Campus Connection

Students in CHM 419 strengthen Eagle Advantage skills through capstone course

Moving from theoretical knowledge to practical application can be a challenge in academia. That is exactly why UWL students enrolled in CHM 419: Advanced Biochemistry Lab engage in hands-on practice. 

“CHM 419 is a research experience that allows students to work in groups under the mentorship of professors and contribute to understanding something that has not been worked out yet,” explains Vanessa Giallombardo, a senior majoring in biochemistry. “This class applied many of the techniques and data interpretation skills I learned in CHM 417, plus additional techniques, to study a specific enzyme from Escherichia coli. CHM 417 was a rigorous course, but I enjoyed it and felt it prepared me well to run experiments and interpret results.” 

The semester-long course includes two three-hour labs and a one-hour group discussion each week. Working in teams of three, students participate in a capstone project, each researching a different mutated enzyme within Escherichia coli (commonly known as E. coli). Through their research, the students sought to better understand how amino acids interact during certain chemical reactions in the body, such as metabolism. 

“Although each student had their own variant, we worked in groups of three on all of our projects and reports,” says Courtney Masarik, a senior majoring in biochemistry. “This course was the only time in my college career that helped me gain some intense scientific writing skills. I learned a lot about properly reporting and presenting my data in a way for everyone to understand.”

CHM 419 fosters Eagle Advantage competencies such as adaptability, collaboration and leadership, communication, critical thinking and problem solving, digital literacy and technology, diversity, equity and inclusion, accountability, and career and self-development.  

Masarik says her collaboration and leadership skills were strengthened due to the course’s emphasis on group work in a lab setting. Additionally, one person from each project adopted a leadership role to guide the group in the right direction and track progress.

Giallombardo describes how adaptability came into play, saying, “Adaptability was an important component of this course, as the exact experiments we were running had not been run before. This meant, on many occasions, a protocol needed to be altered to collect reproducible, interpretable data.” 

It is important for students to have the ability to describe their findings to those who are not experts in the field. To that end, the capstone project culminates in a poster session where students put their communication skills to the test. 

“To prepare for the poster session, we spent most of our time combining and discussing our results to make figures that hopefully clearly conveyed our findings,” Giallombardo says. 

Masarik and Giallombardo illustrate the benefits of the course, which equips students with skills and experiences to distinguish themselves post-graduation. 

“I hope to be involved in biochemical research in my career, and I felt this class introduced me to standard techniques I may use later,” Giallombardo says. “I also hope to attend graduate school, and this research experience may make me a more competitive candidate and has surely made me more confident in the lab.”  

Masarik agrees. 

“I feel like I have learned a lot about professionalism and feel so much more comfortable talking science to peers and faculty,” she says “The professors were great mentors and were inspiring to me as a student.”