Braelei Hardt with her red-tailed hawk Inanna

It was a chill December day in Eugene. I was with my falconry sponsor, Christian Fox, who was there in the park with me to observe a training session. I had been training Inanna, my 3-pound red-tailed hawk for about three weeks. Chris was evaluating whether she was ready to come off the creance (a fancy term for a training leash) and fly free. Once the bird is off the creance, there is no way to retrieve her if she should refuse to come to my call.

Our bond, essentially, would be the only tether between us.

The initial test was a disappointment. She came to my whistle with extreme latency when she should have come instantly. I felt ashamed — like a failure. Chris, however, saw potential where I had not. Without notice, he unhooked Inanna from the creance, grabbed her by the ankles, and flung her into the sky.

My heart leapt into my throat. I watched her, baffled, as she faltered in the air then soared to the top of a 50-foot tree. I began to panic. It was as if Chris had taken the training wheels off my bike before I could ride. Alarming thoughts raced through my head. What if she didn’t come back? What if she flew off, never to be seen again? All of my work, all of my devotion, would be wasted.

“Give it a try,” Chris encouraged, a sly grin plastered across his lips. Tentatively, I lifted my gloved fist and swallowed hard. I blew the whistle.

The park was instantly filled with the sound of tinkling bells (secured to her ankles as a type of locator) as Inanna took wing and then dropped like a stone toward me, pulling up at the last second and landing gently, as if she were no heavier than a hummingbird.

She plucked her reward — a bit of rabbit meat — from between my fingers and swallowed it whole. Then she sat. She just sat, perfectly content.

I stared on, the whistle still hanging between my lips. Here was this beautiful, powerful creature, a wild hunter no more than three weeks ago, coming on command. She could have just as easily left me standing there, dumbfounded, and returned to the wild.

The bond forged that day was of a rare breed. One, I would say, that could only be formed between a falconer and her bird. One that can rarely be found between two people, or even two animals. A partnership. Mutually beneficial and boiling over with respect.

Braelei Hardt is a freshman in the University Honors College majoring in zoology.

Madelaine Katz catches a perfect day at Oceanside

Ever since I was very small, I’ve been enraptured by the animal kingdom. And I was very lucky: My mom fueled this fire by taking me to as many zoos, aquariums, wildlife centers and nature parks as possible on our family travels. It was a big part of my upbringing. Now, as a semi-autonomous and somewhat-functioning adult, I still manage to find ways to go to these places as much as humanly possible.

The most recent of these visits was to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

After the exhausting whirlwind that was my START orientation at Oregon State this summer, I was feeling a little bit panicked about the whole moving-across-the-continent-for-college ordeal. Being a native East Coaster from North Carolina, the move to Oregon was going to be quite a shift for me. I was excited, yes, but a heavy dose of nerves was definitely there too. And what was the one thing that could make me feel myself?

“Dad, can we drive out to Newport? There’s an aquarium there!”

And so we did. It was mostly empty on that sleepy Wednesday afternoon, and I happily roamed around the exhibits, lost and immersed in my own underwater world.

Rounding the corner from some dozing sea otters, I approached my favorite animal, the Great Pacific Octopus. As I walked toward the tank, however, a disgruntled family was heading in the opposite direction, expressing frustration. “Why didn’t it come out?” they were complaining. “Why was it hiding in a hole like that?”

As they made their way noisy way out, I slowly walked up to the glass window of the octopus’ tank. It would appear completely devoid of life if it were not for the single, telltale tentacle spilling out from a small dark crevice in the corner.

Even though I couldn’t see more than this lone tentacle, a flood of simple respect washed over me for this incredible creature. The intelligence of these mollusks is legendary among biologists. I’ve heard many a story of their cunning and wit, whether it be outsmarting predatory sharks three times their size, or figuring out how to make a coconut shell a useful tool for shelter. I closed my eyes and placed my hand on the glass, and smiled to myself. I was, and still am, in love with the fact that these animals exist in the world.

I sighed, and opened my eyes. And splayed out on the bottom of the tank, big and bold and totally orange, was the octopus, come out from hiding in its watery cave. And I swear it was looking at me.

Some part of me will always doubt it, but the larger and more playful side of me believes that the animal felt what I was feeling and came out to say hello, or at least to investigate. A volunteer told me later that the nocturnal octopus rarely comes out during the day, and that I was lucky to be able to witness it.

