Hello everyone! As advising week creeps up on us, I thought I would take moment to share with you some of the fantastic undergraduate course work that you have the opportunity to participate in. Though most don’t realize it Microbiology is a major offered through the College of the Ag, and is my field of choice. Though the courses can sometimes be pretty rigorous, they are all worth it. As a senior I have the wonderful opportunity to take the Capstone course specific for Microbiology majors, and I have to say I’m having the time of my life. As a lab group we have a community partner, ours happens to be the Downtown Clinic. The clinic provides primary care for those patients who do not have insurance. When meeting with the nurses at the clinic it was obvious that chronic infection due to diabetes was the most common. As a lab group we set out to design a yogurt that would have a specific blend of probiotics to help those diabetic patients. Now lab work can become very tedious, but through this course we also had the opportunity to attend the American Society for Microbiology Mountain Region conference. We took a trip to Colorado Christian University one Saturday and had an amazing day spent amongst some of the top Microbiologists in the region. We were also able to pick up tips and tricks on how to, at the end of the semester, present all of our lab findings. As the semester marches on our yogurt is improving and we will soon be able to provide the recipe to those patients at the Downtown Clinic to help improve their chronic condition.
I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to have this kind of hands on research experience, designing my own experiments and presenting my findings, as an undergraduate. I know that without my pervious three years of coursework I would never be where I am today. As you start to look at your next semester or your next few years take the opportunities that are presented to you. Take that course that might look daunting; you never know where you might end up!