Students discover and name new viruses
Unique introduction to lab research
It’s the middle of August, and a group of rising UMBC sophomores enters the classroom with anticipation. “Once everyone walks into the lab, you start hearing ‘Yes!’ across the room from people checking on their experiments,” says Fatma Abker ‘19, chemical engineering.
The students, all participants in the
BUILD Training Program (BTP) at UMBC, are checking to see if their petri dishes successfully grew lawns of bacteria, which they hope are infected with bacteriophages—viruses that only infect bacterial cells. The goal is to discover never-before-seen viruses, sequence their genes, and add them to an international repository of genetic data. As the first scientists to identify these viruses, the students also get to name them.
“Ultimately, we want the students to have an authentic research experience, which we know is critical for student success in STEM,” says Laura Ott, STEM BUILD Active Learning Coordinator. “Hopefully they are inspired to then go and pursue their own independent research experience.”
UMBC was awarded over $18 million from the National Institutes of Health in 2014 to create a national model of comprehensive supports to expand and increase the success of undergraduate students pursuing STEM degrees. Each year, a subset of the incoming freshmen who have declared interest in the biomedical and behavioral sciences are encouraged to apply. Qualified candidates are randomly placed in either the BUILD Training Program (BTP) or one of two comparison groups. In this way, the BTP functions as both a support initiative for students and a research study to improve future supports.
The BTP research study, Ott explains, “investigates how we can best support students in the STEM fields so that they go on to persist in the STEM field and be competitive for jobs, graduate and professional schools.” Program administrators track the progress of students in the BTP and comparison groups to determine how effectively and efficiently various factors can boost student success.
BTP students hear guest lectures from STEM professionals to learn about career possibilities, participate in various courses and enrichment activities, and receive intensive mentoring, particularly through group experiences. They are also required to live on campus with other first year students in the
STEM Living and Learning Community, which was established with the first BTP cohort and is expanding in size each academic year as a sustainable legacy of the STEM BUILD initiative.
In a summer bridge before their freshman year, the students focused on developing time management skills, making use of resources available on campus, and building community. “It helped us transition from high school to college,” says Aleem Mohamed ‘19, biological sciences. He adds, “It also gave us a friend group. We all support each other like a big family.” Fefe Azinge ’19, biological sciences, agrees: “Having a support network and the advising system in place is really helpful.”
The next summer, the cohort tackled Phage Hunters. This was the first time that many of the participating students had an opportunity to pursue their own research in a lab. “It was an insight into the world of research,” says Azinge. “We were very determined to be successful.”
Of 18 participants working on 16 experiments during the summer, 12 produced phage DNA that were of high enough quality to be sequenced, and five were selected for sequencing. Steven Caruso, senior lecturer in biological sciences and Phage Hunters instructor, says that’s “a remarkably high success rate.” Since the Phage Hunters program began at UMBC in 2008, almost 500 students have participated, discovering more than 250 unique phages.
The Phage Hunters program is part of the BTP’s research enrichment core, led by Philip Farabaugh, professor and chair of biological sciences, which focuses on coordinating research opportunities for students. The program also includes other intensive STEM success programs, like a six-week summer research internship for students at collaborating community colleges in Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery, Baltimore, and Prince George’s counties, and at Gallaudet University.
As this collaboration across institutions suggests, UMBC has its eye on scalability. Historically, students in prestigious scholars programs have often had the most access to supports at universities nationwide, but the STEM BUILD at UMBC team is committed to using its findings to benefit STEM students across the board. College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences Dean William LaCourse and Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Patrice McDermott share that the project, which currently includes 40 students and will add another 20 students in Fall 2017, operates with the motto, “Think 500, not 50.”
Reexamining how UMBC provides research opportunities, creates support networks, and allocates university resources are all important pieces of the puzzle, and for students in the first two cohorts, it’s already working. After his Phage Hunters experience, Mohamed is now pursuing research with a scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Inspired by attending an academic conference with BUILD, Abker is focusing on growing her network and practicing her research presentation skills. Azinge is now training in a biological sciences lab at UMBC. At just over a year into the four-year program, she says, “BUILD opens doors.”
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This story was first published on news.umbc.edu and was written by Sarah Hansen. It’s the middle of August, and a group of rising UMBC sophomores enters the classroom with anticipation. “Once...
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ovpr-news-2016
Archived RCA News
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Office of the Vice President for Research
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Mon, 05 Dec 2016 13:20:59 -0500
Apply for a Dresher Center Summer Faculty Fellowship
Deadline: February 15, 2017 (Info session on Dec. 12th)
The Dresher Center for the Humanities and the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) invites applications for Summer Faculty Research Fellowships (SFRF). Funding is intended to support and promote significant humanities research at UMBC. Dresher Center Summer Research Fellows will receive support for summer research and assistance in developing extramural funding applications, book proposals, and grant project applications. Funding may also be used for the completion of a book manuscript, a major article, or a project of similar stature.
Proposals are welcome and will be considered from all full-time, tenured or tenure-track UMBC faculty pursuing humanities research in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Proposals will be reviewed by the Dresher Center Advisory Board.
