Our Last Week

 

Our efforts for our last week were focused on completing our posters and practicing giving overviews of our projects.  Our poster session was held outdoors and attended by ~ 100 faculty, staff, students and family members.  Other presenters, in addition to those participating in the STEPS program were those engaged in the KBRIN and Kentucky Strong summer programs.  Our evaluators were impressed with our science and how well we presented it!  We were able to enjoy lunch together before we all went our separate ways.  The end of a terrific summer!

Week of July 22-Learning about air sampling and discussing our data from the soil collection

 

On Tuesday, we visited the laboratory of Dr. Wayne Sanderson.  He talked to us about the instruments that he uses to collect air samples-both indoor and outdoor.  He also told us about the different projects that he is working on and how important it is to know what types of contaminants are present in the air that we breathe.

On Thursday, Dr. Jason Unrine joined us. He explained how he had analyzed the soil samples and gave each group the lead concentrations that was determined in each sample.  The group then discussed why they had chosen their collection sites and whether or not the lead concentrations that they identified in the soil samples were a concern to human health.

 

Week of July 15

 

For our activity this week, we watched a movie called "The Human Element".  We then worked in groups and shared the emotions that had surfaced as we watched the movie.  These emotions included sadness and a sense of helplessness.  We then discussed thoughts that we would like to share with our colleagues about the subject matter covered by the film.  We shared stories about how important coal is to communities that some of us were raised in and ideas about how we, as individuals, could decrease carbon emissions (like riding our bikes to work).  Finally, we thought about the film and how effective we thought it was.  We thought the movie did a good job of explaining the background, the culture/history of the different areas and why it is so difficult for people to either leave or fixed the problems.  We thought the videos and images were powerful.  We thought it would be better if the movie could have addressed more solutions.

Week of July 8 Environmental Health Literacy and Painting our Projects

 

Stakeholders

(Hoover, 2013)

For the first part of our session, we learned the basics of how to communicate with stakeholders when doing community engagement work with Dr. Anna Hoover.

We then got in touch with our artistic, creative spirits and painted our projects.

Our week of June 21

 

                    For our activity this week, we first learned about lead exposures and how it impacts human health.  We then worked in groups to identify the sites on campus that we would like to obtain soil samples.  After collecting the samples, we then ground and weighed them.  When they were dried, we then took them to Dr. Unrine's laboratory for analysis.

Our week of June 14

 On Monday, the SURES participants met with Dr. Mark Ebbert who told us about his work in neurodegenerative diseases using bioinformatics.  

On Tuesday, the SURES participants chatted with Dr. Kevin Pearson who discussed aspects of mentoring as well as his work in diet, exercise and fetal programing.

On Thursday, we all met with Dr. Wendy Jackson, the Associate Dean for Admission in the UKCOM to learn about applying to medical school and the MD/PhD program.

Theatre Improvisation and more

 This week, the SURF students met with a medical student, Mathew Melton who discussed his first year of medical school and his career journey.  The SURF students met with Dr. Patrick Hannon who discussed his work on phthalates and reproductive dysfunction.

On Thursday, we were joined with the very talented actor, Marianne Miller who led us through a series of theatre improvisation exercises to help us enhance our oral communication skills.

And so it begins... Summer 2021

 On May 24, an outstanding group of students from the University of Kentucky, Michigan State University, Miami University, University of Miami, Centre College, Rochester Institute of Technology and Tulane University came together at the University of Kentucky campus.  During our orientation, we learned about laboratory safety, responsible conduct of research, career planning and good oral communication.  We also explored the campus by participating in a scavenger hunt and prepared for our work in the laboratory by tie-dying our lab coats.  We are ready to go!!