“I have never been a bug person,” says biology major Dana Coleman. But through her work with faculty mentor Mark Willis, she became intrigued by the tracking behavior of moths. Her research experience, which includes performing microsurgery, will be an asset when she goes on to medical school. Photo by Mike Sands.
For some college students, summer is a time to relax and recover from the tests, papers and busy schedules of the academic year. But increasing numbers of undergraduates view the season differently—as a time to gain valuable research experience.
Dana Coleman, a senior biology major and pre-med student, was one of 33 undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences who pursued summer projects this year with funding from the university’s SOURCE office (Support of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors). Like many of the grantees, she was already an established member of a faculty mentor’s research group. And she doesn’t seem to have spent a moment wondering how else she might have spent her summer vacation.
Coleman works with Mark Willis, an entomologist and associate professor of biology. One of his research interests is the tracking behavior of insects—how, for instance, a male moth finds its way to a potential mate by tracking the odor that the female emits. When Coleman started working in the lab in summer 2012, Willis told her about an experiment in which he had taken an adult moth and removed one of its two antennae. His team had then videotaped the moth’s flight path as it sought out a mate, and compared its tracking behavior to that of a normal moth.
At the time, Coleman says, “I had just taken developmental biology, so I had a developmental mindset.” This prompted her to ask a question no one else had thought of. Instead of performing an antennectomy on adult moths (a trauma that has its own impact on tracking behavior), was there a way, at the larval stage, to prevent one of the antennae from growing in the first place?
Coleman and Willis discussed the idea of performing microsurgery on the larvae, and a research project was born. “Dana’s suggestion was exactly the right thing to try,” Willis says. “I showed her how to do the surgery once, and that was it. She took off.”
Later, when Coleman had a question about surgical technique, she emailed an expert in the field and received a lengthy response. “Her enthusiasm is bulletproof,” Willis says. “She gets the world experts to respond to her and with great detail!”
Coleman performs the surgeries under a microscope, operating on tissue only one millimeter in length. Then she studies the moths’ response to an odor plume in a laboratory wind tunnel.
“My data that I have so far shows that moths with only one antenna can sense the odor, track the odor and move upwind in the plume toward the source. But then they have a lot of trouble ultimately locating the source,” Coleman says. Her findings have yielded insights about the sensory information that moths need to track successfully.
In addition, Coleman’s work may have practical uses. “This kind of research can be applied to general flight engineering if a sensory system is necessary,” she explains. “Also, our lab is collaborating with an engineering lab to apply the research to airborne robotics.”
This January, Coleman will present her results at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual meeting in Austin, Texas. “I never would have thought that I would be getting recognition on the national level for my first research experience,” she says.
Coleman has applied for fellowships to continue her research for a year before attending medical school. She wants to become a surgeon, and her experience with moths may give her an advantage. “If I decide to go into microsurgery,” she says, “I’ll have a leg up on all the other med students.”
Like Coleman, Evan Martin was awarded a SOURCE grant for a project in the natural sciences. A senior chemistry major, Martin belongs to a lab group led by Malcolm Kenney, the Hinman Hurlbut Professor of Chemistry.
When he took the job at the start of his junior year, Martin wasn’t familiar with Kenney’s work; he just wanted research experience before he started applying to doctoral programs. “It was a lucky stroke that I happened to end up in his group, doing work I found interesting,” he says.
Chemistry major Evan Martin has investigated a class of molecules used as a blue pigment for a variety of industrial, medical and scientific purposes. His summer project reinforced his decision to pursue a career in research. Photo by Mike Sands.
His project grew out of experiments he has done with doctoral student Ben Sturtz with a class of molecules called phthalocyanines. “They’re widely used in industry and research as a blue pigment,” Martin explains. Some of these uses are routine: dyeing paints, inks, plastics and blue jeans. But phthalocyanines also have more advanced applications. Kenney’s lab group is engaged in research that involves photodynamic cancer therapy and dye-sensitized solar cells.
Martin has assisted Sturtz in developing new structures for phthalocyanine molecules—by combining them, inserting a metal atom at their center or “capping” them with different substances. The next step is to explore the physical and chemical properties of each new molecule and to identify potential applications.
During his first semester in the lab, Martin and Sturtz tried to generate reactions that would combine two phthalocyanine molecules into one—a “dimer.” One day, as he was searching through a cabinet, Martin came across a reagent they hadn’t used before and suggested they try it. “Ben agreed, and we got very good results,” Martin recalls. “That was our first purified dimer sample. I was pleasantly surprised.”
