Our Final Week

 Our final week was a busy one.  Despite the rush to finish up our experiments, complete our posters and get them printed, we still found time for one last activity.  Ms. Tanya Whitehouse at The Food Connection showed us how to make sauces from the herbs that we had grown in our global gardens and how to incorporate those into nutritious food bowls.  

The next day, we joined several undergraduate research programs for a poster session.  It was very inspiring to see all of the outstanding work that had been done by these talented young scientists.  Terrific work, everyone!!

 

SURES Week of July 17

 

Map of the University of Kentucky campus.  The soil sampling sites by the SURES students are indicated by the red stars.

On Tuesday, discussed how to create professional CVs and resumes.  

 On Thursday, first met with Dr. Jason Unrine  talked  about his career journey as well as some of his research projects pertaining to heavy metals in the environment.  We learned about the work of a former SURES student, Julianna Dantzer which involved the analyses of lead levels of children and the extent to which these levels correlated with that in blood and IQ.  He also talked to us about his role as Director of the Kentucky Water Institute and its work in maintaining healthy and sustainable water for Kentucky’s communities.    He then showed us the lead levels that he had determined from the soil samples that we collected on campus.  The values ranged from 30.4 mg/kg to 55.7 mg/kg.  It appeared that the samples with the highest lead concentrations were from soil that was next to roadways.  Fortunately, all of the levels were well within the normal background levels typically found in Kentucky.

SURES Week of July 10

 

On Tuesday, we met with our Co-Director, Dr. Kevin Pearson  who discussed his career journey and his research on maternal exposure to environmental contaminants such as PCBs and the impact of exercise in modulating the effects of these exposures. 

On Wednesday, some of us attended the ice cream social hosted by UK’s Office of Undergraduate Research and got to meet students participating on other summer research programs.

 On Thursday, we met On Thursday, we met with Associate Dean Wendy Jackson who described the processes involved in admissions to UK Medical School and gave us great advice on how to improve our applications.  Afterwards, we painted depictions of our summer research projects which helped us visualize the science behind our work.

SURES Week of June 26

Coffee chat with the Near Peer Mentors

On Monday, some of us met at the lab in the TH Morgan Biology Building to finish processing and weighing our soil samples to prepare them for analyses.

On Tuesday, we met with Dr. Ketrell McWhorter who told us about her fascinating career journey that started with an MBA and a role in executive banking with a "side gig" as a personal trainer and fitness instructor, then a PhD in Molecular Epidemiology and a fellowship at the NIEHS and finally, her current position as a professor where she leads a global health program.

On Thursday morning, Co-Director of the SURES program Dr. Kevin Pearson and I met with the near peer mentors to chat about their experiences with their mentees and the program.  On Thursday afternoon, we learned about using a Restorative Justice Community Building Approach to address mental health.

 

SURES Week of June 19

 

     On Tuesday, we met with Dr. Zach DeVries to hear about his career journey and research on the  health impact of household pests and work in developing better methods of pest control. 

     On Thursday, we became familiar with citizen science approaches by sampling soil for lead contamination.  We joined the KY INBRE group to first talk about lead poisoning how we will be organizing our work.  After choosing a location on campus to sample, we then collected the soil samples, weighed and ground them to prepare them for mass spectrometry analysis.   This will be performed by Dr. Jason Unrine. Dr. Unrine has been collaborating with Dr. Anna Hoover on a citizen science project focused on improving drinking water in Eastern Kentucky.  You can learn about Dr. Unrine and Hoover’s work in citizen science here and here.

Week of June 12

 

This week, we met with Dr. Olga Tsyusko-Unrine who discussed her career journey and her work using c.elegans to identify mechanisms by which environmental contaminants exert their adverse effects. 

 For our weekly activity, we worked again on our planters by first selecting the medicinal plants that are grown and used within our assigned global region.  We then identified the medicinal properties of each of these plants and discussed these with the rest of the group.  Finally we planted them into our containers.  Dr. Swanson took them home and will care for them and we will see them again in July.  After we finished planting, we will tie dyed our lab coats.

SURES Week of June 5

 This week, the SURES participants met with Dr. Ellen Hahn who talked to us about her career journey, her activities in health policy, especially her work in advocating for  smoke-free environments, as well as her research on radon exposure.

On Thursday, Dr. Sara Police joined us and talked to us about her work on developing a global gardens at the University of Kentucky campus.  We were then assigned a global region and started to prepare planters that would represent each global region.

SURES 2023 Week of May 29

 

On Tuesday, we met with all of our near-peer mentors at a speed networking session.  With 22 people all talking at the same time, it was a very noisy, but exhilarating affair.   For our Thursday session, we learned how to do Theatre Improvisation with one of our local actors, Heather Baumann.  We learned the value of these types of techniques which include incorporating "Yes...and....into our conversations to promote collaboration and how to better connect with each other.   On Friday, we joined the Department of Biology for a cook-out and enjoyed meeting more summer researchers.  We were also matched up with our near-peer mentors and had a chance to meet them in person.  

SURES 2023--At the Beginning

 On May 22, we welcomed our 2023 SURES cohort.  Our participants hail from a number of institutions including the University of Kentucky, Georgetown College, Eastern Kentucky University, Idaho State University and Tulane University.  This year, we were pleased to be able to provide on-campus housing in one of our residence halls.  We spent the orientation getting to know each other, getting re-acquainted  with the research process and completing required research training.  During our scavenger hunt, we checked out the native plants in Mathews Garden, visited the Johnson Center where we can do a variety of physical activities and received goody bags from Environmental Health and Safety.  When we returned, we worked on our artistic abilities as well as our teamwork and leadership skills by collectively drawing a horse.  After our orientation, we then met with our faculty mentors to get started on our independent research projects.