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.
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| "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.
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.
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
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!
