What did you do this summer? Pose that question to Ricardo Tenente ’16, Caroline Boyd ’17, or a number of other students in the Summer Collaborative Research program (SCoRe), and you might get an answer like: “Just studying how bacteria incorporate DNA into their genomes by observing the process via an Atomic Force Microscope.”
Through the SCoRe program, Tenente, Boyd, and their student colleagues have spent months conducting real research, in a lab, and recording and analyzing their results. Completing a comprehensive research program on the Block Plan can be a challenge, so this program provides not only collaborative opportunities for students to work together and to work closely with faculty, but also allows for additional time.
“Research requires time and sometimes things don’t work out,” says Tenente. “If an experiment doesn’t work and you don’t get results on a short time frame, it is challenging. That’s why doing it for longer is ideal.” And while the extended timeframe allows for significant progress to be made over the summer, many SCoRe students are involved on an even more long-term basis.
Kristine Lang, associate professor of physics, and Phoebe Lostroh, associate professor of molecular biology, are working with Tenente and Boyd this summer, and have been for several years. The professors are conducting a research project funded by a $500,000 National Science Foundation grant and they collaborate with students each summer to help keep the project moving. By studying a type of bacteria that has a condition called competence, they’re using microbiology and microscopy techniques to observe how bacteria find DNA in the environment and import it into themselves, incorporating it into their own genomes.
“We’re trying to more fully understand how they accomplish this, using a combination of microbiology techniques and microscopy techniques. That’s the cool collaborative part, allowing us to put our skills together.”
They co-teach a First-Year Experience course based on their research project, and during that FYE, the students get one block of background information and introduction to lab work, and then spend a block conducting research. “The idea that you can bring in first year students and have them produce something and have this transformative experience so early in their careers, that’s unusual,” says Lang.
Tenente was exposed to the research program in that FYE course and says the opportunity to work directly on a research project provided insight in making career decisions. “This has defined a lot of my career path,” says Tenente, who graduated in May and is now working as a researcher on this project for the next year. “I knew I wanted to do something with biology, but that first year gave me an insight into what it meant to be a researcher, and I liked it, I liked finding results – that’s just a small part of it – and I liked the whole process.”
Lang says she and Lostroh often hire between two and four students out of that FYE class, so the research students are starting in the lab in the fall of their first year, “which is great for them, to get research experience early,” she says. “And, it’s great for us to have students who know they’re interested and have a background. These students typically work for us a couple of years throughout their time at CC.”
Boyd, who’s majoring in molecular biology, also became involved in research during her first year at CC, “which is wonderful,” she says. “Being able to do it for much longer than a block or a summer tells you how much goes into research. I also found out I love it.”
Boyd spent a semester doing research abroad, and says the experience she had already gained at CC enabled her to survive and contribute to the process overseas. “Through this research experience, I’m learning new ways of analysis that can be applied across other labs, learning things I would not have gotten in other classes,” says Boyd.
It’s a rare opportunity, for undergraduate students to participate so fully in research, and Lang says the time working with students in the lab addresses much more than the research project. “We’re a teaching college at CC, and the best part is feeling like this is an extension of my teaching. It is teaching them practical things, like lab skills; it’s teaching them how to interact with supervisors in a professional job setting; it’s helping them determine whether they like professional science and this kind of research and giving them the experience to make educated decisions about their academic futures.”
“I have lots of students I continue to mentor when they go on to be graduate students, so these are very long term, meaningful relationships. There’s lots more to the research, than the research and those other things are as important than actually the research product itself,” says Lang.
You can catch students discussing their summer work and findings during a final Summer Collaborate Research program presentation: Friday, August 5, in Slocum Commons, 12:15-1 p.m.
All Summer Collaborative Research program participants will present at the Undergraduate Research Symposium, Friday, Sept. 30, 3:30-5 p.m. in Cornerstone Main Space.
