Author Archives: Chelsea DiCarlo

A Postcard From: Elicie Edmond ’21

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This summer I had the opportunity to intern at Prevention Point Philadelphia. Before beginning this internship, I had very little knowledge of the organization, or the services they provided. The most I knew of Prevention Point was that they offered harm reduction services to those affected by the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia communities. I also knew it was located in Kensington, the neighborhood known as the center for Philadelphia’s drug market. However, I wasn’t even aware Philadelphia was one of the major cities affected by the opioid crisis. A conversation I had with a neighbor back home in Delaware illustrates how vague my understanding of my summer plans really was. When they stated, “So it’s basically a safe-place for individuals to use drugs,” I replied, “Yeah, basically,” and went about my day. To say I was ignorant would be an understatement.

Over the past 10 weeks, I’ve gotten to learn the actual types of services Prevention Point provides, and the history behind this organization. Prevention Point addresses public health and social services efforts that aim to provide harm reduction associated with drug use. This organization began as a syringe exchange program, the exchange of used needles for clean ones, in the 1990s to address the HIV/AIDS outbreak among drug users. Since then, Prevention Point has expanded its program to offer a variety of medical and non-medical services to individuals. Along with the exchange program, these services include:

  • Providing warm meals — sit-down meals and sandwiches
  • Mail services
  • Overdose reversal training and distributing free reversal kits
  • Legal aid
  • Case management
  • Stabilized Treatment and Engagement Program (STEP) — Provides medically assisted treatment (MAT) for individuals using opioids
  • Education services
  • Emergency Packs — Harm-reduction needle packs and supplies
  • Street-Side Health Projects — Provides free medical care through mobile clinics and in-building clinics, and wound care
  • Clinica Bienestar — Specifically works with HIV treatment primarily for the Latino/x populations
  • Outreach and Housing — Linkage to housing services and respite centers, such as the Drop-In Center, for individuals to relax
  • HIV/HCV Testing — also provides referrals to HIV and HCV treatments
  • CRAFT — Program that links individuals to drug treatment

Needless to say, Prevention Point offers a lot, and it is definitely not a “safe space for users to use drugs.” Furthermore, the type of services that PPP provides is not limited to those affected by the opioid crisis. It is a safe place for any individual, no matter their race, gender, background, or socioeconomic status, to receive the aid they need. I’ve had the opportunity to take part in most of these services, and it has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Growing up in a sheltered environment, these past couple of months have really given me a different perspective on issues that I had a very biased view of. The staff at Prevention Point are the most kind-hearted and accepting people I have ever encountered, and the biggest thing I have learned from them is to not enter new environments with negative preconceived ideas about individuals, or their backgrounds, and to treat all people like human beings and give them the dignity they deserve.

Elicie Edmond Elicie Edmond

A Postcard From: Hannah Kim ’20

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At School on Wheels, we aim to provide after-school and summertime academic services to children who are living in shelters, cars, foster homes, or the streets in Southern California. These children range from ages five to 18. We have a large body of volunteer tutors who meet with students at shelters, libraries, and schools all across the region. While the goal of the nonprofit is to be able to provide each student with a personal tutor, it is difficult to match each student with a tutor when there is a growing number of homeless and foster youth.

For example, at the Skid Row Learning Center, an after-school program, our busiest day so far has included 29 students and four adults (including myself). On those days, the vibe shifts from a tutoring center to a classroom with a team that consists of a teacher and a few teaching aids, and it is often hard to be able to provide the one-on-one attention each student needs. Children who live near the poverty line struggle in school far more than those who are not, but homeless children struggle even more than children who live near the poverty line. As a result, many students’ academic abilities may not match with their grade and therefore, need even more personalized assistance.

As a sociology major working in one of the biggest homeless “cities” in America, I am constantly seeing examples of how the social structures of race and gender are intertwined with systemic poverty. Many of the children who attend the Skid Row Learning Center are students of color, and some know more than one language. Some students who leave the Learning Center after their families have secured more permanent housing return, because their families have become homeless again. Although many of these children have experienced numerous traumas, School on Wheels focuses on helping these children grow academically and emotionally by providing some solace and fun.

