award at the conference,” Bencze said. “I had focused on making the poster look clean and giving a concise talk to visitors - To me it underscored the importance of communication in science.”
Not only did the research opportunities provide him with housing, a stipend, and the ability to travel, they also helped him stand out in graduate school applications, leading to acceptances to top programs at the University of Notre Dame and Boston University.
While Bencze is excited about what lies ahead, he says it would not have been possible without the physics faculty at Saint Anselm who both challenged him to be better and guided him along the way.
“The community in the Physics department was a huge factor, especially the faculty,” Bencze said. “It’s a small group, but that’s what I like about it.”
He believes the faculty have been the key to unlocking these opportunities, ensuring credit transfers, proofreading applications, and finding graduate programs. In particular, he credits Professor Smith as being the one who “helped inspire [his] interest and [his] desire to take on more.”
Professors in the Saint Anselm College Physics Department conduct research on campus, focusing on Quantum Physics, Imaging, and Astronomy, just to name a few.
Learn more about the Physics Department faculty here.