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Undergraduate Research Opportunities

 

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The Department of Biology at Grove City College offers students the opportunity to perform meaningful and relevant research guided by an experienced and accomplished faculty. Research laboratories are outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment to support student research activities. Current research interests of our faculty include:

Dr. Jan Dudt

  • Development of an automated plant growth chamber: Plant growth chambers that are capable of controlling conditions like light, water, humidity, and temperature remotely come at a significant cost. To develop a more economical model, Dr. Dudt is enlisting an interdisciplinary team of students from Computer Science, Biology, and Electrical Engineering to modify an existing unit. Once developed, students with a particular interest in botany can utilize this chamber to tackle a variety of experimental questions. This work is ongoing.
  • Plant survey: Daniel Beevers ’24 has been surveying and identifying the plants found along the entirety of Grove City College’s campus.  This project is well underway.  The finished work will be published and made available to the public through the college bookstore.
  • American chestnut genetics: Dr. Dudt has a long-standing interest in the re-establishment of the American chestnut tree to its former place in our eastern deciduous forest.  Work to determine the genetic identity of a 40-year-old local chestnut orchard planted from naturally occurring native nuts will contribute to that goal.

Dr. Tracy Farone

  • The GCC Bee Project: Starting in 2019, Dr. Farone and her research students worked to build the apiary project, literally from the ground up. Each student also completed individual projects, including publishing a book about bees, contributing to professional publications, developing an educational website and other community educational materials, and successful grant writing.

During the summers of 2020 and 2021, the project grew to include more research students and projects. The team began to extract hundreds of pounds of honey from our growing hives, (which we donate locally) and collect data for two experimental studies involving drone drifting and diagnostic testing methods for Varroa mites. Under the supervision of Dr. Farone, more experienced students developed a training program for underclassmen joining the team. This layered “watch one, do one, teach one” learning allows training for newcomers with research and instructional opportunities for advanced students. A greenhouse was also added to enhance our capacity to produce pollinator friendly plants in our apiary garden.

In the summer of 2022, on-going research projects continued, and the team earned a Gibson grant to develop a honeybee educational community outreach program for school children. Over the summer, the team, working through the Project on Rural Ministry, was able to serve a local church by helping with VBS, providing honey to foodbanks and widows, and giving a guest sermon on honey and honeybees in the Bible.

This academic year, students worked together to deliver their educational outreach to students at the Grove City School District and pre-school kids at the GCC Early Education Center. This past fall, an anatomical and dissection study of the honeybee was completed and Dr. Farone led a “Fiver” study for chapel on Honey and Honeybees in the Bible. Currently, the team is training “newbees” and designing a new project which could involve offering PCR testing for Dewormed Wing Virus (DWV) to the local beekeeping community to determine the incidence in western PA. All our project summaries are displayed throughout STEM in posters created by our students.

Learn more about the Grove City College bee project.

Dr. Steve Jenkins

  • Ant behavioral studies: Dr. Jenkins’ research focuses on the raiding behavior of two species of “slave-making” ant: Formica subintegra and Formica pergandei. During such raids, ants from colonies of these parasitic species locate, attack, and plunder colonies of host ants up to 80 meters away. He wants to understand the host colony discovery process, host colony response behaviors, parasite colony decision mechanisms, and the communication signals that coordinate long-distance forays involving up to thousands of individual ants.  
  • The “Ant Video Team” and the “Ant SEM Team:” Dr. Jenkins currently has two groups of students working with him. 
    • The Ant Video team has been analyzing slow-motion video of F. pergandei and F. subintegra slave-maker ants engaged in raiding and guarding behavior. Interestingly, this team has identified a pair of novel behaviors: 1) the “leg kick” which seems to be a defense against marauding parasitic wasps, and 2) the “gaster lift” whose function remains to be determined.
    • The Ant SEM team is working with Dr. Jeff Wolinski (Physics Department) to image the fine anatomical structures of multiple Formica ant species using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) on campus. Carrie Dill ’22 and Sam Roettger ’21 presented their data at the Swezey-Janicki competition last spring and are currently preparing a manuscript for publication.

Dr. Kristina Pazehoski

  • Metals in biology: When we think about metals that are important to human health, most of us probably think of iron, but did you know that copper also plays major roles in living organisms? Copper is crucial to numerous biological processes, and too much, or too little, can result in disease. Dr. Pazehoski’s research expertise is in the field of bio-inorganic chemistry, where she studies how cells control the levels of copper so that there is just the right amount for all the good effects, and none of the bad.
  • Integrity of the Intestinal Barrier: Dr. Pazehoski’s research students have been using a human colon cell culture model (Caco-2 cells) to study the integrity of the intestinal barrier tissue. Diseases like Ulcerative Colitis and Chron’s disease involve the breakdown of connections between the cells that form the inner lining of the intestine. That loss of integrity means that the intestine can’t do its normal job of selectively absorbing good things into the bloodstream (like nutrients and water), while keeping out bad things (pathogens, toxins). Dr. Pazehoski’s lab has two main goals:
    • First, they are interested in exploring different models of the intestine. They are comparing the traditionally used 2-dimensional cell culture model to a newer 3-dimensional model known as an “organ-on-a-chip.”  
    • Second, they plan to investigate the influence that various bacteria within the gut microbiome have on the integrity of the intestinal barrier tissue. The gut microbiome can include both good and bad bacteria, and they are interested in using their cell culture models to measure the protective or destructive effects of the bacteria.

Dr. Devin Stauff

  • Human pathogens: The Stauff lab is interested in deciphering ways that disease-causing bacteria sense and respond to their environment using systems known as two-component systems (TCS). They have used tools of genetics combined with chemistry to figure out how these sensor systems work. These studies have the potential to expand our understanding of how organisms respond to their environment and may lead to the development of drugs that interfere with the strategies that bacteria use to cause disease.
  • Research papers: Dr. Stauff and his students have published several papers in peer-reviewed journals and students have presented their research both at Grove City College and at external research competitions.

Dr. Darren Wood

  • Detecting endangered species: Dr. Wood will be sampling for the eastern sand dart (Ammocrypta pellucida), a state-listed endangered species in Pennsylvania using eDNA in the French Creek and Youghiogheny River watershed. Etienne Pienaar ’24 and an alumnus, Jacob Green ’22, are collaborating on the project and hope to present the results this fall at the American Fisheries Society conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
  • Acid Mine Drainage: Dr. Wood and current junior Conservation Biology major Lauren Brockway ’24 are comparing differences among bird communities at a passive treatment site for acid mine drainage (AMD) and a nearby reference site. Lauren hopes to present the results of her work at the Regional Science Consortium (Erie, PA) in the fall.   

Dr. Brian Yowler

  • Cancer biology: Dr. Yowler and his research team are evaluating the anti-cancer properties of various organic compounds by determining their toxicity on human cancer (HeLa) cells. These compounds are synthesized by Dr. Charles Kriley and his research students in the Chemistry Department. Collaborative projects such as this highlight the interdisciplinary nature of science and scientific study.  Several students have recently presented this work at American Chemical Society (ACS) meetings.
  • Bioinformatics: Dr. Yowler is also involved in a large collaborative project with the Genomics Education Partnership. More specifically, students are working to annotate various Drosophila (fruit fly) genes to explore the evolution of the insulin-signaling pathway. Based on the work of Grove City College students and others, several micropublications are being prepared for publication.