The Lion's Roundtable (Guest: Avery Hearnsberger)
Download MP3Good day. This is Amber Narro nine point nine FM, the lion. I am here at KSLU with my friend, Avery Hearnsberger, who has just represented Southeastern as our first Goldwater scholarship applicant. We're very excited to put her on the block for that for Southeastern and and offer her to the Goldwater scholarship committee and say choose our Avery. Welcome, Avery.
Avery Hearnsberger:Hi. Thank you all for having me.
Dr. Amber Narro:Indeed. Indeed. You along with one other student, Noelle Schutz, who is super talented as well. She couldn't be here today, but you're talking on behalf of both of you. We're first our first applicants to the Goldwater Scholarship that we know of.
Avery Hearnsberger:Right? Yes. Yes.
Dr. Amber Narro:The reason that we know that is because we learned through this process that you have to have a campus representative, and Southeastern didn't have one. And why in the world do we have the Goldwater Scholarship now at Southeastern?
Avery Hearnsberger:Well, the Goldwater Scholarship has offered me and Noel so many opportunities to dive into our research to see what we really want to do moving forward after on our undergraduate career. Like, this opportunity has allowed me to look into PhD programs that I would have never looked into before.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. Now it's so I I really appreciate that you and Noel took on this challenge. You had gone to the National Collegiate Honors Conference, which is where we kinda found out about this. Right? Where we our new provost had kinda put it on my mind and said, we wanna do some of these things with our, with our students here at Southeastern.
Dr. Amber Narro:And y'all are absolutely able to do this. You you dove in and said, you know, yeah. I've done a lot of these things that this scholarship is asking me to talk about, so I'm gonna go ahead and apply. Well, we have lots of students on campus who can do that. And in fact, you were talking to doctor Foti this morning about chemistry students who might be interested in it next year.
Dr. Amber Narro:Yes?
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. So I mentioned it to doctor Foti. Sophomores and juniors may apply. There's certain criteria on that, but we can reach out to anybody and let them know if they would want to apply. It can be chemistry, anything STEM basically related.
Avery Hearnsberger:That goes as far as to biology to engineering as well.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. Can you tell me a little bit about the process that you went through in applying for the Goldwater Scholarship?
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. So as the first person to do it, it was a little bit complex but moving forward, I know that.
Dr. Amber Narro:For me too.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. By the way. Yes. We had to work together very heavily but first off, we had to make a pre application which, of course, got sent back to doctor Narrow, and she had to approve. And then I began working on this questionnaire.
Avery Hearnsberger:The questionnaire is full of rigorous questions that allow the scholar committee, the Goldwater Scholar Committee, to see why do you deserve this scholarship. And then after that, there is a research essay, and that research essay can be up to three pages long on all of the research that each one of us has done.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. Avery, what was your project? And this blows my mind because I I wanna be honest with Like, I looked through yours and I edited it and I helped you out and I didn't understand a lot of those words because that's not on my side of the house. What in layman's terms, here's your challenge. Right?
Avery Hearnsberger:Right.
Dr. Amber Narro:What was your project that you submitted?
Avery Hearnsberger:My project was on bacteriophages and specifically a bacteriophage named Benchscraper. Benchscraper. Benchscraper.
Dr. Amber Narro:What is Benchscraper?
Avery Hearnsberger:Benchscraper is the name of
Dr. Amber Narro:Sounds like some kind of little weird man. Yes. You know?
Avery Hearnsberger:So my freshman year, we had a virus hunter class through doctor Justin Anderson, the biology department head. And in that class, we isolated a phage named bench scraper.
Dr. Amber Narro:What does a isolated a phage mean?
Avery Hearnsberger:That means that we basically took these dirt samples from outside, and we isolated through the dirt and other experimental processes and got to a phage, which is basically like a virus that infects bacteria.
Dr. Amber Narro:So you're looking for little weird yucky things?
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. Little weird yucky things. Okay.
Dr. Amber Narro:Very cool. Why Brent why bench scraper? Does where's that name come from?
Avery Hearnsberger:One of the students named it. So I have my own virus or phage that I named Hernsburger after my last name. And the interesting thing about bench scraper is that our class decided to get Benchscraper's DNA sent off to Pittsburgh, where they sent us back its sequence of its genome. And then through virus hunters, we annotated the genome. So we figured out what the different genes do.
Avery Hearnsberger:So like in humans, bacteriophages have these genes. Like we have a gene for eye color, we have a gene for how we move our hands and our arms. Phages have that as well. So we annotated the genes and decided their function.
Dr. Amber Narro:I don't know what that means either. Annotated a gene Figured out.
Avery Hearnsberger:Figured out what it does. So, like, we have a gene that is annotated to make us blink.
Dr. Amber Narro:Gotcha. Like that. Gotcha. So what did your virus what it when you annotated it, what did you find out that it do?
Avery Hearnsberger:What it does. Right. It's it basically, I was testing lysogeny. Lysogeny is a way that the phage can kill the bacteria. So there's lytic and then there's lysogenic.
Avery Hearnsberger:Lytic, I think of whenever I tell people about it, I say lytic is like going in and blowing something up. It blows up the bacteria and just kills it.
Dr. Amber Narro:Okay.
