Elizabeth Kim Presents at Buena Vista University's Thirteenth Annual Scholars Day

2017 May 1

Buena Vista University's (BVU) thirteenth annual Scholars Day was held Saturday, April 29. The event provided students from all disciplines an opportunity to present their best original research, academic posters, artistic creations and performances to their peers, professors and the public.

This year's Scholars Day event featured 63 presentations from 120 students, exploring topics from literature and business to science and history.

Elizabeth Kim, a senior biology and Spanish major from Fairmont , was one of the students who participated. Kim's presentation was titled "Designing and implementing activities for national Brain Awareness Week," and the project's abstract is as follows:

According to the National Math and Science Initiative, only 36% of high school students are prepared to take a college level class in the sciences. There is a large emphasis to change this statistic through introducing educational experiences that get students excited about science. Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is a national event that takes place every year in March. The purpose of BAW is to educate people of all ages about the wonders of the brain. The Honors Life Science course participated in BAW this year. One class objective was to get kids excited about science through learning different aspects of how the human brain functions. To accomplish this, a poster and an interactive activity were created based on a topic of interest. BVU students traveled to Storm Lake Middle School to present to over 200 6th graders. Brain Awareness Week served its purpose of educating the students about the complexity of the brain, but most importantly it planted a seed of curiosity to learn more about the brain.

To See or Not to See, NIS is the Question: Visualizing the NIS protein using immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy techniques

NIS is a sodium iodide symporter that is highly concentrated in the thyroid gland and plays an important role in producing thyroid hormone. Scientists have been able to package the NIS protein into viruses then deliver and insert NIS into cancer cell lines. This enables cancer cells to more efficiently concentrate iodide, allowing the use of NIS in radioactive iodide imaging experiments in vivo. One such example is the A549 lung tumor cell line and the subsequent A549-NIS cells. We wanted to develop a way to rapidly screen for tumor cells which produce the NIS protein, so we utilized techniques such as immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy to try to identify cells expressing NIS. A variety of cell staining procedures were tested on A549 and A549-NIS cells and these experiments will be described and shown.

NIS is a sodium iodide symporter that is highly concentrated in the thyroid gland and plays an important role in producing thyroid hormone. Scientists have been able to package the NIS protein into viruses then deliver and insert NIS into cancer cell lines. This enables cancer cells to more efficiently concentrate iodide, allowing the use of NIS in radioactive iodide imaging experiments in vivo. One such example is the A549 lung tumor cell line and the subsequent A549-NIS cells. We wanted to develop a way to rapidly screen for tumor cells which produce the NIS protein, so we utilized techniques such as immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy to try to identify cells expressing NIS. A variety of cell staining procedures were tested on A549 and A549-NIS cells and these experiments will be described and shown.

The keynote speaker for the event was Adrienne B. Haynes, a 2010 BVU graduate, who is an attorney and business woman who specializes in helping entrepreneurs develop sustainable infrastructure and business practices. Haynes is the managing partner of SEED Law, a business law firm, and owner of SEED Collective, a consultancy. She is the founder of the nonprofit, the Construction Business Institute, and is active in both the Multicultural Business Coalition and Black Female Attorneys network. Haynes is also a member of the BVU National Alumni Association Board of Directors.

"This is a special event because it gives students' a real-life platform where they can showcase their success beyond exams and grades," said Dr. Steven Mills, assistant professor of Spanish and chair of the events committee who organized the event. "With a Scholars Day presentation, students take their hard work and form it into a new medium or method for discussion. They become experts on their topic and then stand in front of peers and become teachers about what they have done and how it adds to the greater corpus of knowledge in their field."

This year marked the first time Scholars Day and the annual Student Recognition Dinner - which was held later that evening - were combined.

"For the first time, those who presented as part of Scholars Day received an invitation to the dinner and were recognized alongside all the others receiving honors and awards for academic excellence," added Mills. "They deserved to be a part of the celebration of hard work and dedication."