When Evelynn Wilcox submitted her entry to the Envisioning Research Image Contest in the spring semester of 2025, she was still a fourth-year student in the final term of her Biological Engineering Bachelor of Science degree program.

The annual contest opened for 2025 on Jan. 13, and the last day to submit was April 25 – four days before Wilcox attended her Order of the Engineer Ceremony and the University Scholars Program Senior Recognition Ceremony – one week before she spoke during the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering (BAE) graduation ceremony and turned her tassel.

After several months of deliberation, winners were notified in mid-July. At the time, Wilcox and her senior design project teammates were in Toronto at the 2025 American Society for Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting (ASABE AIM), en route to present their project for the Gunlogson Environmental Design Student competition, when she got the news that her entry had won first place in the Envisioning Research contest’s graphics and data visualization category.

“The timing felt special because my teammate, Perry Berlin, and I received congratulations for our winning submissions at the same time,” Wilcox said. “Perry’s submission was a photo of us doing a field visit for the senior design project we were about to present at the conference, and mine was a visualization of the research I had been working on since sophomore year. I hadn’t realized before going but the conference was the ultimate wrap up for my senior year.

“I was going to be leading the robotics competition team for the final time, it marked the end of the research I was doing for my BAE REEP (Research and Educational Enhancement Projects) scholarship, and I was about to present my senior design project for the very last time at an international student competition. I was unknowingly putting a lot of pressure on the event. It felt like the final step between me and completing my undergraduate career! The Envisioning Research contest win was a reassuring surprise. It felt like an extra bonus. It legitimized the novelty of the work I was doing regardless of the outcome of the research or the presentation that I was about to give and it was an unexpected and welcome break from the nerves of presenting.”

Nerves certainly didn’t keep the team from success that day. The NC State senior engineering design project team, consisting of Wilcox, Berlin, Jackson Evans and Grace Sullivan, won second place in the international student design competition for their project, “Improved Oyster Mariculture System Enhances Safety and Value.”

The graphic Wilcox submitted to the imagery contest represents the mapping of different habitat types to show the shift in the bird shoal at the Rachel Carson Reserve in Beaufort, NC over the past 60 years. The project, which she worked on as an undergraduate student, investigated what might be driving these changes.

“The precise classification of coastal habitats provides insight into potential drivers of shoreline change,” Wilcox explained. “This knowledge can be used to better inform coastal resiliency planning and to keep our coastal habitats and communities safe.”

“It was exciting that people found the graphic as cool as I did. The process of conducting and documenting the research had been a relatively solitary endeavor. It was hard to tell if the results were actually visually compelling or if my professor and I just had a silly infatuation with a funkily shaped shoal.”

Meghan Teten teaches the Honors Seminar section of ENV 101, “Exploring the Environment,” in the Fall, a required course for students in the Environmental First Year Program, and a voluntary Honors Seminar for non-Environmental First Year students in the UHP to help round out the 40 person class. Teten saw an opportunity for her students to benefit from a recent University Scholar graduate that has specific experience and passion for a major component of their big term project for the semester.

The final participatory science project for ENV 101 requires student groups of 4 students each to contribute to either a state-wide, regional, or global-scale citizen science project and then share their experience and the data they collected with their class peers, who all worked on different projects. Data analysis and visualization (the representation of information in the form of a chart, diagram, picture, map, etc.) is a skill all NC State undergraduates should practice before graduation, so two data visualizations are required for each group’s presentation to help tell the story of the data each group collected.

Teten asked Wilcox, now a first-year PhD student in Biological and Agricultural Engineering here at NC State, to come speak to ENV 101-005H students about her Envisioning Research winning entry and the data analysis and visualization of her undergraduate research that it represents.

Data visualization, as well as the spatial relationship between things, specifically, has interested Wilcox since high school. During her presentation to the Honors ENV 101 students, Wilcox explained why data visualization can make the difference between deep understanding and inconclusive sets of data:

“Data visualization helps us recognize patterns more intuitively that go along with the story the data is trying to tell us. It has the potential to give us more insight into a system than other types of modeling do sometimes. Data visualization is such a good equalizer – it helps tell a more interesting story, especially for people who have a hard time envisioning what data might look like playing out in real life. It’s so much more than charts and graphs.”

Undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs faculty, and staff are encouraged to enter next year’s Envisioning Research contest. Sponsored by the Graduate School, the Office of Research and Innovation, and the Office of Undergraduate Research, the contest helps NC State highlight the beauty and importance of the work conducted by the Wolfpack in the lab and in the field, both on campus and around the world. Those interested can review the 2025 contest winners for inspiration.

After sharing her undergraduate research experiences with the class, Wilcox spent some time with students that approached her after dismissal. She answered questions and provided advice to these students about how best to approach faculty about undergraduate research opportunities.

“It’s important to do your research first to see who you might want to reach out to. Read their research bios on their faculty webpages and search for their names in the Libraries database to see what their most recent projects have involved. Then, it’s important to identify what it is, specifically, that you are asking each potential mentor for before you email them or sit down with them. You just have to be honest with each one that you meet about whether you are more interested in the act of doing research for research’s sake and getting to learn something new, or if it’s that specific mentor’s very specific research area that you want to be involved with and why.”

Wilcox shared, from personal experience, that the faculty will appreciate the fact that you came prepared to the meeting, already having a good idea of what, specifically, you are going to ask of them. Each person you meet with can become a valuable professional resource, even if you don’t end up working with them.

Wilcox credits the UHP with some of her own professional connections and an easier transition to college life back when she was a first year student.

“Being in the Honors [and Scholars] Village was so crucial for me. I was a huge recluse coming to school as a freshman, but being in the village brought me out of my shell and gave me a network I still call on to this day. Who would have thought the kid sliding headfirst in the snow in the Quad would help get me my first job, or the person that stacked the rocking chairs on the Quad Commons patio as high as they could go would help connect me to my first REU?”

Wilcox also credits the UHP with assisting in her academic revelation of wanting to take her coursework more seriously.

“[The UHP] provided me with a great structure for delving into my classes to a depth that I would not have done on my own if I didn’t have to complete my University Scholars Program coursework requirements. I worked with my instructor on an Honors Contract for my watershed modeling class, BAE 376, and I experienced a level of engagement with that class and that instructor that I absolutely would not have gotten otherwise.”

Wilcox was obviously very engaged as an undergraduate, but she cautions her high-achieving Honors peers to be selective with their commitments.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that students, especially first years, should get involved with as many opportunities that come their way,” she said. “There is something to be said about ‘getting your foot in the door,’ but I don’t think the only way to network is to commit to a bunch of things that are draining to you or to something that doesn’t feed your personal or professional interests. Yes, you do have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and original interest area, to be open-minded to other topics you may have never considered for yourself, but I do think you should easily be able to identify your ‘why’ for the things you end up saying ‘yes’ to. There are so many opportunities at NC State — it doesn’t make sense to burn yourself out on something that doesn’t serve you in the long run.”

Wilcox admits, however, “as a first year I don’t think I would have listened to myself, because high school trains you to look for all the things you feel you have to do to get into your preferred school. In college, it can be hard to shift your perspective to the idea that now you get to do things that support your career and interests rather than you have to do things just to be competitive.”