By Rhiannon Saegert/managing editor
Three TCC students finished work in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program over the summer.
The program’s goal is to encourage minorities and women to complete doctorates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields by giving participants a full ride to any Texas university.
About 50 LSAMP alliances exists nationwide. TCC joined the UT Alliance system last year and will be a member until at least 2017.
University of Texas at Arlington LSAMP director Tuncay Aktosun said students who participate in the program are paid to do short-term research projects during the summer. TCC students conducted all of their research at UTA.
“Especially for their [TCC’s] students, it’s more convenient for them to do their research at UT Arlington,” he said.
In addition to working on their own projects, students attended tours of the other professors’ laboratories and organized a math camp for high school students.
Former TCC student Cindy Sandjo participated in the project last summer. She said she heard about the program in a biology class.
“She [the instructor] talked about the program,” she said. “I think only about three students grabbed pamphlets.”
Her summer research involved measuring the blood flow in rats’ hind paws under different temperatures to measure dorsal root reflex in peripheral inflammation with her mentor, UTA associate psychology professor Yuan Bo Peng.
“Usually these kinds of projects are about six months long. Mine was only two,” said Sandjo, who is now majoring in biology at UTA.
Sandjo will present her project over dorsal root reflex at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science’s national conference in San Antonio, Texas, in October.
