KCC FIG – Undergraduate Research as a High Impact Practice
Minutes of the Meeting of Tue, 4/4/2023, 11:00am via Zoom
Mary Theresa Ortiz – Facilitator
Present: Grace Axler-DiPerte (KCC BIO Faculty), Dmitry Brogun (KCC BIO faculty), Christina Colon (KCC BIO Faculty), Carrie Jedlicka (KCC Library), Lilja Nielsen (KCC BIO Faculty), Mary Theresa Ortiz (KCC BIO Faculty), Marina Ouedraogo (KCC BUS/Advisement), Mike Rosson (KCC Library),
The meeting began at 11:00am.
- Mary welcomed everyone, thanked them for coming, and we introduced ourselves to the group.
- Mary shared that Nancy Hensel’s book on Undergraduate Research in Community Colleges will be sent to each person in the group via inter-office mail.
- Mike shared integrating the Library with different departments and working with faculty to help with their research and literature reviews. Resources have been developed for easy retrieval. He wants to get Science Direct for the Library for use.
- Carrie shared they are available to help with literature searches, meetings, strategies, annotations, etc.
- Christina shared in Ecology the students study predation. They found baleen on the beach. She said that AI fails if the question isn’t worded properly. She also discussed phrenology work with the trees on the KCC campus.
- Lilja shared that CSTEP has been studying oysters for 11 years, and they are seeing in genetic sequences where different populations are along the East Coast of the US. Even though the students study sequence data and get a “snapshot” view, all of the “snap shots” put together provide interesting results. Lilja and Craig impress upon the students that their “snap shots” are important to the project.
- We discussed students as co-authors. Lilja shared acknowledging students rather than giving them authorship for several reasons, such as students who have moved on and are no longer able to be reached, the amount of work a student actually did on the project, etc. Christina shared she goes back to posters for authorship.
- Mike spoke of his daughter’s high school and college and suggested we have a STEM Video Conference Showcase online (via Zoom) with both high school and KCC students presenting their work. Mary will approach College Now and the College Now Science Faculty at the high schools to see if they would be interested in doing this and when. Lilja was a judge for Brooklyn College Science Scholars Day. We may want to contact Jenny Basil about our idea.
- Grace is working with the KCC Urban Farm to get soil samples for the BIO50 – General Microbiology class to set up Winogradsky columns to study microbial ecology. She has the students compare layers in the columns with soil from the KCC Urban Farm vs. sand from Great Kills Beach, Staten Island. In the last few years, the column layers have been unremarkable. For the future she plans columns with cultivated vs. uncultivated soil. She also shared the KCC Urban Farm plans to do aquaponics.
- Grace and Christina discussed the DNA Bar Coding session they attended in the winter.
- Grace discussed working with the Culinary Program on pizza dough microorganisms.
- Dmitry discussed his research. He got a grant for Bar Coding. Students will present at the CUNY Symposium. Students compared compost vs. uncomposted soil and looked at biomarkers.
- Grace and Dmitry discussed collaborating using Bar Coding.
- Christina discussed outreach she does for CSTEP, the Rockaway Beach Alliance, bringing students to high schools, outreach to the KCC Summer Camp, Plumb Beach, Middle School students, her work with horseshoe crabs and Cornell, and field trips with her Ecology class (including families).
- Lilja suggested it would be nice to have a list of research opportunities. We will work on this.
- Mary will send out the minutes from this meeting and the Pre-Semester Survey again.
- The next meeting of our FIG will be set up via a Doodle Mary will send out and its results.
Meeting adjourned at 11:52am.
Minutes respectfully submitted by Mary Theresa Ortiz
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