Lucky, yes.  I felt wonderfully lucky to be able to share that moment with that phenomenal cephalopod. But was it happenstance? Who knows, but that creature sure had a wonderful effect on me, and maybe, just maybe, I had a similar effect on him.

Madelaine Katz is a freshman in the University Honors College majoring in zoology.

Dan Arp chats with Chelsea Carnes, a junior in nutrition science with a chemistry minor and a student in the University Honors College. (Photo: Dennis Wolverton)

“Research” means more than laboratory science and engineering. It includes creative endeavors in the arts and humanities. And as dean of the University Honors College, I have found few experiences more fun and rewarding than getting to work with students on projects covering every imaginable subject. In the Honors College, we have made research the capstone of the undergraduate experience in the form of a senior thesis. My colleagues will probably agree with me that there is something special about being there at that “aha” moment when students discover what an experiment is telling them or find their interpretive voice through a musical composition or literary work.

Chelsea Byrd (OSU B.S., Microbiology, 2001; Ph.D., Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2005) is a great example of a student who benefited from an undergraduate research experience. Chelsea works for SIGA, a Corvallis biotechnology company, where she designs countermeasures for infectious diseases. She discovered her passion for research as an undergraduate in my laboratory as she helped sort out how bacteria can degrade environmental pollutants. Chelsea also gives back to her alma mater by serving on the Board of Directors of the OSU Alumni Association.

Connecting the Dots

Few academic experiences have such long-lasting benefits. Studies, including the National Survey of Student Engagement (Indiana University), consistently reveal the positive effects of a research experience. For example, students who do research are more likely to stay in school, to experience diversity and to view their entire undergraduate experience more positively. They gain confidence and become better communicators. Classroom learning becomes more real as it gets put to use in the laboratory or in primary source analysis. Research experiences have even greater impacts on members of underrepresented groups.

Research is one of the most effective ways to help students move from lower-order thinking skills — remembering, repeating, understanding — to higher-order skills — creating, analyzing, evaluating. Students also learn to work independently but as part of a team; they learn to collaborate. These skills and experiences are increasingly vital to professional success. Graduate and professional schools expect that students will have had independent research experience, and employers are more likely to hire an individual equipped with the advanced skills developed in research.

Oregon State University provides many opportunities for undergraduates to do research. With more than 1,000 professors working in diverse disciplines, research at OSU is not just about white lab coats and test tubes. Our “laboratories” include estuaries and open seas, farm fields and forests, art studios and music practice rooms. Through these varied experiences, students learn about more than the world around them. Most importantly, they learn about themselves.

Anneke Tucker has demonstrated the power of natural plant products to reduce glucose levels in people with Type 2 diabetes. (Photo: Frank Miller)

Last winter, judges in a national competition, The Journal of Young Investigators’ Second Annual Virtual Poster Session, recognized her sklls and ambition when they awarded her first place for a video presentation on research with scientists in OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute (LPI). It was Tucker’s second presentation to a scientific audience.

The University Honors College student grew up in a ranching community and, inspired by her participation in Future Farmers of America, came to Oregon State University to study animal science. But instead of healthy cows, it was healthy people that drew her attention, so she switched her focus in the College of Agricultural Sciences to BioResource Research. Intent on getting into a lab to satisfy the required 400 to 600 hours of laboratory experience, she searched for a mentor and applied for undergraduate research funding from OSU’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute program and from the OSU Office of Research.

Natural Remedies

Then she met Balz Frei and Meltem Musa. The LPI scientists were planning to test plant extracts — grapeseed, Japanese knotweed and white and green tea, among others — for their ability to treat Type 2 diabetes. In addition to laboratory studies, they planned to do human trials. Tucker was hooked. “Since I was the only student working with Dr. Musa and Dr. Frei on that particular project, it allowed me to have a greater understanding of the overall goal of the research,” says Tucker. She followed the project from the start, asking questions along the way. “It seemed like a perfect match,” she adds, because she was taking classes in biochemistry and nutrition at the same time.

Tucker focused on two enzymes — alpha amylase and alpha glucosidase — that play a key role in diabetes by breaking carbohydrates down into glucose molecules. Glucose is vital since it powers our cells, and most people keep blood glucose levels within a healthy range.

But in those with Type 2 diabetes, blood glucose can rise to harmful levels. The disease has an unknown cause, and its symptoms are devastating: increased risk of Alzheimer’s Disease, stroke, heart attack and high blood pressure; damage to nerves, kidneys, eyes, skin and mouth; osteoporosis. In the United States alone, 23.6 million people have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and another 54 million are thought to be pre-diabetic. The price tag: $218 billion annually, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Results Were Mixed

Working closely with Musa, Tucker compared the effectiveness of plant extracts to a prescription medication that carries a high price tag and has serious side effects. Her results were mixed. She found that several of the plant extracts are more effective than the drug in reducing the activity one of the enzymes, alpha glucosidase. For the other enzyme, alpha amylase, the drug was more effective.

Tucker is applying to medical school and intends to specialize in women’s health and nutrition. “Ultimately,” she says, “I would love to open a clinic in a rural and under-served community (which is where my fiancé and I come from) and offer medical services and education regarding women’s health and life-long nutrition and health.”

____________________

Learn more about undergraduate research opportunities at OSU.

Robbie’s mom didn’t stop there. She urged her reluctant son to spend his junior year of high school as an exchange student in Ecuador. He loved it. Ecuador had so much a teenager like him wanted — diverse ecosystems, more endemic species than almost any country in the world and a rich, varied culture. “It was one of the most formative experiences I had,” he says.

At OSU, Lamb has strengthened the marriage of those two passions – science and culture. He’s a biology major pursuing an International Degree and marine biology option. He’s spent countless hours in the lab and the field, and he’s written his own grant proposals to get funding for research in the United States, Ecuador and the Bahamas.

But perhaps Lamb’s crowning achievement came in the mail on April 2 — a letter approving a Fulbright grant to continue his studies in Ecuador. In September, Lamb will use the grant to help build a marine reserve in the country’s Esmeraldas region — with fishermen’s input. “I’m very ready to go work with them,” Lamb says. “A big part of developing sustainable fisheries there will be establishing my own relationships with fishermen.”

It won’t be the first time Lamb has melded scientific and cultural work. As a congressional Gilman Scholar, he studied in Ecuador his sophomore year and interned with the Ecuadorian marine conservation group Equilibrio Azul, surveying sea turtle nesting sites and the shark catches fishermen hauled in daily. Counting sharks was a particularly sensitive job in Ecuador at the time. Shark fishing was illegal, and the fishermen were initially suspicious of him.

Gaining their trust was difficult, and where Lamb used to see only a conservationist’s argument, he began to understand the fishermen’s side of the story. “I saw them for the people that they really are. They’re just trying to feed their families,” Lamb says. The experience crystallized his career path. “That experience was very pivotal in directing my interest toward sustainable fisheries,” he says.

Lamb’s travels didn’t end in Ecuador. During his junior year, he took advantage of two of OSU’s undergraduate funding opportunities: the Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship & Creativity grant and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute program.

The grants took him to the Bahamas, where he worked as a research assistant for zoology professor Mark Hixon and even performed his own study on the effects of Bahamian marine reserves on fish communities. “What’s great about Robbie is that he is so enthusiastic, so willing to work and so dedicated to learning about ocean conservation and management,” says Hixon.

Now, with funding from Oregon Sea Grant, Lamb is working with zoology professor Bruce Menge, studying the same tide pools he visited as a child. He’s looking forward to returning to Ecuador and eventually wants to earn a Ph.D. “I’m definitely interested in teaching. It’s probably the best way to give back to the next generation,” Lamb says.

________________________

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Now, the OSU senior and Honors College student from Beaverton, Oregon, is working her way toward a bachelor’s in physics, and she still has that same love for weather. Since she first learned about hurricanes, she has dreamed of studying these raging, destructive forces of nature.

For scientists, hurricanes are physics in action. So with support from a Research Experience for Undergraduates grant from the National Science Foundation, Johnson has been learning about atmospheric radiation, heat transfer and other phenomena, in addition to picking up some advanced mathematics. And she has refined her focus from the continental-scale forces that create storms to the boundaries of a single cloud, where dust, moisture and air currents collide.

“I wanted to learn how clouds form,” says Johnson, “and how the particles they form on affect cloud properties.” So under guidance from Associate Professor Cynthia Twohy in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, she has been getting an intimate look at the seeds on which clouds grow.

