I am passionate about this because I have participated in many science communication workshops as a participant and organizer. And through discussion with many people of different backgrounds, what came up was that young students and sometimes people with untraditional paths believe that it is impossible or too difficult for them to pursue higher education. This is my way to interact with young students and tell them that everyone has a different story but that does not mean you should sideline your dreams.

— Pierre-Emmanuel Yoann N’Guetta

For me, there are two angles to why I chose to participate in this event. I am passionate about making the scientific community inclusive and accessible and this was a great opportunity to reach out to students beyond UNC. I am always looking for chances to interact with other young scientists and help widen both of our circles of community. Secondly, it was an easy opportunity to take advantage of logistically speaking. Dr. Natasha Snider had already organized everything, and it didn’t require me to take the entire day off from lab. This made it easy to move around my experiments to make volunteering possible.  

— Ashlyn Laidman

Two of the posters stood out to me! The first poster had a very simple and interesting project. The student decided to look at the correlation between student performance and growth mindset. She used self-reported survey data as well as demographic information from students taking biology at Wake Tech to determine whether the students had a growth or fixed mindset. She found that students with a growth mindset performed better in the class. I loved that along with this dataset she included some resources that Wake Tech provides for its students on her poster. The second poster stood out to me because the student presented it really well. Her project was to test for antibiotic resistant microbes in soil samples with the goal of adding to our existing toolbox for fighting infections. This student had a really comprehensive grasp of the project and the techniques she wanted to try in the future. She was waiting on admissions news from the Microbiology and Immunology Department at North Carolina State University. She told me she eventually wanted to do a PhD in virology. Fingers crossed she got good news from NC State! 

— Katie Mulhern

There was a project on speed limit design that was quite interesting. I was unaware of the thought and math that goes into determining the speed. Next, a project on food insecurity research and environmental initiatives aiming to help those in the Orange County area seemed quite impactful. They were connecting local organizations to fight landfill waste and environmental damage. The students’ goal was to specifically connect churches and environmental organizations in the Orange County area, and they had a strong idea of how to bridge this connection! Finally, a poster presentation describing sexual vs. asexual reproduction in plankton stuck out the most to me. The presenter explained how you can tell if the organism sexually or asexually reproduces by observing a round phenotype on their bottom. The presenter had interesting ideas for future directions of study including looking more into motility and organism density.

— Jack Bennett

The most enjoyable part of the Wake Tech visit, in my opinion, was chatting with the students, especially asking them questions about their projects, what they did, why they did it, and what they would do next if they continued the research project. It was nice to hear the students articulate what they had done and learned during the START program and to hear their excitement about their projects or potential future research.

— Frankie Marchan