Our Finale-The Poster Session

 Our program culminated in a poster session where we were able to describe the efforts of all of our hard work over the summer.  Our participants summarized their experiences in this Video.  Great job, Everyone!

Video

Week of July 18-Results from the soil analyses and painting our projects

 On Thursday, Dr. Jason Unrine joined us to report back on the lead levels from our soil samples.  The concentrations of lead in our samples ranged from 27.96 to 44.90 mg Pb/Kg soil.  These levels are well within the distribution of background soil lead in Kentucky and well below EPA screening levels-Background soil lead levels.  The mean levels that have been found in Kentucky are 29.2 mg Pb/Kg.  After a brief discussion of these results, we then engaged the creative sides of our brains and painted our projects.

Earlier in the week, the SURF students met with Dr. Vrushali Angadi who discussed her work in voice function and rehabilitation.  The SURES students met with Dr. Cetewayo Rashid who described his career journey and his research investigating the health outcomes in the offspring following maternal exposures to endocrine disruptors.

Week of July 18-Poster Planning and Culinary Medicine

 This week, the SURF students were joined by Mr. Trace Jolly who discussed why he decided to go to graduate school and his research using zebrafish as a model to develop new cancer therapies.  The SURES students met with Dr. Ellen Hahn who is the director of the University of Kentucky Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences.  She also leads a research effort called BREATHE.  She told us about her successes and challenges in making changes in policy to improve our health.

On Thursday, we first met to work in groups discussing our posters.  We then went to The Food Connection where chef Tanya Whitehouse taught us to make different sauces from the herbs that we have been growing in our global garden planters.

Week of July 11

 

For our Thursday afternoon activity, we watched the moving "The Human Element", a documentary about climate change.  After the movie we engaged in a discussion with two experts on climate change and sustainability, both of whom are involved with the Kentucky Climate Consortium.  Dr. Bill Haneberg is the State Geologists of Kentucky, Director of the Kentucky Geological Survey and Research Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences.  He talked to us about his career experiences and gave us advice on how to talk to others about health effects and climate change.  Shane Tedder is the Sustainability Coordinator for the University of Kentucky.  He told us about some of his efforts in policy development and planning around sustainability.  We also discussed how to become engaged locally to make an impact.  

The SURF participants met with Dr. Hilaree Frazier, who is now a postdoctoral fellow.  She discussed her career journey and some of her research in neuropharmacology.

Week of July 4-Collection of Soil Samples for Lead Analyses

 

This week, we first learned about the presence of lead in the environment, in particular in our soil, and the adverse health effects of lead exposure.  The participants of the previous program had selected different sites on our campus for their soil collection and determination of lead contamination.  We wanted to build on their results and collect samples at different sites to determine how soil concentrations of lead may vary across the campus.  Working in teams, we decided where we wanted to collect our samples and collected our samples.  We then took our samples to the lab to grind, weigh and sift them-they were then ready to go to Dr. Unrine's laboratory to be analyzed for lead.

The SURES participants talked with Dr. Stanifer who discussed her career journey and work with community engagement.

Week of June 27

 

On Tuesday, the SURF students chatted with Dr. Yasir Alsiraj who described his career journey and his work in developing mouse models to understand sex-dependent differences in disease conditions such as angiotensin II-induced aortopathies.

On Wednesday, the SURES participants met with Dr. Julia Ravenscroft who described her work that uses an anthropolgy-based approach to understand the impact of environmental exposures on vulnerable human populations.  

On Thursday, we engaged in a number of theatre improvisation exercises and learned how these approaches could help us in improving our communication skills.  We finished the day by finding plants that would best match the planters to create planters that represented the seven global regions.  Two of our planters are depicted above.

Week of June 20

 

On Tuesday, the SURF participants learned about pharmacology, medical devises and career opportunities in technology and commercialization from Dr. Kendra Stenzel.  Dr. Stenzel is the Commercialization Manager in the Office Of Technology and Commercialization at the University of Kentucky.

On Wednesday, the SURES participants chatted with Dr. Kevin Pearson about his career journey and his work on maternal exposures.

On Thursday, we worked in groups to create a planter container that would represent each of the global regions.  Some of our designs are pictured above.

Week of June 13

 

On June 14, the SURF participants met with Dr. Nada Porter, Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences, who discussed her family history and the life changing events that led to her career in pharmacology.

On June 15, we all participated in a community-building circle that focused on mental well-being.  

Week of June 6

 

"Global Garden" by Rogue Michael is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

On Tuesday, the SURF students learned about addiction research with Dr. Cassandra Gipson-Reichardt. You can find out more about her research here.

On Wednesday, the SURES students talked to Dr. Kelly Pennell who described her research in environmental engineering and what she loves about the interdisciplinary nature of environmental research. You can learn more about her here.

On Thursday, Dr. Sara Police got us started in thinking about "Global Gardens". We were each assigned one of the 7 global regions and then investigated herbs and plants common to these areas and their medicinal properties. We then got our creative juices flowing by tie-dying our lab coats.

Week of May 31-Focus on Careers

 

On Tuesday, the SURF students chatted with Dr. Robert Helsley who studies obesity, cardiovascular and liver diseases.  As an undergraduate, Dr. Helsley was also a SURF fellow!  You can read more about Dr. Helsley here.

On Wednesday, the SURES students participated in a near peer mentor match up-each mentee chatted with a potential mentor for 5 minutes.  We will find out who we matched with next week.

On Thursday, we had a career exploration session starting with a panel discussion with PhD and MD/PhD students.   They told us about all the ins and outs involved in going to graduate and medical school.  We were then joined by Dr. Brad Newsome, a UK alum who now works as a Health Scientist Administrator at Fogarty International Center at NIH-https://www.fic.nih.gov/

Our final speaker was Dr. Tithi Basu Malik, Assistant Director for Graduate/Professional Students & Postdoctoral Career Support (Stuckert Career Center) who gave us tips on how to use Linked In to develop our network and learn more about potential careers.

It begins again, STEPS 2022

 

Our STEPS program began on May 23 with a two-day orientation.  We welcomed students from the Centre College, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, University of Michigan and Xavier University.  

Our orientation began with getting to know each other, setting our expectations for the summer, doing a personality assessment and learning about hypothesis testing, data visualization and interpretation, keeping a good lab book, research ethics and how to be a good mentee.  

Some of the data that we looked at was from a study performed in Kentucky that questioned whether opioid overdoses increased during the pandemic.  The measurable outcome was emergency response records for opioid overdose records.  Dear Reader, what do you think?

On Wednesday, we joined our respective labs and got going with our real science