Summers at the School on Wheels Skid Row Learning Center are a combination of academics and play! On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we provide the students with individualized worksheets and activities that focus on helping them improve in areas where they scored below the Common Core standards for their grade. On Tuesdays, we walk to Pershing Square Park in Downtown Los Angeles for crafts and games, sponsored by L.A. Recreation and Parks, and on Thursdays, we go on field trips, also sponsored by L.A. Recreation and Parks. This summer, the students have gotten the chance to go to the Getty Villa, the L.A. Zoo, California Science Center, Mother’s Beach in Marina Del Rey, and Universal Studios.

My internship with School on Wheels at the Skid Row Learning Center in Downtown Los Angeles has given me the opportunity to work behind the scenes and observe how a nonprofit functions while being able to work directly with the people that are impacted most by the nonprofit’s mission: tutoring homeless and foster youth in Southern California.

If you want to learn more about School on Wheels, check out schoolonwheels.org, and if you reside in the Southern California region, please consider becoming a volunteer tutor!

California Science Center Starfish

A Postcard From: Emma Hoffman ’20

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Name: Emma Hoffman
Class Year: 2020
Major: Environmental Studies
Hometown: Saratoga, Calif.

Placement: The School District of Philadelphia (SDP)
Job Title: GreenFutures Intern
Location: 440 North Broad St, PhiladelphiaSchool District of Philadelphia

I spent this summer working at the SDP’s Office of Environmental Management & Services as a GreenFutures intern. GreenFutures is the District’s first comprehensive five-year sustainability management plan and has five key focus areas:

  • Education for Sustainability (EfS)
  • Consumption and Waste
  • Energy and Efficiencies
  • School Greenscapes
  • Healthy Schools, Healthy Living

Whiteboard Planning

Most of my time was spent on Education for Sustainability, which focuses on implementing lasting and sustainable practices both inside and outside the classroom, and involves teachers, administrators, students, parents, and the greater community. It’s important to note that EfS is teaching for and not about sustainability. Unfortunately, EfS is commonly mistaken for earth science when in fact it is far more! It recognizes that teaching about climate change is important but setting up the framework for students to recognize patterns, take responsibility, and invision solutions is far more valuable. The core standards emphasize an understanding of and appreciation for systems, networks, social responsibility, and cross-discipline communication, and can be applied to any subject area (just like the work I did in my Climate Change 360 program!) Throughout the summer I put together a slide deck to explain EfS to non-science teachers. Some other projects I got to work on included:

  • Interviewing current teachers on how they’ve “sustainablized” their classrooms using EfS standards (one of whom is a BMC alum!)
  • Researching and writing various posts for the GreenFutures blog (how to pack a zero waste lunch, what is Integrated Pest Management, natural alternatives to chemical bug sprays, etc.)
  • Consolidating a Community Partners list of helpful organizations and contacts
  • Promotional posters (+a blog post) about the Philadelphia Rodent Academy
  • Playing phone tag with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (and eventually locating the correct paperwork for the School District to apply as a business partner for a project on safe routes to school)
  • Writing a Scope of Work document for Student Driven Energy program proposals
  • Assembling sustainability themed book and movie lists
  • Drafting promotional tweets and contributing to the grant proposal for Litterati, a community litter mapping initiative
  • Editing the 2018 GreenFutures Annual Progress Report (look for my name at the end in Acknowledgements!)

In addition to working at the 440 building (named for the District’s street address), I also got to see more of Philly. I met the Philadelphia Eagles at the annual Eagles Playground Build (probably the coolest first day of work an intern has ever had), got a private tour of environmental art included in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Modern Times exhibit, and explored the catacomb-like basement and future vermicomposting site underneath Reading Terminal Market.

