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Chemistry student's work competes in the major leagues of research
Perseverance and hard work get noticed. Just ask Ashlee Robison.
This past summer, the senior Chemistry major's research on solutions to the honey bee colony collapse syndrome was the only undergraduate finalist in the American Chemical Society's Chemistry Champions Contest. Her research skills also earned her entry into the prestigious Materials Research Science and Engineering Center's Research Experience for Undergraduates program, where she again found herself among peers from the big research universities.
But the non-traditional student's path to undergraduate research success included a few detours. Until a Fort Lewis College class changed everything.
Before FLC, Robison went from earning her first undergraduate degree to earning playtime. She moved to Durango in 2009 for an internship at the Fort Lewis College Environmental Center, and while she was practicing sustainability education at the EC, she embraced the mountain-town lifestyle, working various jobs in active and outdoorsy Durango, including river guiding, landscaping, tree trimming, mountain bike coaching, and taking care of tourists in the service industry.
Enjoying her experience at FLC, she started taking classes, with the idea of transferring to a medical school. But a chemistry class changed her plans. “My professor asked me to work in his research group over the summer. After a weekend there I said, yes, this is exactly what I want to do!” she laughs. “Now I try to stay in the lab as much as possible.”
At FLC, with its focus on undergraduate research, Robison has been able to spend a lot of quality time in the lab. And that laboratory work is paying off, earning Robison both national recognition and invaluable experience. And it may one day also pay off by helping to save the embattled honey bee industry.
“Honey bees are responsible for pollinating one in every three bites of food we take, and so having that collapse so quickly is really kind of terrifying. So I've been interested in figuring out what's been going on for a long time,” she explains.
“One of the things that has really drawn me to the field of chemistry is that I am actually doing something,” she adds. “I can go into the lab and say I am going to solve this problem or try to tackle something that people are talking about a lot but maybe haven't thought about in this creative way.”
“I've been really fortunate to have been able to do that here,” Robison says of her FLC experience. “I find it really invigorating to do research that's going to be used or applied, so it's motivating to me. This research is real and has a goal, so I work harder.”
That hard work is getting noticed. Last spring, Robison entered the American Chemical Society’s 2014 Chemistry Champions Contest. The challenge was to create a short video that clearly and accurately explains the student's research for a non-scientific audience -- a vital skill in a world driven by science. In her entry, Robison explained in only three minutes her undergraduate research seeking ways to protect honey bees from the Varroa mite, a bee-colony killer that plagues the beekeeping industry. (See her entry video below.)
Her efforts advanced her to the semi-final round in August, for which she was flown by the American Chemical Society to San Francisco to present her video to professional scientists and the public at the ACS National Meeting & Exposition. There she was chosen as one of five researchers to advance to the final round.
“Even though I eventually didn't win, I was the only undergraduate student who made the finals,” Robinson says. “The other students were graduate students from UC-Berkeley, Cornell, University of Minnesota, and Princeton.”
Robison also spent part of her summer at the highly selective Materials Research Science and Engineering Center's Research Experience for Undergraduates program, held at Northwestern University. Students selected for the program work with faculty, post-doctorates, and graduate students on materials research projects for nine weeks during the summer.
Fort Lewis College was one of only two institutions in the nation to send two students to the program, Robison points out. “I was surprised that people in the chemistry field know Fort Lewis College. And I don't think it's a coincidence that two of us from here got picked,” she says. “I think it's indicative of how good the science programs here at FLC are.”
So where might this experience take Robison further down her life path? Again, Fort Lewis College has influenced that vision.
“I would really enjoy teaching at a small school like this. I love the environment and working in this type of setting,” she says. “My professors have motivated me a lot, and I would like to do that myself in a small school like FLC somewhere.”
Ashlee's submission to the 2014 Chemistry Champions Contest: