Under the leadership of graduate student Jennifer Jenkins (and with help from many lab members), our group has been developing a booth for 2019 STEMzone, an annual event in which departments and labs share STEM outreach booths at a UGA football game. We’re looking forward to participating in this event on November 9, 2019. R-G lab students developed a promotional video for our booth (see here). We also took some photos of my hilarious students setting up their shots.
2nd rotation!
Whew! This is a busy semester for the lab. We really enjoyed having Miranda Arnold join us for the first rotation and are happy to have Felicia Ebot-Ojong and Alex Waugh joining us for the 2nd rotation. I am also in the midst of teaching Cell Biology (CBIO3400) for the first time. The students are great and it has been challenging, but also awesome and fun. I’m also coteaching a First Year Odyssey seminar on finding and succeeding in research with my colleague Dr. Amanda Frossard (Chemistry); our students are so eager to learn and excited about finding a research group to join. It has been really fun to hear their ideas and watch them settle into college life. We have a couple of grants due this month and are eager to move lots of scientific progress forward in the remainder of the semester.
Fall Semester!
Today is the first day of the fall semester at UGA. I’ll be co-teaching Cell Biology (CBIO3400) this fall and co-leading a First Year Odyssey class for incoming students interested in research. We also welcome a new cohort of Integrated Life Sciences students to UGA this week, with our first rotation student, Miranda Arnold, coming to the lab today. We’re so excited about the year ahead and look forward to lots of learning and great science!
Congratulations to Jennifer!
Congrats to RRG lab grad student Jennifer for passing her Qualifying Exam this week! She really impressed her committee with her strong preliminary data, thoughtful approach to her project, and ability to answer a broad range of questions. The Qualifying Exam is a tough rite of passage for graduate students and she handled it very well. I try to emphasize with graduate students that this exam is really a test of the student’s ability to transition from student (“what’s on the test?” “what do I need to know?”) to scholar, someone self-empowered to drive her own learning and intellectual development. It also measures the scholar’s ownership of her own project and research plan. Jen did great and we are so proud of her! Excited for lots of awesome science to come!
Summer wrap-up
We are wrapping up the summer in the R-G lab and have had an exciting past few weeks.
First, RRG and her writing buddies (Dr. Melanie Reber and Dr. Amanda Frossard, UGA Chemistry) submitted their NSF CAREER applications. We celebrated with some cookie dough at a place we had been wanting to try.
Second, Sara Anne presented a poster at the end-of-summer symposium for REU/NSURE/etc. students on campus. She did a great job.
Third, our summer undergrads have been hard at work on their research, as well as their mini-papers and lab meeting presentations. They have done an excellent job and have worked as a strong team, too.
Fourth, graduate students Tulip and Jennifer have been hard at work on their research and preparing for committee meetings. Tulip did very well at her first committee meeting last week so she has made it through that hurdle. Jennifer is gearing up for her qualifying exam next week. She submitted her proposal earlier in the summer and has been practicing for the oral part of her proposal defense. She’s totally ready to go!
RRG, Dr. Reber, and Dr. Frossard - writing buddies and also eaters of dessert.
Sara Anne McCommon presenting her NSURE research at the Summer Symposium.
RRG lab celebrating our summer’s progress (and our undergrad team’s first semester in the lab) with a lab lunch