Mural This summer was an incredible opportunity that I would never have experienced without Bryn Mawr’s connections to GreenFutures. As a student studying the environment and living with the short-sighted stance of our current federal government, it was relieving and inspiring to see forward-thinking programs and people committed to improving our future. I don’t yet know exactly what I want to be doing with the rest of my life, but I am glad to see that there will be plenty of ways to be involved for sustainability.

A Postcard From: Creighton Ward ’20

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I spent my summer as an intern at the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic (FLAC) at Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law. Overall, it has been an illuminating and enjoyable summer, and I’m extremely grateful to my supervisor and coworkers, who have shown me so much about the legal world. In the clinic, I was able to gain first-hand experience of community lawyering, work with clients, and learn more about the politics of immigration law.

I was drawn to a legal internship in immigration because it satisfied an interest in social justice and gave me the opportunity to explore a possible career in the law. To fulfill the requirements of my Political Science major, I took a class on race and law during the spring semester of my sophomore year. In that class, I was able to understand how contemporary narratives that criminalize immigrants are continuous with a longstanding history of homegrown racism and xenophobia in the United States. Laws and public opinion are powerful and mutually reinforcing, and it was in that course that I understood how important activists and organizers are in influencing national discourses. At my internship, I understood this much more acutely, as I saw lawyers collaborating with community organizers and local organizations to defend clients and improve their practice.

Understanding the legal obstacles that undocumented immigrants face in the U.S. has sharpened my feelings about local politics and the current administration’s strengthening of Customs and Border Protection. This was a politically significant summer for the city of Philadelphia, as people mobilized and called for an end to the city’s sharing of the PARS database with Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). When the news broke that the Occupy Ice protests had been successful, and Mayor Kenney announced that Philadelphia would not renew its data-sharing contract with ICE, it was a reminder of what can be achieved when people—not just those experienced in the law—stand together to protect vulnerable communities against injustice. This was achieved through the hard work of immigrant rights organizations such as Juntos, VietLead, and others who have been fighting to end the contract with PARS for years. The clinic has collaborated with some of these organizations and continues to explore the ways that it can support advocacy groups and learn from them.

Working at the clinic often challenged me to do things that I didn’t have experience or background knowledge in, and gave me many opportunities to work on my interpersonal skills in client relationships. There were many times where I observed things—interviews, oral arguments, teaching moments, for example—but there were also times where I was given responsibility to contact clients on my own time. I lack confidence in most situations when I’m talking to people I don’t know well, so this was an opportunity for personal and professional growth.

My internship experience was made special not only because of what I was able to do and observe but also because of the people I spent most of it with. My coworkers, who are law students and undergraduates like myself, are hard-working, intellectually curious, helpful, and friendly. My supervisor, Professor Caitlin Barry, is nothing short of incredible. Her commitment and knowledge shines in her work as an educator and advocate. These people have provided me with valuable guidance this past summer, and will continue to be a source of inspiration in the academic year to come and beyond.

 

A Postcard From: Carolyn Messer ’19

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Being a queer teenager in Texoma, a region that consists of Northern Texas and Southern Oklahoma, was an isolating experience. In the eyes of the majority of Texoma residents, homophobia was just a normal cultural value and anybody who was open about being a member of the LGBTQ+ community was ostracized. After leaving such a toxic environment, I never expected that I would be able to return and find support and community.

However, with my summer internship at The Opal Center, support and community are exactly what I have found.

The Opal Center is an organization I never expected would exist in Wichita Falls. It provides much-needed resources to the LGBTQ+ community in Texoma, currently offering free counseling sessions and biweekly Trans/Nonbinary and LGBQ support groups. Upon learning that this organization existed in an area where it was so desperately needed, I knew I needed to do what I could to support them.

As an intern at an organization that is not even a year old, my responsibilities have been varied and in no short supply. I have done everything from designing brochures to searching for grants to tabling at a fundraising event to things as mundane as making copies of keys. So much of what is important to The Opal Center at this stage is simply doing everything I can to make sure it stays running, both mechanically and financially.

