Good exposure
Lily Wu came to UC Irvine to be a teacher. But when she took her first sociology course, something clicked.
"I realized I really enjoyed learning about human behaviors and how they interact," she says. In sociology, she found, she got to zero in on the societal aspects of behavior rather than getting bogged down in the more technical focus on the brain. "All the professors have been really kind," she says, and she's greatly enjoyed her classes.
She decided to keep education as a minor. "Sociology and education go pretty hand in hand," she says. She's done research in a number of education labs on campus, and her sociology studies have aided her in better understanding behavioral patterns as well as improving her writing skills, which she's put to work for both research paper submissions and general academic writing for her classes. This year, as part of the UCI Undergraduate Writing Contests, she won the award for Excellent Upper-Division Academic Writing in Social Sciences and Social Ecology. She was also named a recipient of the Social Sciences Order of Merit, a distinction awarded annually to only about 2% of the social sciences graduating class, recognizing academic excellence, original research, leadership activities, and service contributions.
Her first foray into research was — surprisingly to her — via a data science project called Career Pathways for Research in Learning and Education, Analytics and Data Science (CP-LEADS), which looks at digital education technology. The grant program provides juniors and seniors with experience conducting research and helps prepare them for doctoral study. As a research fellow in the year-long 2025 cohort, Wu received statistical training and got to design and lead an independent research project, which centered on an AI tool intended to aid students in reflecting on where their soft skills need to grow.
After her fellowship ended in November, Wu carried on at the Design and Partnership Lab (whose PI, June Ahn, also heads up CP-LEADS). DapLab ideates equitable learning innovations with its partners, and Wu contributes to research there on co-designing AI-supported soft-skill-reflection platforms. She co-authored research paper submissions to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Journal of Educational Change and conducts interviews with undergraduates about their interactions with Careergram, a tool that uses Large Language Models to analyze student's answers to self-reflection questions in order to suggest what they should discuss with their human mentors. Wu has found it fascinating to watch how students explore and learn to navigate such systems. As AI burgeons, she's grateful to have done some structured work with it. "I never thought I'd study things like students interacting with AI tools."
In yet another lab she works with, the Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories Project (MUST), she's doing honors research on students' college-to-career transitions under professor of sociology and education Richard Arum. Her thesis is on co-op programs, a type of six-month experiential learning placement that's longer than the traditional three-month internship (as well as exclusive to students attending a specific university). "It gives them more of a chance to get an internship opportunity that actually makes them feel more like a full-time employee," she says.
Wu is concentrating on the experience of Asian students — who, she says “often come from academic backgrounds that emphasize exam scores rather than hands-on learning” — in the U.S. "When I was looking at the data, their interviews stood out to me," she says. "When they come to the U.S. for the first time, they don't necessarily have a lot of local capital." But it's equally important for them to get experience to secure a post-school job.
"Just doing schoolwork and getting good grades doesn't guarantee you will succeed in the actual workplace setting in the future. So, being able to get that experience as an undergrad really helps them become more competitive candidates and also helps them create networks," she says. "I'm comparing their experiences to see the benefits of this program and whether this program can help with future job attainment and the college-to-career trajectory in general."
As for her own future, she's eager to begin a new stage. She'll be walking this June, having earned a bachelor's after just three years at UCI. "I'm really excited," she says. "Finishing something feels like an accomplishment. That transition, it's going to be fun."
In September, she'll move up to Palo Alto to start a 12-month master’s program at Stanford University in global and comparative education. "It's pretty research heavy," she says. But after completing her grad program in August 2027, she's leaning toward working in industry. "I still want to do something with education," she says. She was inspired by her time this spring as a peer mentor for the UCI LIFTED program, an in-prison bachelor’s program that sends on-campus students to a correctional facility in San Diego. There she aids students who are incarcerated with their own research projects.
"I really enjoyed the experience," she says. She'd tutored in the past, for a younger child, but working with adults piqued her interest in potentially developing learning curriculum to be used within companies — for example, shaping content for managerial courses so that it's more hands on. "Because I am into experiential learning, and I'm also into making learning experiences fun in general," she says.
Her time as an Anteater has prepared her well for it, she says. In particular, the many research opportunities available to her allowed her to explore her interests and learn about things she hadn't even considered previously.
"UCI opened my eyes to a lot of new experiences, especially with research," she says. "I didn't know what sociology even was before I came to UCI. Exposing me to a lot of new things really helped me prepare for what I want to do in the future."
-Alison Van Houten for UCI Social Sciences