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Students delve deeper with undergraduate research projects With the growing number of Ph.D. faculty being recruited to LSU, the opportunities for undergraduate student/faculty collaborations in research abound. Working side-by-side with Ph.D. faculty, an undergraduate researcher can choose to work in the laboratory or in the field to discover what his or her chosen course of study may be like. Students have the opportunity to:
Through programs such as Chancellor's Future Leaders in Research, the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Biological Sciences program and the Ronald McNair Program, students have the opportunity for stipends and faculty mentorships, allowing undergraduate students to conduct graduate level research. Here are three undergraduate students who have taken advantage of what LSU and its faculty have to offer. Meet Kenny
"There is a great health disparity in the African American communities," Kenny said. "We must do more research to devise better nutrition strategies, health prevention and educational programs to reach this group." To accomplish his goals of getting into medical school and becoming a doctor, Kenny has taken advantage of the research opportunities afforded to him as an undergraduate at LSU. In Kenny's freshman year, he worked as a lab assistant in the Human Ecology Nutrition Research Laboratory, assisting various professors who were testing how diet affects bone density.
"Dr. Tuuri has treated me more or less like a graduate student," said Kenny. "She has given me a lot of freedom with the research I am collaborating with her on. My experience in research has truly been unique."
"Under the guidance of Dr. Tuuri, I had the opportunity to write a grant, complete an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and recruit participants for the study, which was quite a challenge." Kenny said. Aside from research, Kenny is currently the president of the Student Dietetic Association, a member of Mortar Board, Omicron Delta Kappa and Minority Science Pre-Professional Society. He was recently selected to Leadership LSU and Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges. Kenny is also a member of the School of Human Ecology Recruitment Committee and the School of Human Ecology Didactic Advisory Board in Dietetics. In his junior year, he served as president-elect of Student Dietetic Association, vice-president of WCA Hall Government, professional career panel chairperson of the Black History Month Committee and coordinated a canned food drive for the Homecoming Committee. In his freshman and sophomore years, he was a resident assistant in Kirby-Smith Hall, serving on several resident hall committees. He has served on the education committee for the LSU NAACP and was a member of Campus Crusaders for Christ. Meet Tam
With hopes of becoming a physician one day, Tam started to plot her course of study in pre-medicine. In her freshman year, she joined the Minority Science and Pre-professional society. It was within this organization that she learned of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professors Program—a program that has aided in opening many doors for growth and discovery in her field. "The point of the program is to help students get through college and give them experience in conducting research as an undergraduate" said Tam. "It teaches us a lot of good things like how to deal with classes, how to deal with life, and it's heavy on peer mentoring. It is really cool." Once in this program, Tam was paired up with Isaiah Warner, Boyd Professor and Philip W. West Chair in Air Quality/Environmental Analytical Chemistry, to work in his lab researching and identifying proteins that are associated with heart plaques. Based upon Tam's exceptional performance in the lab her sophomore year, Warner decided to nominate her for the HHMI Exceptional Research Opportunities Summer program or ExROP. In the summer of 2004, Tam was one of 11 students picked to participate in a research project funded by the HHMI program at Harvard Medical School.
"It [Harvard] was very rigorous," said Tam. "I have always worked in a chemistry lab, so I didn't know anything about cell biology research. It is completely different. I had to learn everything from scratch. I was learning things out of textbooks on my own. It really pushed to me to the limit, working under intense stress and still having to learn at the same time." But in the end, Tam was grateful for the experience she had at Harvard, and it helped her realize some things about herself that she did not know. "At Harvard I learned so much more than I have ever learned before," she said. "I didn't know that I could learn everything on my own and that I didn't need teachers to teach me everything. It was really one of the most enriching experiences of my life." With all the experience she has gained in research, Tam is now contemplating getting an M.D. and a Ph.D. when she enters medical school. While she is unsure about what medical school she would like to attend, she plans to travel west over the summer to check out Stanford University and the University of California at Berkley, and possibly participate in summer research projects at these schools. Meet Colton
Colton serves as secretary for the Business College Council and pop culture chair on the Union Program Council. He is also a member of the executive council of the LSU Ambassadors, streak leader in STRIPES, a top ten freshman and in the fall of 2004, his peers voted him homecoming king at the LSU vs. Troy State game. But it was because of his energetic attitude, his ability's balance the books with extracurricular activities, and the Chancellors Distinguished Leaders in Research program that a unique collaborative research project was spawned between Colton and Barbara Apostolou, professor and chair of the accounting department in the E. J. Ourso College of Business. The two are working together to test a hypothesis that "student leadership skills are developed outside of the classroom."
"This is really cutting-edge research," said Apostolou. "I know of no one else who is doing this type of work." Colton said that he is excited about the opportunity to publish the research with Apostolou, and he is grateful for the experience to work with her. "I feel so ahead because of the mentoring I have received from Dr. Apostolou," Colton said. "She has really made a huge impact on my life."
Contact Michelle Spielman | LSU
University Relations Related Links School of Human Ecology |
Kenny,
a human ecology senior concentrating in dietetics and pre-medicine,
wants to become a family practice doctor, a registered dietician
and establish preventive medicine clinics to treat underserved
populations. 
The
summer before his junior year, Kenny built upon that freshman experience
and began working with Georgianna Tuuri, assistant professor in
the School of Human Ecology, as a summer project for the Ronald
E. McNair Research Scholars Program. Under Tuuri's direction,
Kenny participated in the research project "The Relationship of
Age and Swim Training Distance with Body Composition in Adult Male
Swimmers." The research was conducted at Pennington Biomedical
Research Center. It was with this first project that Tuuri allowed
Kenny to co-author an abstract in the May 2004 issue of Medicine & Science
in Sports & Exercise, the Official Journal of the American College
of Sports Medicine. He also had the opportunity to present this
research at the annual meeting of The Southeast Chapter of the
American College of Sports Medicine, which took place in Atlanta,
Ga, in late January 2004.
In the spring of 2004, he was awarded an Undergraduate Research Grant from the College of Agriculture to conduct research on "Quantitative Ultrasound Measurement for the Estimation of Bone Mineral Density and Risk of Osteoporosis in Louisiana Adults." 
Before
coming to LSU, people would tell Tam, a junior majoring in biological
sciences, that LSU was such a big school and that she would just
be a number if she decided to attend. Tam did make LSU her choice
and has found what people told her not to be true.
While at Harvard, Tam was assigned to Tom Rappoport, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. Her summer project involved investigating the translocation of proteins across a bacterial cell membrane.
When
Colton, a junior majoring in business administration, tells people
that he is studying to be an accountant, their immediate reaction
is disbelief. They are surprised since his gregarious, dramatic
personality and his high level of campus involvement seem to make
him more aptly fit for a major in theater. 
Apostolou,
who is considered a nationally known leader in the field of accounting
education, is interested in developing a business school curriculum
that teaches the E. J. Ourso College's students the necessary leadership
skills that business recruiters seek in new hires. According to
Apostolou, Colton serves as the laboratory for this project and
with careful assessment of his experiences inside and outside the
classroom; the two will design a recommended curriculum that teaches
leadership. Once the curriculum is designed, it will be empirically
tested and published. 