In addition to day-to-day maintenance and fundraising for The Opal Center, a major component of my internship has been outreach, and one of the most interesting forms of outreach we are working on is Out Loud Magazine. Out Loud Magazine is a LGBTQ+ magazine with a special focus on writing and art by LGBTQ+ people that is set to publish its first issue later this month. The magazine is run by the director of The Opal Center, who hopes that its connection to the Center will provide publicity for the services we provide to Texoma’s LGBTQ+ community.

One of the articles I wrote for the magazine was about the Metropolitan Community Church in Wichita Falls, a church founded by and for members of the LGBTQ+ community. The process of writing this article has been the highlight of my internship experience so far. I visited the church for a Sunday morning service, nervous about previous experiences with homophobic churches in the area. However, the Metropolitan Community Church’s mission of “exuberant inclusivity” characterized the service, and the morning was a warm and welcoming experience. I felt safe and supported in a space used to practice a religion all too often manipulated for hateful purposes. I saw queer and transgender people able to openly worship a God that I had been told my entire life hated me, because now they were in a church that affirmed God’s unconditional love for them. Furthermore, I was amazed by the community I saw in the church, with queer and transgender people coming together and loving each other. This was all so far from the rejection and isolation I once thought was the only way LGBTQ+ individuals could live in Texoma. Maybe it was possible for LGBTQ+ people to find community and support in Texoma too.

I left the Metropolitan Community Church that day with a sense of hope. This region might not be universally supportive, but that doesn’t mean that LGBTQ+ people are totally alone. The mission of The Opal Center, to support queer and transgender people and to connect them with others who share their experiences, seemed more important and achievable to me than ever.

With this sense of hope and purpose in mind, there are several projects I am excited to work on going forward. Starting in late July, I will be running The Opal Center’s biweekly LGBQ support group. Additionally, in the next few weeks I will be meeting with one of The Opal Center’s board members to learn about grant writing and begin to secure more funding for the Opal Center. I am so excited to take on these new tasks, as well as anything else that may come my way, because in doing so I am able to help foster a stronger LGBTQ+ community in Texoma and work toward an atmosphere of inclusion and safety that I would have loved when I was younger.

A Postcard From: Sierra Norman ’19

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Thanks to the generous funding from Bryn Mawr College, I have had the opportunity this summer to participate in an internship at The Children’s Center, located in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sierra Norman standing outside of The Children's Center

The Children’s Center is a private, not-for-profit mental health clinic with a mission to provide “comprehensive mental health care to enhance the emotional well-being of infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families.”  It is the largest agency of its kind and provides care to over 2,000 families a year, helping children under the age of seven to improve in managing their feelings, learning to play, making friends, and succeeding in school and at home. They provide affordable services and subsidize families in need with charitable funds.

The Children’s Center is a partner of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and provides evidence-based treatment to children and families exposed to traumatic events. Dr. Douglas Goldsmith is the executive director of The Children’s Center and has created widespread impact on the clinical application of attachment theory, to help heal parent-child relationships. He is nationally and internationally recognized as an expert in the field of attachment and trauma therapy.

My role at The Children’s Center is in their Therapeutic Preschool. The Children’s Center’s Therapeutic Preschool is intended for children who are struggling to succeed in childcare or preschool settings. It provides group therapy, in addition to individual therapy, to support improvement for specific behavioral goals. This program provides intensive, daily treatment, where the children can gain skills necessary to succeed in school, such as learning to listen to adults, manage their emotions, and play with peers. Class sizes are limited to nine students who have a wide range of emotional and behavioral health diagnoses (i.e. autism, hyperactivity, depression, and aggression) and traumatic experiences (i.e. domestic violence, abuse and/or neglect, refugee from war-torn countries, and parent(s) in the military that returned with PTSD).

I assist the therapeutic specialists in the morning with a class of 3-4 year olds and in the afternoon with a class of 4-5 year olds. I am able to be a part of the group therapy and assist in evaluating the student’s progress towards their individual goals. While I am not able to share specifics on my experience here, for confidentiality reasons, I can say that it has made a lasting impact on my life!

