Pre-College Program Fuels Discovery, Exploration Through Hands-on University Research

During the warm summer months, when the UMass Amherst campus quiets and vehicles move freely down Massachusetts Avenue without yielding to a steady stream of students, there are some areas that still buzz with activity.

Rianna Mitra, left, a high school student in the Adler Lab, examines a bee sample with doctoral student Sonja Glasser. Top: A high school student uses a pipette to transfer a liquid into a vial in the Park Lab.

For six weeks, 57 high school students from across the country developed cutting-edge research skills alongside doctoral and undergraduate students in eight academic departments across campus in the Research Intensives Pre-College Program.

In Fernald Hall's Pollinator Health and Ecology Lab, known as the Adler Lab, Distinguished Professor Lynn Adler hosted a small cohort of high school students during the lab's most active months providing hands-on experience with bees in lab-based experiments and out in field sites with pollinator habitats. The lab's mission is to study the role that specific flowers can play in transmitting pathogens to key pollinators, such as bees. By better understanding how the pathogen is transmitted, researchers can help support sustainable and healthy ecosystems.

This immersive research program, designed for academically successful rising high school juniors and seniors, is part of the University Without Walls (UWW) Pre-College Program. It offers a variety of single and multi-week academic sessions online, on the UMass Amherst flagship campus and Mount Ida Campus in Newton, held from late June through Aug. 8. Throughout the six-week program, students conduct their own independent research then present their findings in the Integrated Sciences Building for parents and guests on the final day.

Students lived on-campus in the Commonwealth Honors College dorms or commuted if they live nearby. Those with strong academic backgrounds in math and science were encouraged to apply early, as labs fill up quickly, said Erin O'Rourke, director of Pre-College Programs at UWW.

"We're a strong research campus so it's very popular," O'Rourke said. "We had 150 applications this year. We get far more applications than we have room for."

Adler, who has taught at UMass since 2004, has been welcoming high school students into her lab since 2014, when the pre-college program was first offered to faculty researchers. Since then, she has happily built a network of Adler Lab alumni.

"It seemed like a win-win to me. I am a field ecologist, so summer is our most active research time-that's just the nature of the kind of research that I do," Adler said.

Doctoral student Sonja Glasser works in the Adler Lab "Red Room" to check on a bee colony.

"One of the things that I love about this research is that it is very well suited to engaging people at all different levels. We can train people on the protocols they need to contribute productively to the research we do. And, I have had, by and large, fantastic students through the years."

For Rianna Mitra, a high school junior from Morganville, New Jersey, and Caleb Hopkins, a high school senior from Philadelphia, deciding to come to the UMass Amherst campus was driven by their interest to work alongside faculty, doctoral students and explore a new field. They worked with Sonja Glasser, a doctoral student in the Organismic Evolution Biology graduate program, on the bumblebee cell cultures project. Their research focused on the harmful pathogen Crithidia and measured how time spent in cultured media can affect its transmission and infection in bumblebees.

"I realized that in this lab, I was going to be paired with a professor and with Ph.D. students like Sonja," Mitra said. "And I really never worked with ecology or bees before, so I wanted to see how that would go."

She added, "I feel like a lot of the other STEM fields we know stuff about; we have some background knowledge. But with bees, I didn't know anything, and I was scared [of them], too. So now I feel like I got better with that fear."

Hopkins was excited to learn about a complex organism that you can observe in your own backyard, not just in a lab setting. Mitra agreed, saying she was surprised that bees "even have personalities."

Hopkins and Mitra learned that bees can't see in red light because they lack the appropriate color receptors. To collect bees from their colonies for experiments, they used the "red room."

Hopkins added, "I thought working with hundreds of bees-like putting my hand into a box full of them-would be scarier than it was."

Other students traveled outside the lab and into the field sites with pollinator habitats to gather bees and data, or, like Mitra and Hopkins, worked in other parts of the Adler Lab assisting graduate students with their work while conducting their own independent research.

Yeonhwa Park, professor of food science, reviews data with one of her students in the Park Lab.

Across campus in the Chenoweth Building, six rising high school juniors from the U.S., China and Taiwan were inching their way toward discovering the field of food science in the Food and Environmental Chemical Impact on Development of Obesity lab, led by Yeonhwa Park, professor of food science and F.J. Francis Endowed Chair. Through studying the common roundworm, the Park lab's research can help determine on what food bioactives can help prevent obesity and promote healthy aging in adults.

"I'm using different food bioactives compounds to treat the worm and see if their fat goes down or goes up or has no change," Park said.

Tung Phan, a master's student from Vietnam who works with the students, said they use chemical compounds that derive from natural food, such as types of herb and plants, to observe if they have anti-obesity effects on the roundworm grown in the lab.

"Our aim here is to find how to prolong the lifespan, but also give everyone a healthy, fulfilling life. As we all know, obesity is one of the most concerning epidemics at the moment, and it has a lot of negative impacts on public health and the economy," Phan said.

Master's student Tung Phan looks into a microscope while high school student Owen Liu looks on in the Park Lab.

Owen Liu of Morris County, New Jersey, was eager to do hands-on work in a life sciences lab-an environment he'd like to continue through college and a career in medicine.

"I actually get to use the tools like the micropipettes and other stuff like that," Liu said. "In school, we wouldn't get to use any of those things, but now that I'm in a lab at UMass, I get to do that."

Leah Im chose to make the cross-country trek from Seattle because of the freedom it offers and the hands-on experience that will benefit her interest in pursuing a career in medicine.

"I liked how it is less structured, unlike a course. You're performing your own research, your own experiment, which is something that I really valued," Im said.

Surin Nayak, who is from Lexington, Massachusetts, agreed. He was specifically looking for a hands-on summer program in food science. His grandparents own a Mexican and Indian fusion concept restaurant in the Washington, D.C. area.

"I was looking for something in the food science area, and UMass has a very well-established food science program, so for me, this was a great fit," Nayak said. "Also, food is like a core value of my family; it's something I've grown up around."

The lab uses food samples from the common human diet, such as green tea, onions and berries, and converts them into compounds that are fed to the roundworms. Nayak and Liu both discovered with their projects that compounds in cinnamon and in soybeans have anti-obesity effects.

"It's shown the effects that essentially the worms are eating less, so they are less fat," Nayak said. "It does have the effect of fighting obesity or lowering the chances."

High school student Surin Nayak uses a pipette and microscope in the Park Lab.

Phan said the discoveries students make are significant, especially for people who follow a plant-based diet.

"I wish that I'd had this opportunity; it is very valuable for them and for public health," Phan said. "I strongly believe that this experience will open a lot of doors for them in the future."

In her ninth year of hosting the summer program, Park said she enjoys it as much as the students, who often don't want to leave at the end.

"These high school students, they just love being in the lab, and love what they're doing," Park said. "Their showing their happiness and it's the same feeling all around."

For more information, visit the Pre-College @ UMass Amherst website. To learn more about the Adler Lab and its research, view an article and video here.