Summer undergraduates present research

August 1, 2017

GRAND FORKS, N.D.—On Thursday, August 3, fifty UND undergraduates will present the results of their summer research at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences Summer Undergraduate Research Experience poster session. The one-day conference will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the second floor of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) building at 1301 North Columbia Rd.

For the past 10 weeks, students from UND, as well as from rural and tribal colleges in Minnesota, North Dakota, and across the nation have conducted research and participated in a number of related educational activities. Students worked shoulder-to-shoulder with their mentor scientists from the UND Department of Biology, the UND Department of Civil Engineering, the UND SMHS Departments of Pathology and Biomedical Sciences, Cankdeska Cikana Community College, and the UND SMHS Center for Rural Health.

One of the goals of the summer research program is to provide students with the opportunity to work directly with an established research scientist. An additional goal is to recruit students from rural and tribal colleges for future participation in UND undergraduate and graduate programs. The program, designed to bolster the workforce pipeline of biomedical research scientists and healthcare professionals, included students from North Dakota state community colleges and several high schools.

Over the course of the summer students received specialized laboratory training. In weekly professional development sessions, undergraduates learned: how to conduct research responsibly, the particulars of science writing, and the basics of the graduate and medical school application process. At the end of the summer, students present their work, which has implications in the areas of neurological disease, cancer, diabetes, drug addiction, heart disease, and aging, in an on-campus poster session.

In addition to the University of North Dakota, this year’s participants are from Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN; Benedictine College, Atchison, KS; Cankdeska Cikana Community College, Fort Totten, ND; Carroll College, Helena, MT; College of Saint Benedict, Saint Joseph, MN; Concordia College, Moorhead, MN; Lake Region State College, Devils Lake, ND; North Carolina Wesleyan College, Rocky Mount, NC; Oxford College of Emory University, Oxford, GA; Salish Kootenai College, Pablo, MT; Turtle Mountain Community College, Belcourt, ND; University of Jamestown, Jamestown, ND; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC; and West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV.

Funding for the students came from a variety of organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Office of the Dean at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences.

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Brian James Schill
Assistant Director, Office of Alumni & Community Relations
University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences
701.777.2733
brian.schill@UND.edu | med.und.edu