The deadline for submissions is
February 15, 2017. Proposals should be submitted by email to
dreshercenter@umbc.edu.
The CAHSS Dean's Office will hold an informational session on preparing proposals for CAHSS Centers Summer Faculty Research Fellowships on Monday, December 12, 2016, from noon until 1:30 p.m. in Commons 331.
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The Dresher Center for the Humanities and the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) invites applications for Summer Faculty Research Fellowships (SFRF). Funding is intended to...
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Dresher Center for the Humanities
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The Dresher Center for the Humanities
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Mon, 05 Dec 2016 09:56:28 -0500
Fri, 24 Feb 2017 15:55:17 -0500
Event: Carole McCann: Figuring the Population Bomb
Malthusian Masculinities and Demographic Transitions
December 7th - 4:00 to 5:30 pm
Albin O. Khun Gallery (Library)
10TH ANNUAL KORENMAN LECTURE
Carole McCann, Chair and Professor of Gender + Women’s Studies, UMBC
On
November 11, 1959, the television broadcast CBS Reports: The Population
Explosion presented nine million viewers with the facts of the world
population crisis, saying “its volatile ingredients are statistical.”
Rebroadcast a year later to an even larger audience, the report
investigated an issue that fueled public anxiety about potential war,
famine, and related doomsday scenarios. Drawing from her new book, Figuring the Population Bomb: Gender and Demography in the Mid-Twentieth Century,
Carole McCann traces the genealogy of the statistics that underwrote
the midcentury panic about population growth. She illuminates the
gendered geopolitical grounds and affective commitments of the
specialized mathematical culture that composed the figures of the
population explosion. The talk traces the inferential logics by which
demographers’ quantification practices configured women’s bodies,
especially women of color, as excessively fertile by nature; defined
that fertility as the singular cause of growth; and installed the
demographic transition to low fertility as necessary for modern citizens
and nations. Those population figures, she argues, circled the globe,
moved nations to intervene in women’s reproductive lives, and continue
to haunt struggles to secure reproductive justice.
Bio: Carole
McCann is Professor and Chair of the Department of Gender + Women’s
Studies; Affiliate Professor of the Language, Literacy and Culture
Program; and Special Assistant to the Provost for Interdisciplinary
Activities at UMBC. Her research focuses on transnational feminist
theory and science studies. Her publications include four editions of
the highly regarded anthology, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, co-edited with Dr. Seung-Kyung Kim (Routledge Press, 2003, 2010, 2013, 2016), and Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945
(Cornell University Press, 1994, 1999). Her newest book, Figuring the
Population Bomb: Gender and Demography in the Mid-Twentieth Century, is
part of the new Feminist Technosciences series from
the University of Washington Press, co-edited by Banu Subramaniam and
Rebecca Herzig. It will be available in December 2016.
Sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities and the Gender + Women’s Studies Department.
]]>
December 7th - 4:00 to 5:30 pm Albin O. Khun Gallery (Library) 10TH ANNUAL KORENMAN LECTURE Carole McCann, Chair and Professor of Gender + Women’s Studies, UMBC On November 11, 1959,...
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Language, Literacy and Culture Doctoral Program
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Dresher Center for the Humanities and the GWST Department
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Mon, 05 Dec 2016 08:15:59 -0500
Day One: Fierce Mind
1 Corinthians 2:19-16 (NIV) - “However, as it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’- the things God has prepared for those who love him-these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words…But we have the mind of Christ.”
“The spirit within a person - the deep innermost life where thought, feeling, memory and imagination meet - know best what the person is really all about. Even so, Paul declares, God’s Spirit is like that with God; and this Spirit is given to all God’s people in the Messiah.
“This is an astonishing claim. It clearly doesn’t mean that Christians automatically know everything about God, or why would Paul bother to write letters? It means that they have open access to God’s mind - or, as he says in verse 16, to the ‘mind of the Messiah.’
“This… has many lessons for us, but perhaps the most important is for Christians who have forgotten, or perhaps never known, two truths.
“The first is that there is a wealth of knowledge and …understanding waiting for us to explore… [Christianity] is full of beauty and mystery and power, and as terrifying and wonderful as God himself. There is always much, much more to learn, to relish, to delight in.
“The second is that the Christian message from the very beginning challenged the world of power… with the message of God’s superior kingdom unveiled in Jesus’ death and resurrection” (N.T. Wright, Paul for Everyone, p. 27-28).
Response : Let’s respond today with thanksgiving for what God has revealed to us by His Spirit, that we may understand what God has freely given us. And let’s ask for God to reveal more of Himself and His glorious kingdom in our lives, and especially our thoughts and imaginations.
Being found again in the wonder of what God has done for us, let’s worship in song -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EoFESw4iY
-BR
]]>
1 Corinthians 2:19-16 (NIV) - “However, as it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’- the things God has prepared for those who love...
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Agape Campus Christian Fellowship
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Agape Campus Christian Fellowship
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Mon, 05 Dec 2016 07:51:31 -0500