Her project is part of a federal research program known as the Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean experiment, or RICO. The goal is to understand the forces that create sub-tropical cumulus clouds, one of the globe’s most prevalent cloud types and a factor in the Earth’s energy balance and climate. Twohy is a principal scientist in RICO.

In a lab bathed in green light, Johnson inserts particle samples into a transmission electron microscope. “An instrument (mounted on an airplane) gathers particles from clouds, evaporating most, if not all, the water along the way” and depositing them on delicate membranes known as grids, she says.

The microscope’s X-ray beam reveals sea salt crystals and dust grains. Black balls of carbon are among the smallest. These particles of soot come from forest fires and fossil fuel combustion. Sulfuric acid is a common component, says Johnson, but it is so volatile that it tends to boil away under the beam.

“Kim’s research will determine whether clouds forming on these particles are different from clean marine clouds,” says Twohy. “This will help us learn how pollution affects cloud properties, one of the largest uncertainties in understanding climate change.”

By combining information about chemical composition with data on trajectory, temperature, wind speed and altitude, scientists can determine the source of the particles. Johnson is excited about her work because she is learning first-hand how the origin of an air mass affects cloud formation and why some clouds generate more rain than others.

“We’re finding that some air trajectories reaching the site are influenced by dust from Africa or pollution from North America or Europe,” Twohy adds.

Johnson’s research has changed the way she looks at the sky. “Clouds look so clean and white, and people think of them as just drops of water. But there’s so much more going on in them. The surface area and size of these particles affects how much water can condense and whether or not rain can form,” she says.

When she is done with a four-hour stint in the lab and isn’t working as a teaching assistant in a physics class, Johnson spends time with friends and family. She has plans for a winter wedding and intends to study meteorology next fall at the University of Arizona, where she aims to get back to her childhood dream of studying hurricanes.

Erin Rieke (left) has conducted much of her research in Christine Kelly’s chemical engineering lab. She has also shared her skills with younger students. As a member of OSU’s Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering Student Society, she visited Oregon schools, introducing students in grades three to 12 to bioengineering concepts. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

At one time, Erin Rieke might have been hesitant to take risks, glad to let someone else step up. Hard to tell now.

The 22-year-old senior in bioengineering from Tualatin, Oregon, has been doing extraordinary things for an undergraduate: culturing breast cancer cells, exposing them to controlled doses of radiation, learning how to make nanoparticles that can circulate in the body. She loves research, but the goal for this pre-med student is to become a doctor.

“First and foremost I want to be a physician. I want to heal people. I love learning, but it’s almost useless if you can’t apply it to helping people and making advances in society,” she says. “That’s what drives me.” Rieke has convinced others of her commitment, earning an OSU Presidential Scholar award and a nationally competitive Goldwater Scholarship.

During two summers as a student in OSU’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute program, she worked with Christine Kelly, associate professor in chemical engineering, to establish a new program of breast cancer research. Kelly and her team are taking advantage of recent developments in nanotechnology to create particles that can search out cancer cells and deliver lethal medication without harming surrounding tissues. Other team members include Professor Stuart Helfand and Wade Edris, lab tech, in Veterinary Medicine, and Kelsey Yee, a chemical engineering graduate student.

In 2005, Rieke’s role was to learn cell-culturing techniques and to create a supply of breast cancer cells for future experiments. She then conducted irradiation experiments, applying four different tests to monitor the effects on cells.

Last summer, she and Yee synthesized nanoparticles, a promising mechanism for delivering medications. They used molecules known as “dendrimers,” growing them through successive chemical reactions, a little like adding spokes to a bicycle wheel. Other molecules — such as anti-cancer drugs and fluorescent markers — can be attached to the ends of the spokes. The work will become part of Rieke’s Honors College thesis.

Not surprisingly, there were setbacks. “Erin is very good at troubleshooting. When things didn’t go right, she asked the right questions and searched the scientific literature for answers,” says Kelly, who asked Rieke to assist with a new course on cell culture and tissue engineering.

When she was still in high school, Rieke was attracted by challenging careers: law, medicine, engineering. “In an anatomy class, the intricacies of the human body just amazed me and blew me away,” she says. But she credits her father Ross Rieke, a civil engineer and OSU graduate (‘82), for encouraging her to consider engineering and to take chances.

“I have a lot of his engineering traits. It’s a little scary,” she says with a laugh.