Undergraduate Research Opportunities

The Department of Biology at Grove City College offers students the opportunity to perform meaningful and relevant research guided by an experienced and accomplished faculty. Research laboratories are outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment to support student research activities. Current research interests of our faculty include:

Dr. Lisa Antoszewski

• Zebrafish development: What is the best way to study kidney development at the undergraduate level? Utilize a model organism! Dr. Antoszewski and her lab take advantage of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) to study the genetic control of kidney development. More specifically, they are interested in identifying novel genes that regulate the number of kidney progenitor cells (earliest cells in the embryo that will be become the kidney).  

Dr. Jan Dudt

• Development of an automated plant growth chamber: Plant growth chambers that are capable of controlling conditions like light, water, humidity, and temperature remotely come at a significant cost. To develop a more economical model, Dr. Dudt is enlisting an interdisciplinary team of students from Computer Science, Biology, and Electrical Engineering to modify an existing unit. Once developed, students with a particular interest in botany can utilize this chamber to tackle a variety of experimental questions.  

Dr. Tracy Farone

• Honeybee health: Four students (Maura Ashley ’21, Katerina Bailey ’21, Deidra Ressler ’21, and Alliefair Scalise '21) worked with Dr. Farone to build the apiary project, literally from the ground up. Before they graduated, each student also completed individual projects including publishing a book about bees, contributing to professional publications, development of an educational website and other community education material, and successful grant writing.

During the summer of 2021, two students (Sydney Hanson ’23 and Abby Treusch ’23) who served as understudies to the original senior students, took lead on the project as garden and apiary managers. They worked with Dr. Farone to extract hundreds of  pounds of honey from the bees and collected data for two experimental studies involving drone drifting and diagnostic testing methods for Varroa mites. In the fall of 2021, Sydney and Abby also delivered lectures to new students coming into the program. Under the supervision of Dr. Farone, this layered “watch one, do one, teach one” learning approach of the GCC apiary project allows training for newcomers with research and instructional opportunities for advanced students.

In the summer of 2022, Sydney returned to the project to add data to her Varroa diagnostics evaluation project and Ellie Persohn '24 joined the summer team. Ellie applied for and received a Gibson grant to develop a honey bee educational community outreach program for school children. Over the summer, the team, working through the Project on Rural Ministry, were able to serve a local church by helping with VBS, providing honey to foodbanks and widows, and even giving a guest sermon on honey and honey bees in the Bible.

In the fall of 22, Ellie and Lizzy Karns '23 worked together to deliver their educational outreach to students at the Grove City School District and pre-school kids at the GCC Early Education Center. You can get a glimpse of that educational program here. Abby rejoined the group and did an anatomical and dissection study of the honey bee. Sydney is working on designing a new project which would involve offering PCR testing for Dewormed Wing Virus (DWV) to the local beekeeping community to determine the incidence in western PA. All our project summaries are displayed throughout STEM in posters created by the students. This fall, Dr. Farone delivered a “Fiver” for chapel on Honey and Honey Bees in the Bible.

Learn more about the Grove City College bee project.

Dr. Steve Jenkins

• Ant behavioral studies: Dr. Jenkins’ research focuses on the raiding behavior of two species of “slave-making” ant: Formica subintegra and Formica pergandei. During such raids, ants from colonies of these parasitic species locate, attack, and plunder colonies of host ants up to 80 meters away. He wants to understand the host colony discovery process, host colony response behaviors, parasite colony decision mechanisms, and the communication signals that coordinate long-distance forays involving up to thousands of individual ants.  
• The “Ant Video Team” and the “Ant SEM Team:” Dr. Jenkins currently has two groups of students working with him. 
  • The Ant Video team has been analyzing slow-motion video of F. pergandei and F. subintegra slave-maker ants engaged in raiding and guarding behavior. Interestingly, this team has identified a pair of novel behaviors: 1) the “leg kick” which seems to be a defense against marauding parasitic wasps, and 2) the “gaster lift” whose function remains to be determined.
  • The Ant SEM team is working with Dr. Jeff Wolinski (Physics Department) to image the fine anatomical structures of multiple Formica ant species using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) on campus. Carrie Dill ’22 and Sam Roettger ’21 presented their data at the Swezey-Janicki competition last spring and are currently preparing a manuscript for publication.

Dr. Kristina Pazehoski

• Metals in biology: When we think about metals that are important to human health, most of us probably think of iron, but did you know that copper also plays major roles in living organisms? Copper is crucial to numerous biological processes, and too much, or too little, can result in disease. Dr. Pazehoski’s research expertise is in the field of bio-inorganic chemistry, where she studies how cells control the levels of copper so that there is just the right amount for all the good effects, and none of the bad.
• Other projects: Dr. Pazehoski is also excited about helping students design their own research plans. A recent project born of student interest focuses on the good bacteria of the gut microbiome, and their ability to protect against inflammatory bowel disease.

Dr. Devin Stauff

• Human pathogens: The Stauff lab is interested in deciphering ways that disease-causing bacteria sense and respond to their environment using systems known as two-component systems (TCS). They use the tools of genetics combined with chemistry to figure out how these sensor systems work. These studies have the potential to expand our understanding of how organisms respond to their environment and may lead to the development of drugs that interfere with the strategies that bacteria use to cause disease.
• Research papers: Dr. Stauff and his students have published several papers in peer-reviewed journals and students have presented their research both at Grove City College and at external research competitions.
  • A recent publication from the Stauff lab.
  • Dr. Stauff actively collaborates with Dr. Eric Skaar, a faculty member at Vanderbilt University and Dr. Stauff’s graduate research mentor.

Dr. Darren Wood

• Detecting endangered species: Dr. Darren Wood plans to begin a new research project this fall aimed at detecting cryptic or endangered species through the use of eDNA. One of his students (Jacob Green ’22) will use this technique to detect populations of eastern sand darter (Ammocrypta pellucida), a state-listed endangered species in Pennsylvania.
• Animal behavior: Dr. Darren Wood and two current students (Anna Sarkisian ’22 and Zane Fuss ’22) spent the summer of 2021 examining the behavior of great blue herons (Ardea herodias) in high and low-use recreational areas as well as quantifying the overall microhabitat use of the species during wading. Both students plan to present their findings during a poster session at the 28th annual conference of The Wildlife Society. They also plan to submit their result to the journal Waterbirds in Spring 2022.   

Dr. Brian Yowler

• Cancer biology: Dr. Brian Yowler and his research team are evaluating the anti-cancer properties of various organic compounds by determining their toxicity on human cancer (HeLa) cells. Interestingly, these compounds are being synthesized by Dr. Charles Kriley and his students in the Chemistry Department. Collaborative projects such as this highlight the interdisciplinary nature of science and scientific study.
• Bioinformatics: Dr. Brian Yowler is also involved in a large collaborative project with the Genomics Education Partnership. More specifically, students are working to annotate various Drosophila (fruit fly) genes to explore the evolution of the insulin-signaling pathway. Based on the work of Grove City College students and others, four micropublications were produced. Two Grove City College students (Aaron Lehman ’22 and Heather Willis ’22) presented their findings at a regional undergraduate science conference this spring.