Helping others, especially children, has always been very important to me. I have dedicated time for over 10 years to serving my community through various projects impacting children. My long history of involvement with youth has provided me with unique experiences and allowed me to interact one-on-one with children from a variety of different backgrounds and situations. My time at The Children Center is further enriching my experiences and has only strengthened my desire to pursue a career as a pediatric psychiatrist.

A Postcard From: Shelby Hoogland ’19

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When I first moved back to Mystic, Conn., I already had a preconceived notion of what my summer was going to look like after having spent the past semester with the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program. My best friend from the program was going to be my roommate, I would be living in the same student houses, and I would be working with the same professors who had traveled with me from sailing offshore in the Caribbean Sea aboard the S/V Corwith Cramer to hearing how climate change is affecting the lives and the history of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians.

If you know nothing about Williams-Mystic, know that the 30 other people that you get thrown together with, students and faculty, for a semester will become your family. Having already had these important connections with Dr. Tim Pusack, my former marine ecology professor and current research mentor, and with Dr. Rachel Scudder, my former oceanography professor and another current research mentor, made me more confident that this would be the summer where I grow into my new position in life as a field ecologist and as a research scientist.

Shelby Hoogland in field

Carcinus maenas, European Shore Crab: invasive species to the Long Island Sound.

Invasive species pose one of the largest threats to biodiversity worldwide. Additionally, this group of organisms can alter an ecosystem’s characteristics and local populations of native species. These alterations can have negative impacts on local industries like commercial fishing and tourism which directly impact local economies. C. maenas is an introduced crab species originally from coastal Europe that was potentially brought over in the fouling or bored into a wooden ship in the 1800s. The area that I have been studying is Avery Point, Conn., on the University of Connecticut-Avery Point’s campus. Although there are many different crabs that are found in this rocky intertidal ecosystem, the shoreline is dominated by C. maenas. It can be assumed that it is outcompeting native populations of crabs and other invasive species of crabs. In the lab, I am subjecting the crabs to temperatures between 12 dC and 31 dC to mimic the rising temperatures that will be present during the coming years due to climate change. I am measuring their stress responses as a direct representation of how much they are eating daily.

My research has brought me to some really cool places. I mean, how often can someone say that they get to go to the beach for their job? However, more importantly, it has taught me the importance of studying climate change. And it has given me important insight into the lack of knowledge about how climate change will affect vital ecosystems. Looking forward to the future, the uncertainty is high as to what our climate will be like. Additionally, we don’t exactly know how it is going to influence local economies. Funding climate change research is important so that we can better prepare our communities in the face of future disasters.

A Postcard From: Anna Huang ’19

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This summer, I participated in the Clinical and Translational Science Award Internship program at the University of Pennsylvania, and I was matched to a lab studying the lipid metabolism and cardiovascular disease. My experiments use both GC-MS and mathematical model so that I could use skills and knowledge from both my chemistry and mathematics major. Basically, I am assessing the effects of a new drug on lowering lipid levels in patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, which means those patients have unusually high LDL-cholesterol level compared to normal person due to a rare genetic disease, and they do not respond to regular drugs to lower plasma lipid level like statins. Along the process, I understood more about how the education from BMC empowers me in the outside world.

I definitely benefited from the training for research I got in Bryn Mawr College. Back at Bryn Mawr College, I have been working with Dr. Monica Chander for almost two years. I think her strict requirements and guidance prepared me much better than other students from big universities. I am more confident in planning my experiments independently, conducting experiments efficiently and not making basic mistakes. Due to such efficiency and carefulness, I actually got three projects along my internship instead of the originally planned one from my mentors in UPenn.

