Outreach and Mentoring Activities
2024 Recruitment and outreach activities
Grotewold lab: The Grotewold lab participates in multiple ways in URM recruitment and retention, for example as co-Director of the NSF-funded Success in Graduate Education (SiGuE) postbaccalaureate program, which hosted one URM Fellow during 2023 (14 total in the past 12 years). In addition, the lab hosts undergraduate students with an emphasis on URMs and had three such students during the past year. It is anticipated that PBHS Fellow Braun will be involved in similar mentoring activities, as he progresses in his PhD program.
Hamberger lab: PBHS Students Max Harman, Elliot Braun., Angel McKay Whiteman., Lucas Reist, and Brianna N.I. Brown wrote in January an application for the 2024 U.S. Department of Energy EnergyTech University Prize competition (EnergyTech University Prize). The proposal was selected and in March, the collaborative team consisting of a total of 12 students were invited for the Midwest Regionals, where they presented their project pitch to an audience of biotech and business leaders. To emphasize the importance of translational science and bring attention to an emerging biotechnology opportunity, the team detailed the framework for the creation of a high terpene-producing sorghum variety to improve the economic viability of biofuels. They outlined a novel scientific project, production pipeline design, and the economic feasibility of this technology. A manuscript detailing the economic and societal impact of the success of this work will be submitted in the next week. For details, our press release can be found here: https://mps.natsci.msu.edu/news-events/news/2024-05-mps-graduate-students-participate-in-2024-energytech-competition.aspx
Haus lab: The Haus lab participates in multiple outreach events valuable for recruiting students from diverse backgrounds, including through the MSU Indian Leadership Program and EcoTek labs. EcoTek is a Detroit based high school summer outreach event. Haus and PBHS trainee Grace Miller also mentored undergraduate students for the NSF REU summer program.
Lebeis lab: The Lebeis lab joined 5 other MSU lab groups to host a group of high school students working with the Detroit-based EcoTek labs. One Saturday a month, members of our lab would work with these high school students to teach them lab techniques to enable them to perform experiments they designed back at the EcoTek lab. This year we also set up a greenhouse experiment to help them generate and analyze data.
Strenkert lab: Together with the MSU Honors College and MSU-Detroit Partnership for Food, Learning and Innovation (MSU-DPFLI), the Strenkert lab helped plan, organize and conduct the inaugural MSU Detroit Early Honors Experience. The 3-day event was targeted towards 8th to 10th graders from different schools across Detroit during their summer break, offering a variety of opportunities for students from underrepresented backgrounds to interact with artists, professionals and researchers, with one full day dedicated to plant sciences. The students developed research questions, collected data on the urban agriculture site developed by MSU-DPFLI, and ultimately presented their research to the group, mimicking the full scope of a scientific study in their daily environment. Cultivating curiosity in students from underrepresented backgrounds to learn about plants and creating an awareness for career possibilities in STEM research in academia and industry in general was the premier goal of the event. We employ pre and post event surveys to collect feedback and track learning success from the participants, impressions from the event can be found here (http://tinyurl.com/3b849mvk). We participated in 2023 (which was the inaugural year with ~25 student participants) and again this year in 2024, and we got excellent feedback both from participants and the organizers on the Detroit school side. We are planning to extend the plant science portion to a full 3-day event in subsequent years that will involve a visit to MSU-PRL (~ 1h drive) and a molecular laboratory component, which will center around nutritional work in our fast-growing Chlamydomonas system, allowing us to fit the research component in a single day.
