It is always recommended that incoming freshmen meet with their advisors early on in the semester to become familiar with them and their office hours. 给卡洛琳·特科特, 2018届毕业生, a double major in biochemistry and biomedical sciences, heeding this advice as a new student proved to be a momentous turn in her college career.

卡洛琳去看医生. 切奇的办公室"只是来打个招呼.” “We talked a little about what I wanted to do as a career and I said I was really interested in genetics, 所以她说‘太好了, 加入我的实验室.’ It was a very sudden thing,卡罗琳说.

Dr. Checci和她的丈夫Dr. 安德鲁斯, 都是bet亚洲365欢迎投注大学的教授, run a genetics research lab on campus along with the help of four other students, 包括卡洛琳. The team works with a model organism known as C.elegans, which Carolyn describes as essentially a “one-millimeter long worm.” By studying the process of meiosis on this organism, Carolyn and the other students are able to take this information and then apply it to humans.

“在减数分裂, there has to be these breaks in DNA, and if they don’t get repaired properly they can lead to all sorts of problems like miscarriage, 或者像唐氏综合症这样的疾病, 甚至有患癌症的倾向. So we’re focusing on the repair process for these breaks, ensuring they’re repaired properly so these problems don’t occur,卡罗琳说.

The research that Carolyn has done in Dr. 切奇和博士. Andrew’s lab has shaped both her college career and her future plans. She has presented her work at four different regional symposiums and had the opportunity to travel to Florida this past summer 2016 on a travel award from the Genetics Society of America. There she spoke at the 2016 Allied Genetics Conference, as one of only eight of around 150 applicants selected to present undergraduate research.

Carolyn describes this experience as an honor and says that she wasn’t even expecting to be picked at first because of how large the conference was and how many students applied.

“It was kind of nerve-wracking because I knew there would be a decent amount of people attending and I hadn’t talked in front of a particularly large audience before, so I was practicing for weeks on end to make sure that I got it down right,她说。. “但总的来说，这真的很有趣. I got to see what other undergraduates were doing, mostly on completely different problems than me which were really interesting to see the diversity of students that were chosen,她补充道.

In addition to working in the research lab for 3-10 hours a week, Carolyn is an Honors Student and secretary of the American Chemical Society chapter on campus. Balancing this along with her double major can be difficult at times, 但是卡洛琳说, “The workload is definitely tough sometimes but it’s worth it in the end.”

The tough but rewarding workload is in part what has inspired Carolyn to pursue a career in teaching undergraduates after first obtaining her Ph.D. “Ideally I would really like to spread my knowledge. I’m so thankful for what my professors have done for me, I think it would be really great to give back,卡罗琳说.

Though she is confident in her career path today, Carolyn never thought that she would pursue science when she was growing up. “When I was younger I didn’t really know completely what I wanted to do, I was actually really interested in stuff like art,卡罗琳说. 但高中毕业后, 她发现了表观遗传学, or “the way the way our genetic information is modified by environmental factors,她解释道. “这真的让我着迷.从那时起，她就被迷住了.

最近, Carolyn was one of about 300 students to be chosen as a Goldwater Scholar, a scholarship for students planning to attend graduate school in the sciences or a STEM field. “I was ecstatic…I can’t believe I was chosen,” says Carolyn. 为 the first time in Marist’s history, the school had two Goldwater scholars in one year.

她有那么多成就, it seems strange to even think about Carolyn pursuing a field other than science, although she continues to enjoy art, 尤其是绘画, 在她的业余时间. Her passion for genetics and her time spent in the research lab has provided her with invaluable experiences, 甚至是友谊. “I know some people think that being in a lab is kind of stuffy and you don’t really get to know anyone,卡罗琳开玩笑说, “but there’s a really big group environment…were just like a big group of friends. 我们有内部笑话, 我们出去吃饭, it’s really a more social thing than a lot of people think.”

Perhaps one of the best things to come out of working in the lab is simply the feeling of working on something as a team that has the capacity to evoke real-world change.  This was something Carolyn especially realized when she presented at the National Genetics conference. “It felt like I was doing something important. You don’t think that what you’re doing in undergrad might be seen by an international audience,她说。.

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