Our Maine Street's Aroostook Issue 28 : Spring 2016 | Page 69

The worms Zachery Beal is seeing.

UMFK students join
UMPI for real-world lab
experiences
By The University of maine at Fort Kent

Living and learning in the far northern portions of
Maine has many benefits for the college students
who choose the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
Those benefits include unparalleled opportunities
to explore some of the most beautiful outdoor vistas
in the world, share in unique cultural experiences
in Canada and the Acadia of the lands and Forests,
and participate in outdoor activities such as dog
sledding, hunting, mountain biking and the
world renowned sport of biathlon that are simply
unavailable to students in more urban schools.
These benefits of a rural college experience have
a flip side for professors and mentors that search
across the state for ways to have their students
practice some of the skills and knowledge they
have gained at UMFK. One way to accomplish
this is to partner with another rural university
and take advantage of opportunities for students
to gain some hands-on experience. In January, a
pair of University of Maine at Fort Kent students
joined their peers from the University of Maine at
Presque Isle to work with professional researchers
at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratories
in Bar Harbor, Maine.
According to Assistant Professor of Biology Dr.
Christin Kastl, two students studying biology
at UMFK, Zack Beal and Corey Henderson,
accompanied seven UMPI students to the MDI
Biological Labs to work with model organisms, C.
elegans, to support research on the aging process in
humans. “Every year we take a few students, and
they offer us a class on research methods using the
little worms.”

“They actually get hands-on with the worms,
learning how to handle organisms you can only
see under the microscope. The students get to alter
their DNA.” she said.
Jake Theriault, a lab manager at UMFK,
accompanied the group.
Dr. Kastl said the experience is more than a field
trip. “It’s the best thing for them. It’s free housing,
free food, and free lab experience. It’s good on their
resume.”
Along with the experiential learning, which is a
hallmark of UMFK practices to prepare students
for jobs in the real world, the MDI Biological
Labs sent the students home with several wiggly
gifts. “Dr. Dustin Updike, scientist at MDIBL and
teacher of this workshop, gave us worms to take
up here so I can use them with my students in my
classes,” said Kastl.
IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence
(INBRE) provided the funds to pay for the trip.
INBRE further sponsors internships for UMFK
students at local companies in order to have
students engage in research related to Fort Kent,
such as work in toxicology, food industry, fishery,
and others. Students learn how to do real life
research, said Dr. Kastl. They also sponsor students
to come down for the 43rd Maine Biological and
Medical Sciences Symposium in April and offer
summer research internships at their labs.

Dr. Kastl said the scientists helped the students
learn how to work with the worms, that are invisible
to the naked eye, in a working lab environment.
“The lab is scientists doing science to figure out
the aging process in humans. They work with
worms, because they are a good model organism,”
said Kastl.
SPRING 2016

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