Based on that success, Martin consulted with Kenney and Sturtz about developing his own project. His summer in the lab gave him the chance to explore dimer-creating techniques in more depth than before. Just as important, he says, the project “reinforced my decision to pursue a career in research. I enjoy doing laboratory work, and working on this project gave me a taste of what that type of career would be like.”
For Alaina Wodzinski, a senior majoring in psychology and medical anthropology, SOURCE funding last summer led to a breakthrough experience: the chance to design a child development study.
Alaina Wodzinski has set out to learn whether children’s skill in pretend play correlates with other qualities: IQ, emotional expressiveness and the ability to tell complex stories. Her summer project was her first opportunity to design a child development study. Photo by Mike Sands.
Wodzinski belongs to a research group led by psychology Professor Sandra Russ, whose recent work focuses on children’s creativity, especially as it is manifested in pretend play. For her summer project, Wodzinski developed a study to determine whether there is a correlation between preschoolers’ pretend play skills and their IQ, their emotional expressiveness in daily life or their ability to tell complex stories. The study is being conducted this fall with 4- and 5-year-olds in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
Wodzinski first met Russ when she took the professor’s SAGES seminar, Psychology of Creativity. She found the topic so interesting that she declared a major in psychology, chose Russ as her advisor and joined the research group at the beginning of her sophomore year.
The abilities and behaviors that Wodzinski is examining in her study may seem to elude measurement. How, for instance, can researchers assess a young child’s pretend play skills? To meet this challenge, Wodzinski chose an observational tool developed by Russ’ team, the Affective Play Scale for Preschoolers.
The first step is to videotape children playing with toys such as stuffed animals, action figures and stackable cups. “We give them little prompts to get them started,” Wodzinski explains. “For example, we might say, ‘There’s a polar bear and he’s hungry and he’s looking for food.’ Then we put the cups out and have the polar bear say, ‘I’m hungry. Is there food in here? Is there food in here?’ Then we say to children, ‘Now it’s your turn: You make up a story and tell me what’s next.’ Every time they express any sort of emotion, or make novel use of the toy, that’s all coded for.”
To measure the children’s emotional expressiveness in everyday life, teachers complete surveys about classroom behavior. And to measure storytelling ability, Wodzinski developed a new tool: a set of four pictures that researchers show the children and invite them to make up stories about.
Before last summer, Wodzinski had worked in biomedical research labs as well as in Russ’ group, and she was accustomed to assisting other people with work in progress. But this project is different. “It is my own thing that I created from the beginning,” she explains. “Instead of having a project that’s been set out and designed and is already in the process of collecting data, I had a say in what exactly we’re going to be collecting data on and how we’re going to collect the data as well. This early start has allowed me firsthand experience in all aspects of a research study.”
Eventually, Wodzinski and other researchers want to understand the causal relationships between the behaviors they are studying. Suppose that advanced pretend play skills correlate with high IQ. Will researchers then be able to determine whether one causes the other—whether, for example, pretend play promotes mental development?
Wodzinski hopes to study such questions in graduate school, where she plans to pursue a degree in pediatric clinical psychology. She also hopes the answers to those questions will help change educational practices for young children and allow teachers and students to become more successful in the classroom.
Lisa Chiu (CWR ’93) is a writer and editor in Cleveland.
ONLINE EXTRA: With support from the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, Caroline Bass, a sophomore majoring in philosophy and political science, attended a summer institute on bioethics. Read about her project, an ethical analysis of medical reality shows, here.
So Many Opportunities
“Every year, we get more and more students who come to us in search of research opportunities,” says Sheila Pedigo, director of SOURCE (Support for Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors). “In the past, we had to inform students about research and encourage them to get involved. Today, students come to CWRU because they want research.”
The university offers close to 20 formal summer research programs for undergraduates. SOURCE sponsors three such programs:
– SOURCE: open to all majors
– SURES: for students doing research in energy and sustainability
– P-SURG: for students in biological sciences, chemistry and social sciences (especially psychological sciences, sociology and anthropology)
Other funding opportunities for undergraduate researchers are available through the College of Arts and Sciences. These include Experiential Learning Fellowships for students in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and the Wellman Hill Political Science Internship Grants. The Wellman Hill program encourages students to apply for and accept public service internships, which often have a research component. —LC