SACNAS Conference Report

American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) National Conference

SACNAS Conference
Anaheim, CA
September 26-28, 2002
Summary of Impressions
Christina Ramirez

MCB Recruitment:
    There were over 2,000 attendees at the 2002 SACNAS Conference. The central location of the booth and the high quality of the MCB display attracted many of them to our booth. Often the students were already interested in the UW or had previous interactions with faculty at the Hutch and UW. Their questions varied from "what is the course load like" to "does it really rain all the time." I answered them honestly, and from their responses, I think that there will be several MCB applicants from the SACNAS conference next year. I also talked to students that were hesitant about what they wanted to do after college or where they wanted to go for graduate school. I emphasized my own experiences and the flexibility of the MCB program. The poster sessions were good opportunities to talk to students about their research and let them know the kinds of research going on at the FHCRC and the UW.

Oral Presentation:
    I gave a 15 min presentation on my current thesis research in the Ostrander Lab. There are a wide variety of scientific fields represented at the SACNAS conference; therefore, the talks are organized into groups relative to their subject matter. Unfortunately all the molecular topics are grouped as a single field. Because of this I tried to keep my talk focused on the broad concepts of why dogs are useful for mapping genetic diseases and the importance of comparative mapping between humans and other species for understanding genome evolution. I was asked several pertinent questions and felt that the talk was well received, if not completely understood.

Contacts:
    The SACNAS Conference provides a great opportunity to make a variety of contacts. I went to recruit for the MCB program but found myself being recruited too! After my oral presentation, a woman from Proctor and Gamble told me about current research to develop new formulas of IAM's dog food. She thought that I might be interesting in working for them after graduation. Later, I talked to a gentleman from St. Jude Children's Hospital. He took my information and invited me to attend a special reception for prospective post-doctoral students. I also made several contacts at the 200+ booths. Most were geared to undergraduates or masters students looking for summer research positions or Ph.D. programs, but there were also organizations with information on post-doctoral positions (e.g. NIH, EPA, NOA, NCI).

Final Impressions:
    The SACNAS conference was a great opportunity for me to share my experiences as a graduate student at the University of Washington and FHCRC. I met many minority undergraduate and graduate students with whom I enjoyed talking about our research experiences and goals. I also made several contacts for future research positions. I hope that I can attend next year and continue to encourage minority students to pursue careers in science.

American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) National Conference
November 7-10th, 2002
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Shannon Murray

I attended the AISES conference as a student representative, with Michele Karansantavelos as the program representative, of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program, in the interest of recruiting American Indian students to the graduate program.

Synopsis of the Conference

AISES chapters exists across North America, including a University of Washington chapter, with the conference having over 2,000 participants, predominantly students and academics. AISES, a non-profit organization, was established to support American Indian students culturally and financially, in view of the high dropout rates and low college enrollment and graduation rates of American Indians compared with all other ethnic groups in the United States, and the severe under-representation in the science and engineering fields. AISES has provided scholarships for over 800 undergraduates and graduate students attending MIT, Washington University, Dartmouth, Stanford, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and numerous other universities, as well as Tribal Colleges; many of these undergraduates interested in pursuing graduate studies in the sciences attended the conference.

Our booth was one of the over 200 exhibitor booths at the career fair. We were positioned within the academic section, adjacent to UC Santa Cruz Graduate School, Eastern Washington University, University of Oklahoma, Oak Ridge Laboratory, and Stanford University.

Mostly undergraduates, and some high school students visited our booth. The senior undergraduates took detailed information about the program, and seemed impressed by the diverse areas of research represented by faculty in the program. However, some of the students were not clearly informed of the funding available for graduate studies in the biological sciences.

The majority of students were interested in summer internships, presumably to experience the labs more directly before deciding to join the graduate program. We were prepared with applications for internships at the Hutch and University.

Additionally, a number of undergraduates from New Mexico State University (NMSU) visited our booth, and were interested in the MCB program. I mentioned the collaboration between the Hutch and NMSU designed to establish student internships, and forwarded them contact information for this program.

Many of the students had specialized interests. For example, one sophomore undergraduate studying mathematics was interested in faculty working in bioinformatics. While we gave the student information about MCB faculty, and took the student's contact information, it may be useful to find ways improve on the process of teaming up students with faculty of appropriate interests.

One student was interested in the kinds of research that can be done with in vitro cell culture technologies, without the use of animal experimentation, which may be another area of concern for American Indian students.

While we were prepared with a contact list of student groups for American Indian students, the presence of University of Washington School of Medicine with Native American representatives from the Office of Minority Affairs was invaluable for MCB recruiting, since students were interested in finding out about the kind of environment that exists at the University and in the area, for American Indian students.

The poster made by the Science in Education Partnership attracted educators and students because it reached a pervasive desire of many of the attendees - to maintain culture, traditions and to connect education and science with community needs.

I saw this interest reflected at the poster and oral presentation sessions. A significant number of the presenters reported on methods to use new technologies and developments in science in conjunction with Native American traditional science to solve environmental and ecological problems. Fore example, one graduate student at University of Wisconsin was identifying the biological structure of plant and microbial enzymes able to breakdown TNT, the explosive, to a non-toxic product, as a method to clean up TNT-contaminated soil. Another undergraduate's project involved identification of proteins involved in azo reduction by gut microflora implicated in the carcinogenicity of azo dyes.

I presented my research poster, which drew quite a bit of interest, and I discussed the potential to use the research findings to improve the quality of life and aid to improvements in biomedical technologies.

Overall, many students were interested in the MCB program, however voiced concerns regarding funding, and were interested in experiencing the labs first-hand by doing undergraduate internships before entering the graduate program.