Andrew Boddicker, M.S. Graduate student advised by Annika Mosier, received a travel award from the Department of Integrative Biology to attend the American Society for Microbiology's international meeting, Microbe, in New Orleans, LA. He presented a poster at the meeting on his research involving the cultivation and whole-genome sequencing of novel nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. Boddicker was additionally awarded a competitive travel grant from the Rocky Mountain Branch of the American Society for Microbiology to attend the meeting this June.
Andrew McDevitt, Ph.D. student advised by Laurel Hartley, received a travel award from the Department of Integrative Biology and recently attended the 2017 national meeting for the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) Symposium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At SABER, he presented a poster about improving undergraduate research experiences entitled "Promoting inclusion in STEM fields through REU programs: An evaluation of common program assessment techniques." McDevitt's research critically examined common program assessments and proposed a framework that situates assessments in a more educationally meaningful context which will hopefully improve dialogue among these interdisciplinary programs. This poster was an abridged version of McDevitt's most recent manuscript entitled "Three Decades as an NSF REU Site: Lessons and Recommendations" which is currently under review.