Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
In order to help increase the retention and graduation rate of Tribal students, we are expanding an existing program to include out of state Tribal students. As part of the Trails to Research program, we have developed intensive hands-on research courses for Tribal College students. The one-week long projects are highly visual in that they allow students to follow amphibian and zebrafish embryo development. Students direct their research projects by choosing substances to which they expose their embryos. In the past, students have chosen alcohol, caffeine, herbicides, and heavy metals, to name a few. They formulate a hypothesis and then collect, interpret, and present their data on the effects that their substances had on embryonic development. Involvement in undergraduate research has been shown to greatly increase retention and graduation rates. Thus, one of our goals is to introduce Tribal students to undergraduate research and to make them aware of undergraduate research opportunities. Further, the students experience life at a 4-year university by living in the dorms and eating in the cafeteria. They will have presentations by a transfer specialist, financial aid, and AI/AN student support services to demonstrate to the students that transferring and completing a bachelor's degrees is a realistic option.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
The goals of the NBTS program include increasing the retention and graduation rate of Tribal students attending land-grant institutions, such as Montana State University (MSU). We propose to include out-of-state Tribal students enrolled at 2-year Tribal colleges in our Trails to Research one-week program. Students will experience life on a 4-year university campus and engage in research projects. Experiential learning is one example of NBTS strategies to increase retention and graduation rates. Our Trails to Research program immerses students in hands-on research projects, where they expose amphibian and zebrafish embryos to various environmental substances and observe resulting defects in embryonic development. These projects are relevant for any vertebrate, including other aquatic animals and agricultural animals. Students direct their projects by choosing the substances to which they expose their embryos. They formulate a hypothesis and then collect, interpret, and present their data. At the same time, they live in campus dorms and eat in the cafeteria to experience life at a 4-year university. The students will have presentations by a transfer specialist, financial aid, and AI/AN student support services to demonstrate to the students that transferring and completing a bachelor's degrees is a realistic option. Further, students learn about undergraduate research programs and how to begin engaging with them. It has amply been demonstrated that engagement in undergraduate research increases retention and graduation rates. This NBTS proposal aims to increase the number of out-of-state Tribal students that can be funded to attend our Trails to Research course.
Project Methods
The Trails to Research courses provide an introduction to research for Tribal college students regardless of research background or prior coursework. The Trails to Research experience emulates real-world research and increases students' ability to see themselves as scientists (Forecki et al., 2023). Participation in undergraduate research builds social belonging in STEM communities on campuses, which is important for all students, particularly students of minority groups (Fechheimer et al., 2011; Walton and Cohen, 2011; Gregerman et al., 1998). Thus, students with undergraduate research experience are some of the most successful STEM students at 4-year universities and are more likely to graduate (Rodenbush et al., 2016; Lopatto, 2007; Russell et al., 2007).This proposal will work together with the NSF grant that funds our overall Trails to Research program. The NSF grant has funding for in-state students and for travel by the PI to out-of-state colleges to begin making outside connections. It also has funding for two out of state students to attend our Trails to Research course. I did not realize how successful my travels to out-of-state Tribal colleges would be and how quickly I would recruit out-of-state students to our course. Thus, we propose in this NBTS proposal to fund additional out-of-state students to attend our Trails to Research program. In order to maintain our teaching and mentoring ratio for the extra students, I will recruit a graduate student, who will be (partially) paid by this grant. This proposal also includes supplies needed for additional students. Further, we propose to introduce the use of amphibian embryos to our courses to give students experience with a second model organism (see below).The Trails to Research courses aim to give students the experience of sampling life at a 4-year university and to introduce them to hands-on research. To date, these courses have used the model organism zebrafish in student-selected short research projects that explore developmental biology and environmental toxicology. Since we have used zebrafish as a model organism for all the years that this program has existed, we would like to propose adding Xenopus (frog) embryos as a choice for students. Besides the additional educational opportunity, a practical advantage of having embryos from two model organisms is that it lowers the likelihood of having no embryos to work with. This has happened once so far; having the additional possibility of amphibian embryos would have saved that particular course. (We ended up doing an RT-PCR project with the students, which is conceptually more difficult to grasp and not as visual.)For their projects, students will prepare Xenopus embryos and carry out the experiments they designed. They will gain experience in how to properly frame a research question and then formulate hypotheses that address those questions. For each experiment they perform, participants will learn the basics of experimental design, establishing controls, choosing variables, calculating meaningful treatment conditions (see below), setting up and carrying out experiments, observational practices, trouble shooting, data collection and analysis (including statistical analysis) and, ultimately, presentation skills. Since the students may elect to pursue new conditions for their experiments, the outcomes of at least some of the experiments will be unknown (for example all the embryos may perish under some conditions). This will allow participants to design refined hypotheses and procedures (although within the time frame of one week, they will not have time to test these new hypotheses).For their experiments, students will select substances with which to expose their embryos. Very often they choose substances relevant to their personal lives or their personal environment. In the past, students have researched the effects of substances such as tobacco, ethanol, caffeine, and over-the-counter drugs on embryo development. After arsenic contamination was found in well water on the Crow reservation, two students tested the effects of arsenate on embryo development. At Fort Peck Community College, Trails to Research students partnered with students from a water ecology class to obtain and test water samples from different locations along the Fort Peck dam ecosystem. The consequences of fracking, mining, and agriculture can be examined by testing the effects of minerals and other chemicals that are released into the environment during these human activities and affect the waters of many reservations. During these experiments, the importance of having and observing untreated control embryos is emphasized on a daily basis.Students watch and photograph their control and treated embryos throughout the week, using microscopes fitted with cameras. Both Xenopus and zebrafish embryos reach the early tadpole/larva stages with a clear body plan within 4 days (head, tail, eyes, limited pigmentation, primitive heartbeat, non-voluntary swimming). Students measure body length and heartbeat, they assess morphology, pigmentation, and swimming behavior. Acridine orange staining reveals how much apoptosis (programmed cell death) occurs in the embryos. Observed defects in the embryos will be related back either to aquatic population issues resulting from environmental pollutants, or to known defects in human and other vertebrate embryo development (ethanol: neural crest cell migration; retinoic acid: posteriorization of the overall body plan of the embryos, etc). Xenopus and zebrafish embryos treated with the same substances will be compared for similarities and differences in the resulting defects. Students will observe that their projects are broadly relevant and experience how model organisms can be used to answer a diverse range of questions regarding any vertebrate animals.In order to support possible transfer to MSU, the PI and the graduate student will set up meetings with financial aid officers, transfer specialists for all students, and major advisors at MSU for those students, who are interested. The course participants will also visit with representatives from the McNair Scholars Program, Undergraduate Scholars Program, INBRE program, Empower Program (all four programs support undergraduate research), and the American Indian Student Success Center. The close interactions with the PI, the graduate students, and the TAfor the duration of the 5-day courses, along with targeted discussions of career paths in STEM and particularly with an eye towards environmental science, will help shape the students' understanding of individuals in the STEM professions and what their careers involve. This may allow students to visualize a future in such professions.