Above is a hypothetical experiment proposal that a partner and I wrote for my Ecology class. The assignment was to create an experiment that would test the environmental effects of any issue of our choice. We chose to test the relationship between the assessed condition of a house versus the plant diversity around it. This class taught me how the information that I learned in my Biostatistics class could be used in real world cases. It makes the work required to do well in classes worth it when I am able to use that knowledge to design an effective experiment centered on a real world problem.
Above is the final paper I wrote for my Honors reading seminar focused on Natural Sciences. In this class, we picked books in the natural sciences and each of us read them throughout the semester. My favorite book that we read was Missing Microbes, which is a book about the effect of antibiotics on the human microbiome. This book was followed by Deadliest Enemy, which is about the spread of disease and the path to an epidemic. Reading these books in succession allowed me to gain a greater understanding of the worldwide impact that can result from these changes in a single person's microbiome. This was an important lesson for me because one day I will be the physician that chooses when antibiotics are necessary and responsible for the effects they have on my patients. As a final project, I chose to write a research paper over gene therapy of HIV and AIDS, specifically using HIV-1 derived lentiviral vectors. I was amazed at the current research into using the factors that make HIV so infectious to transfect cells with antiviral genes. My favorite part of writing this paper was learning about how this method is also being used to develop a vaccine for HIV that could possibly be used for prevention as well as treatment. The hope is that this vaccine would be the more economical alternative to gene therapy and could have a better chance of being implemented worldwide. Many of the millions of people living with HIV or AIDS live in low-income areas, so finding a less expensive treatment for this virus is vital to effective future treatment. Overall, this class was one of my favorite that I have taken at Drury. Through the discussions and reading the books that others had picked, I was exposed to topics in the natural sciences that I would not have sought out otherwise. This class pushed me to research topics from the books we read, to look at these topics from the view of others, and to gain a better understanding of my chosen field of study.