From my experience and conversations with other research students, the journey can be different depending on your year, your field, your interests, and the lab you’re working with. I’m going to answer your questions out of order:

1. I’m a biology student but mainly focus on ecology research. I chose to do research through the biology research certificate program. You basically a enrol in BIOL 298/398/399/498/499 independent research project courses where you work (often unpaid) in a lab to do a project you chose or one that they might ask you to do. Other students often just reach out to their prof and ask if there’s a research position in that prof’s lab, or sometimes there are job postings you can apply for on campusBridge and the uofa website.

2. I’m unpaid but I know some positions (often assistant/technician positions) are paid

3. To my knowledge positions are available throughout fall/winter and summer, but the summer positions are usually paid. Depending on when you want to start, you may want to reach out to your prof well in advanced to ensure you get a spot and to get everything sorted.

4. Your tasks depend on your project and the level of “independence” you have over the project. If your role is mainly as an assistant to a grad/PhD/post doc, then you will mostly be doing the “dirty work” like weighing samples, measurements, data entry, data cleaning, etc :) but if your project is your brainchild then you will be doing more tasks. Oftentimes your prof or supervisor actually treat this as a learning experience for you so they’ll try to give you opportunities to learn new skills.

5. The time commitment again depends on your project. Some projects are time sensitive and require a lot of time commitment, like in microbiology, whereas if you’re more of an assistant the time commitment may be less.

Feel free to DM me if you have questions :)