Earlier this year, six College of Wooster students participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program at The Ohio State University. Cosponsored by the Five Colleges of Ohio, Inc., the residential program provided paid summer research internships in STEM and public health fields for students from Wooster, Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, and Ohio Wesleyan.
The Wooster interns, Katelyn Barnes ’27, Thomas Chapman ’28, Teagan Fullen ’28, Kyung Seo Kim ’28, Anakha Shah ’27, and Hailey TerLouw ’28, spent 10 weeks gaining hands-on laboratory experience at a top-tier research university. At the end of the internship, the students presented their findings at a capstone event attended by OSU and Wooster faculty. They will also present their work at Wooster’s Experiential Learning Showcase on Sept. 19 during Homecoming and Family Weekend.
Professor of Mathematics, Dean for Curriculum and Academic Engagement, and Dean for Advising, Planning, and Experiential Learning Jennifer Bowen has witnessed the intellectual growth participants experience during the program. Students “come away with skills in new lab techniques, science writing, and presenting,” she said. They then apply those competencies to their Independent Study and other research projects at Wooster. Along the way, she added, “Students often find they enjoy a particular research area or lab ability that they didn’t know they would enjoy.”
Barnes can confirm that the SURE program helped her discover new avenues of academic interest. During her internship, the chemistry major developed a highly sensitive instrument to measure proteins that are too small to see with standard microscopes. “My day-to-day lab work involved learning to write and edit code to analyze data, working at the laser table to align or calibrate our instruments, and preparing and testing samples on the fluorescence correlation spectrometer I built,” she explained.
The experience influenced Barnes’s intended specialization in graduate school. “At Wooster, I learned how much I enjoyed research,” she reflected, “and as part of the program at OSU, I learned how much I enjoyed working at a laser table and the hands-on building and editing that came with it.” She now hopes to advance her studies in a biochemistry or chemistry research lab that uses lasers and optics, a direction she credits SURE with helping her recognize.
TerLouw, a chemistry major minoring in religious studies and music, spent her internship investigating whether some plants have naturally evolved the ability to absorb light in the far-red portion of the visible spectrum. In the early weeks of the program, she mostly read background literature, with some of her time devoted to learning wet lab techniques. During the second half of the summer, she focused on collecting and analyzing data. Throughout the internship, she gave weekly presentations within her lab group and received detailed feedback on the two official talks she gave.
“The experience allowed me to explore the more biology side of analytical chemistry,” she said. And although the internship helped her realize she doesn’t want to pursue an advanced degree in biology, TerLouw added that it gave her “the opportunity to see what graduate school would be like.” She’s now considering whether that’s the path she plans to pursue.
During his internship, fellow chemistry major Chapman studied how altering a molecule bound to cobalt affects the metal’s ability to catalyze the reaction that adds hydrogen to an organic compound called styrene. He also got to collaborate with Wooster chemistry graduate and current OSU grad student Ellen Daugherty ’25.
“Ellen was an excellent mentor,” he shared. “They were very knowledgeable and able to answer virtually every question I had.” Chapman also credits Daugherty with easing his transition into the program. “It was fun to discuss our shared experiences during free periods,” he said. “Through Ellen, I was able to make meaningful connections with the other people in the lab very early on.”
His time at OSU helped clarify Chapman’s postgraduate plans. “After this experience, I definitely want to go to grad school for a Ph.D.,” he said. He has yet to decide whether he prefers a career in academia or industry, so he’ll be applying for internships in industry next summer so he can compare that experience with this summer’s program. In the meantime, he appreciates SURE because he learned advanced lab techniques and received valuable advice on grad school. For those purposes, he said, “The program was really helpful.”
Featured image: SURE gave Fullen, a neuroscience major completing the public health pathway, the opportunity to research and present on the messaging used with vaping products.