On Friday, Oct. 14, eight students from Skyline College who participated in the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans (SACNAS) conference in Denver had their projects displayed in the MESA (Math, Engineering & Science Achievement) Center.
The conference took place from Sept. 29-Oct.1 as students from Skyline, Harvard, Cornell, MIT and many other UC and State campuses presented their scientific research projects.
SACNAS is based in Santa Cruz. The organization’s primary goal is to increase diversity in the sciences, traditionally for Native Americans and Chicanos. The organization doesn’t focus solely on those two groups, though, as SACNAS has recently opened its doors to other diversities.
The eight students who took part in SACNAS initially began their research in Biology 230: Introduction to Cell Biology and Biology 690: Independent study.
“Some professors from other universities, like Oregon State, were there and they invited us to do summer research,” said Nhugynh (Winnie) Tran, SACNAS participant. “Many universities have summer programs, so I’ll be thinking about that.”
Paul Adler was also one of the eight students who participated in Denver.
“My project was on The Effect of Secondary Sewage Effluent on the Growth of Euglena” said Paul Alder, SACNAS participant. Adler chose this project because “Chemicals were being released into the bay from a lot different sources like houses, drainage, and pharmacuetical companies; we just wanted to see the effect that the effluent had on the euglena and see if the euglena was suitable to test to see if it was toxic or not.”
The experiment itself took about week, in which Adler counted how many number of euglena there were. The difficult part was definitely counting the number of specimens, according to Adler, because he was counting euglena for hours through the lens of a microscope.
Biology Professor Christine L. Case was the advisor for the projects and helped the students involved during the spring and summer 2005 semesters.
“The students did their original scientific research during the spring and submitted their abstracts in June,” said Dr. Case. “The 5 abstracts were accepted for publication. During the summer, we continued the research and wrote the papers.”
Along with Dr. Case, Biology Technician, Patricia Carter, and MESA Director, Tiffany Reardon also guided the eight Skyline students in preparation for the conference.
“The students did the research. We want them to get some exposure,” said Reardon. “To get them familiarized with presenting, since their going to be scientists, we want them to begin before they go to graduate school.”
Reardon’s main role was assisting the students in applying for travel stipends and handling logistics.
“There is misconception that community colleges are not at the same level of Ivy League students when in fact the caliber of students that I’ve seen are really driven,” said Reardon. “We’ve begun to see students that attend events like this who have transferred from Skyline, gradated, and who have been coming back to apply and get into graduate programs. That’s what we want them to do.”
Congratulations to the students who participated to SACNAS: Rona Silva, Sandra Goins, Nhugynh (Winnie) Tran, Paul Adler, Gilbert Huang, Gordon Lam, Narmen Hanhan and Marwan Jubary.
