This is awesome!!!  I am interested to hear about how this can impact what goes in in the classes, in addition to the undergraduate research projects.  Could a course assignment be tied into some aspect of the research?  

Hello Ann, thanks for your question.  Although our project has a much broader scope, I’m sure it can be broken down into some smaller components and those components used as class assignments. As an example, I teach the Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology course, and I can visualize incorporating an assignment tied to community engagement as part of the course.  Maybe something like: “discussing the ethical conduct of biomedical research, especially when research is focused on ethnically or culturally distinct populations”. This way questions as diversity, inclusion and equity can be integrated and discussed within the conceptual framework of biomedical research.  Hope this answers your question, and thanks again for commenting on our video.

Thank you. We will continue to engage this community with different students creating a group of holistic students with scientific skills and social responsibilities. At the same time the participants of the community receive training in scientific methodology, but above all concerning public health and environmental sciences, fostering the creation of citizen scientists.

Thanks! It is our aim to show students the importance of empowering communities by showing them not only how to generate and contribute to the pool of knowledge, but also what to do with that newfound knowledge.

Thank you, Jeff! We really appreciate your comments about our project! As to your questions, students meet with community members at the beginning of the semester. In this introductory meeting, community members present themselves and express their concerns and priorities for the project, students also introduce themselves (including academic background) and then we pinpoint the ways in which we can collaborate, understanding what each group brings, and how the community and the students can complement each other in the search for potential solutions. As an example, the community can identify times, days, possible sources of exposure, and students can identify potential biological and chemical pathways of exposure and explain potential health effects. Our goal is that students and the community can interact as much as possible, having the students serve as mentors by offering workshops, scientific talks, and question and answer sessions to the community so they can have all the necessary tools to become efficient citizen scientists.

On your second question, we have not implemented a survey with the community, but have started conversations with the community to determine the best way to collect health and perspective data and have identified new health related priorities (mercury exposure) for the next semester. We are working to obtain IRB approval for the next group of students to make this possible.  Hope this answers your questions, feel free to let us know if you have any other questions about our project.

Muchas gracias!!!

Our students are excellent ambassadors for this project, and we are also very proud of the them and the work they have done.  This video is testimony of their commitment to help their communities.

Hello Paul, thanks for your comments and words of encouragement, they are deeply appreciated.  We are also very excited to share the results of the impact of this research on its particiants in the coming years.  As to your questions, the UPR-Aguadilla offers an undergraduate research course (BIOL 3108), its a capstone course, so students that take it have basically completed most of the required courses of their curriculum, but any student can take the course, its not limited to STEM majors.  The students that participated in this project where Biology and/or Environmental Technology Majors who for the most part had completed courses in statistics, air quality, and molecular biology. But during the project, statistical skills, specially working with the statistical software R was emphasized. An added component of the project, is that participants also served as mentors to incoming freshman student and informally introduced them to undergraduate research. Our goal is to create a pipeline, where this year’s mentees are next years’ mentors.  Hope this answers your questions, don't hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions about our project.

 

Thanks!

Some of this answers a question I posed above about how this ties into classes.  I teach statistics and R programming and would love a way to incorporate small pieces of this type of real world research into some of the classes students take before getting to a capstone class.  

Hello Ann, didn't see this question until after I had already answered the one before.  But knowing now that you teach statistics with R, I can give you a better example.  In our project we use data obtained from PurpleAir Air Quality Sensors to analyze air quality of the different comunities.  This is real time data that can be obtained open source for parameters such as: US EPA Particulate matter 2.5, Temperature, Humidity, etc.  I’m sure that there should real time data for your city/state. I’m including the link to the PurpleAir website where you can download data in Excel or any other data base foormat, which you can later use for statistical analysis with R.  If you are interested in using the PurPleAir data and need help downloading the data sets, feel free to contact me and ill try to help you as much as I can.

Thanks for your comments!!

