Suji Jeong and Gina Lebkuecher

Tennessee Governor’s Academy Students Make New Friends and New Discoveries through Research Experience at ORNL

At this time in their lives, high school girls often establish two things: lasting friendships and habits that may affect them for a lifetime.

Participating in the inaugural class of the Tennessee Governor’s Academy for Mathematics and Science (TGA) had a positive effect on students Suji Jeong and Gina Lebkuecher, as they developed lasting relationships with their fellow students and had the chance to study the life-affecting consequences of obesity alongside Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) molecular geneticist and mentor Dr. Brynn Voy.

While the girls said being away from family and friends was a challenge, they enjoyed the unique opportunity offered by TGA to make new friends with similar interests. “It’s really cool getting to live with a bunch of girls our age, fixing our own dinner and sitting around and talking about school,” said Lebkuecher. “I like all of the people I’ve met this year, and having a roommate has been interesting, because it’s taught me a little bit about responsibility.”

Along with the fun, sense of independence and confidence gained from living from August 2007 to May 2008 in the TGA community—cottages at the Tennessee School for the Deaf in Knoxville—the students took advanced courses in mathematics and science as well as acquired real-world genetics research experience in a national lab.

Voy said: “They’ve had the chance to work with fat tissue and isolate RNA from it and actually do experiments to show them how genes are expressed and the end points in gene expressions. That’s the molecular basis for physiology [the branch of biology that deals with the functions and activities of life].”

In Voy’s view, this mentoring program reaches young students at the right time. “I see this as an opportunity to introduce kids at a pivotal stage in their education to what it’s like to be a scientist and hopefully get them excited and trained as part of the next generation of scientists. That’s cool, and I’m very happy to see that and to see the state committing dollars to that process.”

This research project with the TGA students was one of the many ways that ORNL is partnering with Tennessee schools to enhance the education of the state’s young people. During the past academic year, the laboratory provided mentored research experiences for all 24 of the TGA inaugural class of high school juniors in addition to a number of other area high school students. Administrative aspects of involving the students in research at the laboratory were handled by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), the laboratory’s long-time partner in education.

Lebkuecher said the project gave her insight into what a career in scientific research might really be like. While uncertain about a specific career direction, she noted that science is her favorite subject and that she has a strong interest in biology.

“I knew that obesity itself is bad for you, but I never realized that so many other conditions stem from it,” Lebkuecher said. “I’ve gotten a better understanding of how our bodies work.”

Watching students broaden their knowledge and their horizons was gratifying to Voy. “As somebody interested in science, I can almost be a student again vicariously through them and envision how just being exposed to science would have been such a big opportunity, not even a career but an education leading to a career in science.”

For Jeong, participating in TGA brought her closer to her academic goals of completing advanced courses of study. Jeong said: “This has been the major challenge and opportunity of my entire life.”

Lebkuecher summed up her feelings by saying, “TGA has really been different from anything I’ve ever experienced before.”