In this talk, I will discuss how I built my infectious disease modeling “lab” with little funding as a pre-tenured faculty member at a small, primarily undergraduate, liberal arts institution (Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL). I will address how I recruit and select students, prepare students for research, construct an interesting yet approachable research question, support students throughout their project while appropriately managing my time with a heavy teaching load, and support my own professional productivity. In particular, I will share my experience working with first-year students. My previous and current projects with undergraduate students include estimating the number of quarantine beds Eckerd College would need during the first full semester of the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating the role of healthcare workers in the transmission of C. difficile in a hospital ward, modeling the effect of resistance to disinfectants on the transmission of hospital-acquired infections, and optimal harvesting in an ornamental fishery suffering an outbreak of koi herpesvirus.