 

 

Thanks for this specific suggestion.  I have looked at the website and there is data in our area.  We had previously used something similar with climate data for a research project as a part of our MSEIP grant, but I don't think that site still exists.  And I hadn't tried to incorporate aspects of the research project into the class yet.  I think if there is research going on at the university and we can incorporate a small example of that in a class, that might encourage additional level of buy-in from students in the class.  This looks promising and thanks for your offer to help with downloading if needed!!

You are welcome Ann! Please feel free to reach out at nancy.cardona@upr.edu or contact Dr. Lee.

Thanks, for taking the time to see our video and commenting!!

Thank you for your comment and for watching our video!

Gracias por las felicitaciones y por tomar el tiempo de ver nuestro video Ivonne.

Thank you for taking your time to see our video, for commenting, and for the support! 

Thanks for the comments, Sarah! The idea of new research topics comes primarily from the community’s interests. Specifically, the idea of monitoring mercury concentration in biological samples started when the students reported back to the community results of this year’s research projects done in the area. This served as the catalyst to exchange ideas based on the community understanding of the data obtained and ultimately generated new concerns/priorities. The conclusions reached at the end of the semester also serves as a baseline for the development of the next semester course/group of students. 

Hello Bhaskar,

Thank you for taking the time to watch our video and post. Project aims are develop from question and issues stated by the community. After students gather all inquiries and concerns from the community, they work with the PI to formulate research questions, postulate aims and develop methodologies [that include community members as a key component] to address those inquiries and concerns. You could say that projects are molded based on questions/issues from the community and not decided beforehand by students or PI. Hope this answer your question. Thank you again!

Thank you! I saw your video, congrats to you to! Great initiative!

Thank your viewing our video and for your comments! Este proyecto se comenzó como un curso de investigación subgraduado (BIOL 3108), donde los estudiantes dependiendo, de su intereses particulares, hacen el acercamiento al profesor del curso y son matriculados. Esto nos permite que en el currículo del curso se integren todas las fases para este tipo de proyecto científico basado en la comunidad.  

 

El reto principal para los estudiantes se centra en la comunicación científica a una audiencia no académica. Un reto adicional, para este proyecto, es la distancia del lugar de estudio con respecto a la Universidad (Aguadilla a Guayama).  

 

La sugerencia principal para realizar un proyecto como este, es dedicarle tiempo para conocer a las comunidades a nuestro alrededor. Una vez que nos involucremos en las inquietudes de la comunidad como oyentes, podremos ir creando la confianza para conocer sus prioridades y de ahí partir juntos, reconociendo que los expertos del área, siempre es la comunidad.  Nosotros como académicos y los estudiantes, como científicos en formación, podremos aportar y discutir con la Comunidad posibles estrategias viables y sobre todo sostenibles para ellos. 

 

 

Thank Your Viewing Our Video and for Your Comments! This project began as a undergraduate research course (Biol 3108), where students, depending on their particular interests, approach to the professor and are enrolled. This allows us to integrate all phases of this type of community-based scientific project into the course curriculum. 

 

The main challenge for students focuses on scientific communication to a non-academic audience. An additional challenge, specifically for this project, is the distance from the community we are helping to the university (Aguadilla to Guayama). 

 

The main suggestion to carry out a project like this, is to spend time to meet and get to know the communities around us. Once we can get involved in the concerns of the community as listeners, they can create confidence to know their priorities and from there, working together, recognizing that the experts in the area is always the community. As professors and students, as scientists in training, we can contribute and discuss with the community possible viable and sustainable strategies for them. 

Thanks for your comments Molly!  We are planning to present our work at the SACNAS conference!! Hope to see you and your students there!!

Thank you for taking your time to see our video and for the comment!

Thank you Kelly, one of the main goals of this project was to develop advocacy skills in our students.  We were pleasantly surprised on how students were quick to understand how much of an impact they can have on their community.  They really went above and beyond when they met the community and started working with them hand in hand.