Aubrey Funke, the Assistant Director of the Imaging and Histology Core Facility (IHCF), welcomed the iCREATE students to the IHCF to learn how to use an extremely powerful (and extremely expensive) microscope! The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) can magnify 1,000,000 times - which is 1,000 better than a light microscope, which is already 1,000 time better than our eyes! The Imaging and Histology Core Facility provides imaging services to faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, along with industry partners. They provide services in light microscopy, electron microscopy, and histology (microscopy of tissues). Graduate Student Alyssa Talbert creates scaffolds for wound healing with elastin, collagen and water in her graduate work. But here, she is illustrating how to collect and stain cheek samples for the students to view under the light microscope. Alyssa and Aubrey then take the students to compare the digital light microscope images with the detail they can see with the SEM. Because electrons have a very small wavelength, much smaller than the wavelength of light, the resolution using the SEM is much greater than that of light microscopes. Aubrey and Alyssa shared a variety of SEM images with the students, from insects (see past Ugly Bug Contest winners below), to fungi, Alyssa's scaffolds, and much more! The students spent approximately 8 hours at the IHCF learning how to use the SEM. They took copious notes they then followed explicitly, with Aubrey observing them, and they were able to run the SEM themselves on their last day of the training! Thank you to both Alyssa and Aubrey for all the time and patient effort they put into instructing the students on the SEM. We weren't surprised to learn that Aubrey won the "Outstanding Staff Member" for NAU's Biology Department at their award ceremony on Wednesday, May 2nd. Congratulations to Aubrey!
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Colleen Hopkins, Telehealth Coordinator for North Country Health Care (NCHC) shared an interactive lesson on NCHC’s Telehealth program with the iCREATE class on March 15, 2018. NCHC reaches across all of Northern Arizona, stretching 500 miles from Nevada to New Mexico, and has 23 Access Points for care across this vast region. The mission of NCHC is to provide accessible, affordable, comprehensive, quality primary healthcare in an atmosphere of respect, dignity, and cultural sensitivity. The health and well-being of patients and community alike are promoted through direct services, training/education, outreach, and advocacy. The NCHC Telehealth program uses video conferencing technology to link providers and their patients, as well as educators and health care consumers, to a comprehensive continuum of care. Using this technology, they can reduce the isolation of providers and their patients within rural communities. They can also save a lot of time. For example, a patient can get immediate information and help for behavioral health, diabetes, nutrition advice and more, without a practitioner needing to make a 6-hour drive. The students watched a video about Project ECHO (Extensions for Community Healthcare Outcomes) by Dr. Sanjeev Arora from the University of New Mexico. He shared this collaborative model of medical education and care management that empowers clinicians everywhere to provide better care to more people, right where they live. The students then practiced using the system to watch their own heart rate on the monitor (photo above) that a remote doctor or nurse would be able to observe and hear real-time. They also used another monitor to see their ear drum (photo below). Colleen ended the field trip with a tour of the NCHC facilities. Students got to see many areas in the clinic and see the dedication of the entire community working at North Country Health Care. Thank you, Colleen!
Dr. Bret Pasch, Assistant Professor in the biology department at NAU, is partnering with one of Jillian Worssam’s 8th grade science classes at Sinagua Middle School through the “Scientists in the Classroom” program founded by Jillian. Bret specializes in recording and analyzing mouse vocalizations and has brought his digital sound recorder into Jillian’s classroom so the students can learn first-hand about singing mice. These grasshopper mice have a relatively loud voice so other mice can hear them over the vast distances in the desert where they live. Bret shared audio recordings of the mice, and then slowed them down so the sound was more apparent to those of us with ears that don’t hear at high frequencies any more! He also showed the students how they can measure both the frequency and duration of the sounds on the sonogram. The students are making hypotheses about whether the male or the female mice will vocalize more frequently, and which will have a higher pitch, higher amplitude (loudness), and longer duration of the sounds. Bret will leave the mice (male on one side of the room and female on the other) for the next few months along with the digital recorders so students can capture their vocalizations. The mice are nocturnal and vocalize more at night, so the students will be able to access their sounds when they return to school each day. Bret fed the mice while eager students looked on. He fed them their natural diet of bark scorpions, which are one of most venomous scorpions in Arizona. These mice have a mutation in their pain receptors so they don’t feel the sting as much as another species of mice would. They also like Pinacate bugs that lift their hind ends and spray as a defense strategy. The mice have a behavior where they stick the bugs abdomens in the ground so they don’t get sprayed and then they eat the heads first! Thank you to Bret for participating in the Scientists in the Classroom program and also for elucidating information on singing mice through a Science on Tap presentation to the community! Flagstaff really appreciates your scientific outreach to both our schools and our community! Note: You can also see and hear the mice at Bonnie Stevens’ Brain Food story on Bret Pasch here!
