Bria Shackleford, SURE PROGRAM

Bria is a junior at Kent State University majoring in Biology with a Pre-Med concentration. Bria participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program for SURE 2023. She has given several presentations about her time in the SURE program and is eager to share her experiences.

What got you interested in research? How’d you hear about SURE?

Bria: I was looking for things to do for medical school, and it is expected that students do some research before med-school. At the time, my roommate and her mother, who is faculty here, told me about the SURE program. My faculty advisor also brought SURE up, and that’s how I started looking into it.

How’d you meet your mentor, and what about their research work interested you?

Bria: I went on the website and looked up different faculty members who were doing research on anxiety, and that’s where I found Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett, who was doing research specifically on anxiety of Black women. That’s what got me interested in her research.

What is your research about?

Bria: I did research on the relationship between racial discrimination and stress levels, and how cortisol levels can control that. Students were asked to come in and give samples of their hair, and those samples were then tested for cortisol levels. Surveys asking students about their experiences on and off campus were also taken.

Then, we compared the two to see if there was a correlation between the cortisol levels in their hair and their experiences.

The main goal of the research was to see if anxiety affected cortisol levels in hair.

What was something new or your takeaway from the SURE program?

Bria: I really liked learning about everyone else’s projects in the summer and what research they were doing. I also liked being a part of BHRI fellowship in the summer because they talked to you about research and how to best prepare and write papers.

What would your advice be for future students?

Bria: My advice would be to volunteer in different labs and see what they are like, because I did the same, and that really helped me figure out what kind of research I enjoyed.

Edited by Lenore Kohl