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Kenya King
Director
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Perimeter College
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CLARKSTON, Ga.—After the semester wrapped at Georgia State University Perimeter College this spring, the learning continued for a dozen students taking part in a special research project. On one particular day, they clustered around lab tables at the college’s Clarkston Campus, taking copious notes, as Perimeter lab coordinator Zach Degon described the method for triple-checking soil samples.
The student researchers had collected the samples from around the Clarkston Campus, measuring the effects of vegetation and pavement on surrounding soil as the campus prepares for a reforestation project that will add 348 trees to the landscape.
Their work is part of Perimeter’s Summer Bridge Research Program sponsored by the Peach State Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation—commonly known as LSAMP. Now in its sixteenth year, the program prepares minority STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students to practice field research, collaborate on teams and present findings in an open forum.
Biology professor Mark Graves, a Summer Bridge organizer and one of nine faculty guiding the project, said the "intensive" program provides students with their "first experiences in scientific research, designing experiments, and collecting and analyzing data."
Students receive a small stipend, but the real benefit is the experience, Graves said. Graves has been a part of Summer Bridge for the past twelve years, and says that the faculty, an all-volunteer crew, understand the significance of the work.
"If we didn't do this, what would students do?" he said.
"These are opportunities they wouldn't have otherwise."
Summer Bridge is only part of the national LSAMP program. Named for former Ohio congressman and civil rights activist Louis Stokes and funded by the National Science Foundation, LSAMP aims "to increase the number of underrepresented minority students statewide" according to program literature. LSAMP students practice STEM fieldwork and engage in academic discourse, from attending conferences to presenting their own research and findings.
This year's Summer Bridge project is unique in that the students, though split into three teams, have worked collectively on a single project measuring soil health.
The work draws heavily on biology and chemistry, new for many of the mostly engineering and computer science scholars.
Tiffani Singleton, a computer science major who studied soil nitrates, said she's never taken a chemistry course.
"That was a big learning curve," she said.
"But I feel like I've learned a lot. I love lab work and getting to use my skills from biology in a real-life project."
Soe Wai Yan and Kiana Vigilance, part of the team studying soil Ph, also said the process of the field work came slowly at first.
"But I enjoyed the flow," Soe Wai Yan said, adding that the three weeks have now led him to "a sea of knowledge."
Vigilance shared that the challenge and diversity of study is what initially drew her to LSAMP.
"The program expands your horizons," she said. "And you can be with like-minded individuals."
Though students will not take part in the actual reforestation of Clarkston Campus, the tree planting and re-paving may provide future opportunities for field research, according to Graves.
“That’s exactly what Summer Bridge does,” Graves said.
“It opens Perimeter students to a field of possibilities in the world of research and making our communities better.”
Story by Ben Austin
Photo by Kenya King