Also, the close contact with professors in BMC helped me to understand more about establishing and maintaining the mentorship. One important thing I found in this internship is that a good mentorship is more precious than anything else. Before the internship started, I emphasized to my program director that the specific topic of the research is not very important to me at all but a good mentor matters. A good mentor can open the possibility of hundreds of fields to you. And luckily, as I required, my program director got me two really good mentors, who are willing to and feel the need to spend time with me. They respect my time and try to maximize my gaining. They do not only guide me in the lab, but also give advise my future and career goal. The atmosphere in Bryn Mawr teaches me not to be afraid of asking for support and opportunities. This is really useful in a big place like UPenn where there are a lot of opportunities around and you can only ask to grab them by yourself. With this in mind and good mentors, you can really get access to a lot of things. One of the mentors introduces me to some other clinicians and let me shadow the clinical part of the research so that I can understand the whole picture of translational research. The other mentor found me some more projects that I can work on and introduces me to know about other people’s research in the lab. My life is much more colorful than I expected it to be and I enjoy it a lot.

I still have a month left for this internship and I believe that I will enjoy it. I hope what I gained from this summer will accompany me for the rest of the college life.

A Postcard From: Elizabeth McGuire ’20

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Name: Elizabeth McGuire
Class Year: 2020
Major: Anthropology and Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology
Hometown: Veazie, Maine
Internship Placement: Transylvania Bioarchaeology
Job Title: Student
Location: Cluj-Napoca, Romania

What’s happening at your internship? 

My field school is currently working in Jucu on a rescue excavation. Although the land is protected, companies are developing the land and the construction is subsequently destroying the burials. This summer, we have been working to recover the remains and associated material culture.

Dig site in Transylvania

Students participating in this program alternate weeks on site and in lab. At the beginning of the field season, we spent the majority of our time on site doing heavy excavation using mattocks (similar to pick axes) and shovels to get down to the archaeological layer. That proved to be very difficult! After mattocking back a layer, we would use trowels to clean the area and look for signs of grave cuts and fill. Once the layer had been identified we began fine excavation using trowels, brushes, and small wooden tools to carefully uncover the individual buried below.

On lab days, we start with lectures on topics ranging from human osteology, archaeological theory, and paleopathology. Students taking part in this program have varying levels of experience and are at different points in their education, so lectures are crucial at getting everyone on the same page. As the youngest and least experienced student here, I definitely appreciate them! After lecture, we spend time in the lab applying what we have learned, including identifying pathology and determining age and sex of fragmented skeletal remains.

Archaeology students

Why did you apply for this internship?

After taking Professor VanSickle’s bioarchaeology class last year, I discovered my interest in biological anthropology and how it relates to archaeology. It was important to me that I spent some time this summer becoming more familiar with the discipline in order to make more informed decisions about graduate school. As a Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology major, I have taken a lot of classes that focus on material culture, so it has been interesting to study the primary sources that inform our understanding of the past—the people themselves. There is a lot that we can learn from them!

This program has given me exactly what I was looking for—proper field training, a crash course in human osteology, and experience handling and analyzing fragmentary remains. Although it is difficult to identify bone fragments first, it is important to practice doing so. More often than not, fragments are recovered rather than perfectly preserved bone. It has also been great to talk to professionals in this program about how they chose their areas of focus.

Learn more about Bryn Mawr’s Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology Department.

Living in a new city? What has that experience been like for you?

Living in Cluj has been amazing! The program accommodations are about a 25-30 minute walk to the main square—the city center.  I have been enjoying trying out different coffee shops with some new friends before lecture on lab days. We recently discovered iced lavender lattes and have been hooked ever since!

There has been a city sponsored event every weekend we have been here, including Jazz in the Park, the Street Food Festival, and most recently Electric Castle.

The program also takes us on a short field trip throughout Transylvania, highlights including Brasov, Sibiu, and of course, Sigisoara, the birthplace of Dracula.

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

Learning objectives of this program include becoming familiar with methods of skeletal analysis and assessing their strengths and weaknesses, identifying and recording pathological conditions, and practicing proper methods of excavation. Before coming to this field school, I had limited experience with archaeological excavations and no experience working with fragmented bone. This has been an incredible experience overall! I have learned so much over the past five weeks and I am looking forward to applying these skills in my praxis next semester.