As stated on their website: The Ancient DNA Lab provides support for researchers working with ancient, historical, forensic, or other sensitive (low DNA quantity/quality) genetic samples. Established by the School of Forestry’s Carol Chambers and Faith Walker in 2016, the Ancient DNA Lab is physically isolated from other genetics labs on campus and adheres to rigorous quality control measures to prevent contamination, both of which are internationally recognized standards for the early stages of ancient DNA handling and processing. The Ancient DNA Lab is sterilized (left) and ready to use in 2018. The 2017 iCREATE class (right) was able to go into the lab between cleanings. Some of the projects the lab has been involved with include a 10,000 year old bat, research using both extant (living) bats and bat guano, the 8,500 year old bison (below), and work with extant wombats in Australia. Undergraduate Research Assistant Sam Hershauer presented some basic information on how DNA is extracted, amplified and analyzed in the aDNA Lab. Sam is working on collaborative research project on DNA from organisms in Alaskan lake sediments going back thousands of years. This collaborative project is with the Arctic Lakes Project headed by Dr's. Nick McKay and Darrell Kaufman in the School of Earth Sciences and Sustainability. Thank you to Faith, Colin and Sam for sharing your hidden treasure with the iCREATE students!
Guest Blog Post by Nick Siskonen, AmeriCorps STEM VISTA, CAVIAT Every student enrolled in our CAVIAT programs has the opportunity to participate in a Career and Technical Student Organization (CTSO). These organizations provide scholarships, competitions, leadership opportunities and so much more that enriches the life and learning of our students. Some of our students are traveling to the Arizona state competition hosted by the CTSO, HOSA - Future Health Professionals. HOSA is an international organization focused on developing character and technical skill competencies for members, to uplift current and future people in the health professions. Our students are there to compete in a variety of subject matters. Madison Stump, of the Medical Professions program, is competing in the Behavioral Health event. Cylie John, also in the Medical Professions program, is taking the Medical Law and Ethics test. Dakota Palmer, of the Veterinary Assistant program, is doing the Veterinary Science skills test. Zachary Ashland and Elizabeth Strones, from the Bioscience program, are both taking part in the Medical Innovation event, and their classmate Antonia Green is taking the Biomedical Laboratory Sciences test. To qualify for this week's state competition, students took an online test which covered a wide variety of topics from their program's curriculum. Only top scoring students are allowed to attend the state competition and earn the chance to move on to the international competition at the International Leadership Conference, which takes place at the end of June.
The state competition this year is taking place in Tucson, from April 2nd through April 4th. Let's cheer them all on to victory! And not to be left out of the fun, this week our Fashion Design and Merchandising program is headed off to Los Angeles! They're going to visit the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and the LA fashion district. They've been fundraising for this trip all year, and all the hard work has finally paid off. Eleven high school students in the CAVIAT iCREATE bioscience class publicly presented their unique solutions to the authentic problem of tracking and reporting influenza-like illnesses in Coconino County. The presentations were held on March 7th at NAU's Center for Science Teaching and Learning. The students are in the second semester of this college-level course that earns credits from both Coconino Community College plus from Coconino High School or Flagstaff High School. The class meets after school for 2.5 hours each day from Monday to Thursday to learn the CTE (career and technical education) bioscience standards through an epidemiologic lens and with rich community involvement. Community partners include Coconino County Public Health Services District, North Country HealthCare, Northern Arizona Area Health Education Center, Northern Arizona Healthcare and TGen North. The students also gained assistance from Corryn Smith in using GIS technology for their reports. Instructors Dr. Aaron Tabor and Robert (Bobby) Woodruff co-teach the class at NAU. Both have extensive experience in research and education. They also include additional community partners for in-class presentations and field trips. Students have toured the Science and Health Building at NAU, the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (ECOSS) laboratories, the Clinical and Pathology Laboratory at Flagstaff Medical Center, and more! The students study disease-causing agents as then use the tools necessary to determine what microbes cause the illnesses. The class includes biosafety skills, microbiology techniques, DNA extraction, separation and analysis. Students take an end-of-year test to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Congratulations to all the students! And thank you to the community members that attended their presentations! NAU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dan Kain (Left), FUSD Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Mary K Walton (Center), and FUSD Superintendent Mike Penca (Right), all came to hear the student presentations and ask them questions about their unique solutions to this authentic community problem.
