Elephants roam in sight of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Duke Global Health students and faculty are nearby in the region doing field work. For their blog, see Duke Global Health below.
Summer Blog Week
Students explore their research experiences online
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
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Durham, NC -- The summer research project is becoming a regular part of a student experience at Duke. For undergraduate, graduate and professional students, it’s an opportunity to get out of the classroom and to get field work done that can energize their students and interests.
The ease of blogging is changing the summer research experience somewhat. Programs such as DukeEngage encourage students to write up their experiences, both to help them think about it and to share their work with others. For the next seven days, Duke Today will highlight a different summer research blog. We encourage you to check out what the students are thinking.
DukeEngage
In the program’s second year, DukeEngage students have spread out around the world from Delhi, India, and Nkokonjeru, Uganda, to right here in Durham. It’s a summer when the students are expected to work hard but think even harder. For Ryan Bird, working in New Orleans, it’s learning to look beyond impressions and find what can really make a difference in improving lives and living conditions. For Jonathon Cross, in Cairo, it’s getting a new perspective on relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims in a volatile region.
Click here to link to different DukeEngage blogs.
Meredith Barrett, Lemur health and conservation
Meet Meredith Barrett. She's a grad student in Duke's program in ecology with Lemur Center Director Anne Yoder and she's doing some very interesting work on the health of animals that are on the fringes of human encroachment.
Right now, she’s on the other side of the world, doing field work in Madagascar. Her work involves gently trapping and darting lemurs on the forest edge and quickly taking several measures of their health status, including a physical and dental exam, a snip of hair, and yes, fecal material. (They're apparently quite willing to donate that last bit, she says.) Her hypothesis is that animal populations probably suffer from human encroachment even before the humans have actually taken away their habitat. Proving this may help inform policy about how and where to create sanctuaries.
Meredith takes readers along on her field work and living conditions in this strange and wonderful island through a blog: Lemur Health and Conservation.
Duke Global Health Institute
Follow the reflections and experiences of Duke students (and faculty) who are taking time away from campus to engage in a global health field experience. From Singapore to South Africa, from Delhi to Durham, Duke undergraduate, graduate and professional students are learning about what it takes to tackle the health disparities that plague our world.
Click here to read the postings.
Nicholas School student blogs
The Nicholas School is encouraging students to blog to not only showcase their research but to give readers a better perspective on all ranges of student life. Postings range from reviews of American Dance Festival performances to a first successful use of GIS technology in research.
Click here to read the postings.
The Howard Hughes program in undergraduate biology
In summer 2006, the Integrated Systems: Integrative Sciences is an educational collaboration between Arts and Sciences, the Medical Center and the School of Engineering.
For the more than two dozen undergraduate and pre-college students in the program, it’s an early step into doing biology research in the lab. Eugenia Hyunjin Cho wrote about her interview with her mentor, Fred Nijhout, and what she learned about turning a love of wildlife into a research career. For Stephanie Haeyun Chang, the program is a chance to make new discoveries about DNA and what the BBC has in common with coffee.
Click here to read the postings.