Elizabeth McGuire digging at site

Another important aspect of this program have been our discussions about bioarchaeological theory and ethical considerations. Although we can learn a lot from the human skeleton, there are limitations to our methods. We have to be careful about making assumptions about individuals past activities and lifestyles because we should not be giving them new identities. I think one of the most important things that I will take away from this experience is knowing what we can learn from archaeological remains and what we cannot. That knowledge is going to help me critically approach bioarchaeological research and literature in the future.

Learn more about praxis courses.

A Postcard From: Katherine Sweasy ’20

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Name: Katherine Sweasy
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Guilford, Conn.

Internship Placement: Kwan Lab, Dept. of Psychiatry, Yale University
Job Title: Research Assistant
Location: New Haven, Conn.

What’s happening at your internship?

This summer I have been learning about brain cell structure, and how it relates to schizophrenia. I have been spending my time analyzing brain cell images. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to assist a postdoctoral associate with his ongoing project in the lab. I mainly analyze the brain images of several different mice with differing experimental manipulations. One of these manipulations, is a mutation of the Shank3 gene that is highly significant to schizophrenia. This gene is responsible for building a protein that aids in neuron development, and mutation of this gene is highly penetrant; it hugely increases a diagnosis for schizophrenia. The second manipulation takes a pharmacological approach. The lab utilizes ketamine injections with the mice, as there is literature that suggests that when injected in mice, it is effective in modeling observable symptoms that are similar to schizophrenia in humans. One of these symptoms, the one that I’ve been focusing on, is hyperactivity in the brain cells, more specifically in dendritic spines. This is a part on the neuron that is heavily associated with synaptic transmission, the mechanism by which neurons communicate with each other. In the experiment, the mice have their brain activity imaged in vivo, while they are alive. I look at recordings of these in vivo brain images through a program in Matlab. As I go through the frames of each recording, I indicate the neuronal spines that are located near the dendrites, which are long white branches in the images. As a brain cell activates and calcium is released, a protein that’s used to visualize calcium releases called GCaMP6 makes the dendrites and its accompanying spine “light up.” Hyperactivity means there is an overrelease of calcium by the neuron, which can be the cause of many brain dysfunctions. Making note of the differences in brain activity between the mice help understand the role of communication dysfunction in schizophrenia.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I’ve been a psychology major since the beginning of my time at college, but only since sophomore year have realized my interest in neuroscience. More specifically within neuroscience, I wanted to learn about neuronal structure and development, and thus sought out to do so in a research setting. I’ve had limited experience in doing research in something that interested me, and so I wanted to see what research in neuroscience looked like, and if it was something I wanted to do more of as a career.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?

When I had come to the lab, I had taken a few neuroscience classes before, but they did not prepare me for the level of understanding needed to comprehend the research going on in the lab. There was definitely a bit of a learning curve as my postdoc and I figured out where I needed more background information. I wanted to be able to understand my role in the research and how his project fit into the research in the neuroscience field as a whole. I got into the habit of asking as many questions as I could, and the experience has definitely influenced me to take more biologically based classes, which I wouldn’t have thought to do before.

Was this internship what you expected it to be?

Definitely not. It required me to have more of a reflective mindset and a self-motivated mindset. From day to day, my job was to repeat the same task over and over, analyzing data set after data set. I was responsible for one small part in a large project, and so I had to really motivate myself to stay with it. In order to get what I wanted out of the internship, I had to reach out to the people around me. My supervisor and PI have been really supportive and great resources for exposing me to other research that is going on and giving me information about graduate school. I was also surprised by how much the environment impacted me. The lab is structured in a way that focuses on the member’s independent projects and so there aren’t many instances of intentional collaboration that I observed. After a while in the lab, I was surprised to realize that having an aspect of collaboration and communication in the workplace was something I really valued and missed at my internship. People have told me that internships are just as important in informing what you don’t like, and that has been well articulated to me this summer.

Diagram of Neuron

Diagram of Neuron