VanBuren lab: PBHS fellow Cathy Mercado in the VanBuren lab planned and organized the MSU Communicating Science Conference (ComSciCon-MI) workshop, an event focused on advancing scientific communication skills for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows throughout Michigan. This workshop, supported by a coalition of MSU departments and designed for emerging scientists, emphasized critical techniques in effectively sharing scientific insights with diverse audiences. Cathy represented the MSU Plant Sciences at the annual SACNAS conference (Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science), fostering connections within the scientific community and promoting STEM pathways for underrepresented groups. PBHS fellow Jenny Schuster participated in the MSU Science Festival, where she volunteered and engaged in various outreach activities, and she is coordinator for Biomedical Sciences (BMS) Graduate Recruitment Initiative Team (GRIT) peer mentorship program. In alignment with a commitment to fostering scientific curiosity and outreach, the VanBuren lab is also deeply engaged in the Water and Life Interface Institute (WALII), participating in mentorship and outreach initiatives that explore fundamental questions in plant and microbial resilience. These activities include WALII’s mentorship and summer internship programs, as well as hands-on outreach events like "tardigrade hunting," which captures public interest in microscopic organisms, and seed longevity workshops, which emphasize the importance of conservation and resilience in plant biology.
Walker lab: Together with the department of Plant Biology, the Walker lab organized a visit from the Carol Greer Center, which brings elementary-aged students from under-served communities to MSU campus to visit STEM labs and engage in research activities. The Walker lab additionally hosted a first-generation summer research student from a primarily undergraduate institution and co-taught a summer workshop on exploring non-academic careers. Additionally, PBHS Mentee Luke Sharpe (co-advised by faculty trainers Walker and Ducat) was a part of the U.S. Department of Energy, EnergyTech Prize competition (described in greater detail under Hamberger lab activities) and organized in part through the Spring 2024 BMB 864 “Plant Biochemistry” course offered in conjunction with the PBHS program and coordinated by Dr. Hamberger.
Impacts on the broader scientific community
Co-PD Ducat conducted a Mercator Fellow sabbatical period from January 2024 through July 2024 in Dusseldorf, Germany. During this time, Ducat was engaged in additional mentoring activities (e.g., student committees, Dusseldorf iGEM team, career development discussions) for students in the Center for Synthetic Microbiology at Henrich Heine University. As part of these activities, Ducat was involved in the MibiNext (https://www.sfb1535.hhu.de/mibinext) training environment and helped to coordinate a summer 2024 practical workshop in Dusseldorf, Germany related to techniques for developing and characterizing synthetic, light-driven microbial communities for bioproduction.
The Haus lab prioritizes outreach and extension activities because they are important to relay the value of our research program to the broader public. We have achieved this by authoring an online MSU extension article on the physiological effects of waterlogging on roots (MSU Extension, 2023) as well as an extension article with Crop Science Society of America on the potential of wild bean germplasm to develop new varieties. The latter article was picked up by fifteen other media outlets including FarmWeek Now. To engage more directly with stakeholders, Dr. Haus was a guest speaker at the Replanting and Soil pH Mapping Workshop at the Trevor Nichols Research Center. During this workshop, Haus taught growers about blueberry root architecture and health. Dr. Haus was also a guest speaker at the “Pod to Process” Bush Brothers Science and Technology Community workshop. For the Pod to Process workshop, she introduced diverse stakeholders (i.e., growers, accountants, chemists) to the basics of plant biology.
To lower the barrier to Ribo-seq experimentation and analysis and facilitate communication with the broad research community, faculty trainer Hsu lab ran a Ribo-seq informatics workshop at the 2024 American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) annual meeting. PBHS fellow Isaiah Kaufman was a co-organizer and speaker. Isaiah presented a session focusing on sequencing data preprocessing & quality control, and hosted a GitHub site for sharing the workshop materials and the example code for the data analysis (https://github.com/kaufm202/Riboseq_ASPB_2024).
The Jiang lab organized an Oligo-FISH Workshop designed to provide hands-on training in widely used molecular cytogenetic techniques. This annual workshop, which has been organized since 2005, was interrupted by the COVID pandemic, making this session the first since the disruption. PBHS trainee Luke Strickland participated in this year's workshop.
PD Last organized a Minisymposium on the interface between plant primary and specialized metabolism at the 2024 American Society of Plant Biologists Centennial Celebration in Honolulu, HI, June 2024.
Faculty trainer VanBuren and PBHS fellow Elliot Braun are active participants and members of the National Corn Growers Association. Through this organization, they regularly engages in broader agricultural and policy discussions pertinent to plant sciences.