Val Callaway is the STEM Education VISTA Leader, for the Flagstaff STEM Education Project. She completed a 2-year service-term in the National Civilian Community Corps in 2001 igniting her passion for working in the nonprofit and public service sector. Then, after nearly 10 years in Santa Fe, New Mexico doing everything from Wildland Firefighting to serving six years in the New Mexico Army National Guard, Val moved back home to Phoenix, Arizona to be close to family.
Val attended Grand Canyon University earning a Bachelor’s of Science in Educational Studies and a Master’s of Science in Leadership while working at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Phoenix. Val has a background in program and curriculum development with youth of varying ages. She successfully designed and implemented several after school programs including an; Urban Arts Program, STEAM Education Program, and a BMX STEM program where teens learned the science of bikes while serving their local community by offering free bike maintenance to youth in the community. When Val isn’t helping her partner with their three kids and five dogs, you can almost always find them camping, fishing or biking local trails. With her partner being an international level roller derby skater and their children attending a performing arts school, this active family is constantly finding new adventures. STEM City and the NAU Civic Service Center are thrilled to have Val serving as our STEM VISTA Leader, and Val is looking forward to serving this upcoming year and being given the opportunity to support an amazing and talented group of VISTAS. Guest Blog Post by Ben Koch, Senior Research Associate, NAU Researchers at NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (ECOSS) have partnered for the second year with one of Kathryn Wertz's 6th grade science classes at Sinagua Middle School in Flagstaff as part of the ‘Scientists in the Classroom’ program founded by Jillian Worssam, and assisted by STEM City. In November, ECOSS scientists worked with students to begin a 5-month-long decomposition experiment in the forest near the school. The students learned that decomposition is the process by which living things are broken down into simpler and simpler pieces, and that decomposers like invertebrates, bacteria, and fungi accomplish this feat by consuming dead organisms in order to get the energy they need to survive, grow, and reproduce. The students considered which kinds of dead organisms decompose quickly, and which kinds decompose more slowly, depending on their chemical composition (i.e., a deer skeleton will take longer to decompose than an earthworm because it is made of bone, not soft tissue). The students are investigating these ideas with a field experiment in which they are comparing the decomposition rates of leaves from two different species of trees: Oak and Ponderosa Pine. The students deployed set amounts of each of these leaf species in mesh bags on the forest floor near their school, and they used bags with two different sizes of mesh: coarse (the black bags in the photos) and fine (the white bags in the photos). When placing the leaf-bags in the forest, the students made observations and predictions about which leaf type and which bag type will yield the fastest decomposition. In April, ECOSS scientists and the students will retrieve their leaf-litter experiment to measure the mass loss of the leaves in each bag. The students will then take a field trip to the ECOSS laboratories on the NAU campus, where, among other activities, they will be able to weigh their leaf-bags and create a graph of their experimental results.
I’m Mallory Schaefer and I will be working at STAR School as a part of the AmeriCorps VISTA Flagstaff STEM Education Project team. I moved to Flagstaff in 2013 to attend NAU where I received a Bachelors degree in Environmental and Sustainability Studies and a minor in Sustainable Community Development. For the past four years I have been working at Willow Spring Program Center, a Girl Scout camp located in Prescott, AZ. Working there is what really made me passionate about working with children in an outdoor setting and allowing them to interact with nature in fun and developmental ways! I would love to pursue a career in Outdoor Education in the future where I can continue to inspire a love for nature in today's youth. I am excited to be back in Flagstaff and to have the opportunity to work with and learn from Native youth and Native communities.
At my site I will be working on developing the schools existing STEM program to meet the needs and wants of the teachers. I hope to develop after school activities with a STEM focus that are both fun and engaging for the students. I will also be working on a special water project that includes setting up an aquaponics system to get the students involved in the importance of water as well as assisting with the implementation of a water testing and filtration project for the near by community. I am looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish in our year of service! Hey there! My name is Charlie Humphrey and for the next year I will work in Flagstaff with Grand Canyon Youth as their Office Manager through the Flagstaff STEM Education AmeriCorps VISTA Project. I will devote my efforts towards smoothing office processes, coordinating volunteers, and engaging in community events.
I grew up among the copper sunsets, vast deserts, and jagged mountains of Phoenix and Sierra Vista. I inherited my love for nature from my father, who taught me early on that we can recognize that we are part of something more when we spend time outdoors. I traded Saguaros for Ponderosas when I moved to Flagstaff in 2013 so that I could study at Northern Arizona University. In May of 2017, I graduated with a BS in Parks and Recreation with an emphasis in Outdoor Education. GCY works hard to ensure that diverse populations of youth have an opportunity to participate in outdoor immersion programs. That is what I am so proud to member of the Grand Canyon Youth team. I am very excited about this chance to help connect the youth of America to the best that the southwest has to offer. |