{"id":5624,"date":"2017-02-08T14:43:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T19:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groups.etown.edu\/news\/?p=5624"},"modified":"2017-02-21T11:15:34","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T16:15:34","slug":"e-town-integrated-lab-offers-chemistry-students-multi-dimensional-research-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/2017\/02\/08\/e-town-integrated-lab-offers-chemistry-students-multi-dimensional-research-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"E-town integrated lab offers chemistry students multi-dimensional research experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"student<\/a><\/p>\n

Every now and again James MacKay notices students referring to themselves as \u2018organic chemists\u2019 or \u2018forensic chemists\u2019. They categorize themselves into specific sub-disciplines of their chosen major before they\u2019ve had an opportunity to explore others.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, MacKay and fellow chemistry professors created an integrated lab in which chemistry students can break down some of these barriers in the context of a novel research problem.<\/p>\n

E-town chemistry students \u201cvary widely in career interests,\u201d said MacKay, associate professor of chemistry. Some plan to go to medical school; others are interested in industry. Still others choose jobs outside of chemistry. What they don\u2019t always grasp, however, is the idea that science is interdisciplinary, he said. Each chemistry concentration can use the tools of another and many of these tools are broadly applicable in any profession.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis even extends beyond chemistry,\u201d MacKay said. In pharmaceutical sciences, a bit of psychology and business is needed. In some chemistry careers, you might need physics. \u201cIt\u2019s a holistic approach,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n

The atmosphere during integrated lab is absolutely unique.\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The College\u2019s integrated lab is a research-based, two-credit course taken over two semesters. One of the exciting novelties of the course is that students collaborate with a research institution to bring in expertise that does not exist on our campus, MacKay said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe atmosphere during integrated lab is absolutely unique,\u201d said Holly Sofka, a senior biochemistry major who has taken part in the integrated lab. The whole class, she said, separates into one of three chemistry disciplines\u2014computational, analytical, organic. Then, each student is assigned research in two of the three disciplines; they switch halfway through the semester. \u201cWhen put into a collaborative lab setting, one really learns a great amount about themselves and their strengths and weaknesses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sofka said she became interested in biochemistry in high school thanks to an inspiring teacher. \u201cI have always had a passion for helping people, and biochemistry allows me to indirectly help people through scientific findings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything E-town students learn\u2014about chemistry or themselves\u2014by taking part in this course aids in further studies, said Sofka, who\u2019s presently looking into graduate schools and hopes to work in drug design or disease-related research.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Last semester, 10 students in MacKay\u2019s integrated lab course attended the American Chemical Society annual meeting. Two of them presented a poster on their research, which involves the design and synthesis of novel nucleic acids. Thanks to the integrated lab, they were able to explore and discover the structure and properties of \u201cnon-coding\u201d ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules in biological systems, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and again James MacKay notices students referring to themselves as \u2018organic chemists\u2019 or \u2018forensic chemists\u2019. They categorize themselves into specific sub-disciplines of their chosen major before they\u2019ve had an opportunity to explore others. With this in mind, MacKay and fellow chemistry professors created an integrated lab in which chemistry students can break down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":5631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[178,3],"tags":[490,1123,1128],"class_list":["post-5624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achievements","category-real-world-learning","tag-achievements-2","tag-chemistry","tag-feature","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5624"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5685,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624\/revisions\/5685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}