ACES James Scholars Doing Research That Matters

About 275 students in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois are getting a head start on promising careers in research.

As ACES James Scholars, they are held to high academic standards throughout their undergraduate years. And they are required to plan and complete a professional-quality research project by the time they graduate.

Sometimes, those research projects pay off - not just for the students themselves, but for others as well. In fact, the state's pork producers and corn and soybean growers may eventually benefit from two ACES James Scholars projects going on this semester.

Debbie Evans' ultimate career goal is veterinary medicine, and her current research project looks at how stress affects the immune system of pigs. When stress affects individual piglets' immunity, the costs can add up quickly for pork producers.

"In the normal production of pigs, there are common stressors that occur - like mixing (with piglets from other litters) and weaning," said Evans, a junior in Animal Sciences from Orland Park near Chicago. "I'm taking groups of piglets and exposing them to those kinds of things, comparing them to the control group, and looking at the differences in immunity through varies assays."

Evans says she owes a lot to her mentor, assistant professor Janeen Salak-Johnson, who has given her "an appreciation for the little things that go into research projects - like being accurate, and liking what you're doing. She's really great because she's very excited about what she does. You absorb that when you're around her. It gets you excited, too."

Heather Clodfelter, a junior in Crop Sciences from West Salem in Edwards County, is just beginning her ACES James Scholars research project, Impact of Soil Sample Processing on Variability of Analytical Results.

Her hypothesis is that the way in which soil samples are processed may render the test results less accurate than they should be. A typical soil sample consists of five cores. But because some labs cannot fit all five cores into the grinder that mixes the samples, only about three-fifths of the sample may end up being tested.

"We're wanting to know if this is throwing off the test results, especially in no-till fields," Clodfelter said. "When you take a seven-inch core, the soil is usually pretty loose at the top and it's compacted together toward the bottom. If they just dump about 3/5 of the sample into the grinder, they're most likely going to test the stuff that's at the top and not at the bottom."

Clodfelter will be testing six major soil types from throughout Illinois, from conventional and no-till fields, and from fields with both high and low phosphorus content - about 600 samples in all. She begins taking soil samples during the week of October 11.

Although she is not sure where her Crop Sciences degree will take her, she expects that her undergraduate research experience will come in handy whatever she ends up doing.

"The most important thing up 'til now has been communication and organization," Clodfelter said. "So far, it's been just one big organization process, trying to get all of the cooperators lined up and the fields we can go to, and figuring out how were going to get 600 samples and keep them all straight." Clodfelter�s mentor is crop sciences professor Bob Hoeft.

"I would have to say the most beneficial part is that the research project is kind of like a taste of reality," Evans said. "You get to apply everything you're learning in classes and it all overlaps. You're actually using someone's money to try to get somewhere; somehow, it's more serious. I've had to learn a lot of things I probably never would have been exposed to if I hadn't gotten involved" in the James Scholars program.

Evans says her James Scholars experience has held few surprises. "They lay it out very clearly so you kind of know what you're getting into. It's been what I expected for the most part."

And Evans says that if she could give one piece of advice to high-school seniors who may be interested in the ACES James Scholars program, it would be "Do it, do it, do it! There's not really any other program you'll find that will match it.

"Number one, you get to register early," Evans said. "After you do registration once, you'll know how nice it is to register early. And you get to go straight to the fun stuff - working in a lab instead of washing dishes. It's great for networking, too because you get to make connections with a lot of different professors."

For more information on the ACES James Scholars program or other undergraduate research opportunities in the College of ACES, contact Assistant Dean Wayne Banwart, wbanwart@uiuc.edu or 217/333-3380.