Avery Hearnsberger:Whereas lysogenic is it's like a stalker. It goes into your house and it stalks you and it stays there and it weakens you. Mhmm. That's what I was testing to see a bench scraper had, if it was lysogenic. And I found that through its genome that we annotate it with its genes that it should be lysogenic.
Avery Hearnsberger:But whenever I tested it in the lab with actual physical testing, testing the bench scraper's genome and its physical characteristics showed that it was not lysogenic. Right. So now what? Now what? Exactly.
Avery Hearnsberger:What you told it to do. Exactly. It is not doing
Dr. Amber Narro:It's like one of you students. We tell y'all stuff and y'all don't do what we tell you to do, and then what?
Avery Hearnsberger:Right. That's what I have been looking into. So I have been comparing Benchscraper's genome to other phages genomes, and Benchscraper is in a Ay family. Meaning, like, my family is the Hernsburger family, whereas doctor Nero's family is the Nero family. So the Ay family phages are known for being temperate, which means lysogenic and lytic.
Avery Hearnsberger:That means it can do both. They can go boom or it can stalk. Okay. Yeah. So from that, I found another phage named Cookie Bear along with the help of doctor Anderson, of course.
Dr. Amber Narro:That would be what I would name mine because you can name your own. Right? So Cookie Bear, where did Cookie Bear come from? You do you know who named it and why?
Avery Hearnsberger:I do not know who named it, but I'm assuming another student that was very creative, just like the name of Benchscraper.
Dr. Amber Narro:Probably like cookies and teddy bears. Who knows?
Avery Hearnsberger:Who knows? Who knows? Alright.
Dr. Amber Narro:So you find Cookie Bear.
Avery Hearnsberger:I find Cookie Bear, and Cookie Bear has sent sent to me with bench scraper. That means whenever we look at Cookie Bear's genome compared to bench scraper's genome, all of their genes, it has a match, basically a complete match. So they should be the same, and cookie bear is known to be temperate, the lysogenic. And if it's all the same, why isn't bench scraper showing itself to be lysogenic?
Dr. Amber Narro:Okay.
Avery Hearnsberger:That's whenever I decided to keep diving into Cookie Bear, and I found Cookie Bear to have this site called an ATTP site. That is basically where the phage will attach to the bacteria and do lysogenic things, like integrate into the chromosomes, the bacterial chromosome. Bench scraper has this same ATTP site. I found it through comparison of the genomes. So my question now moving forward is why is Bench scraper not showing itself to be lysogenic whenever it has all of the same matching characteristics of it showing that it should be?
Dr. Amber Narro:Very good. And that's something that you'll be looking forward to over the next year or so, I'm imagining, as you're finishing up your college degree.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. That is probably what my thesis will be on.
Dr. Amber Narro:Okay. Thesis. So you're an honors diploma candidate as well. We actually spoke with Lorelai Brewer Lorelai Brewer yesterday about trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her her research that she presented as part of the Truman scholarship, and she was talking about her honors thesis as well, and this is what you have to write to get the honors diploma. So you're kinda doubling that research a little bit.
Dr. Amber Narro:You're also presenting it at Southern Regional Honors Conference. Lorelai will be with us at that as well. I think Noelle is going to that too for another reason. So lots of lots of awesome energy around what we're doing with the Honors Program lately. Yes?
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. Great energy. And a big big help with all of it has been our new meetings that we go to called SAMS, the student accountability meetings. Yes.
Dr. Amber Narro:And you're a founding member. What is that?
Avery Hearnsberger:So SAMS is basically biweekly, so twice a week. We meet up and the students, we hold each other accountable for scholarships, internships, for getting presentations in. And it's it's what gave me the opportunity to do the Goldwater Scholarship because it opened my eyes to there's so such a large world of opportunities.
Dr. Amber Narro:Wonderful. Avery, what are you looking forward to as far as the rest of your college career is concerned here at Southeastern other than trying to figure out if bench scraper and cookie bear are anything to do with what they got, what you was talking about a second ago?
Avery Hearnsberger:I am very I am looking forward to completing my classes and getting an in-depth involvement with my professors, my colleagues that I've met here, and also being involved more in clubs and getting that experience.
Dr. Amber Narro:Now you went through the application process, and I know that Lorelai's gotta go through an interview for hers. Right? The Truman's the Truman Scholarship requires that their applicants, if they make it to the finalist area, go through a an interview. So we're gonna put you through kind of a mock interview today, right, If on I was somebody at the Goldwater Scholarship Committee, I would probably wanna know what you learned about yourself when you were going through this process. Can you talk me through, what those reflections did for you when you look back on your last two years as a college student?
Avery Hearnsberger:So the reflections of the past two years as a college student, I realized that I had done a lot. I felt as if I hadn't. Mhmm. But looking at and listing all the things I had done had done through the Goldwater, I learned that I had accomplished a lot. Even though it seemed like days felt like stagnant, no growth, I realized that through this stagnant phases, I was taking small micro steps that led to giant leaps.
Dr. Amber Narro:Oh, fancy. You need a meme for that. We gotta post it. I love it. Now if you were another Goldwater question, if I'd say so myself.
Dr. Amber Narro:This is a this is a soft toss. Right? If you were to suggest to other students that they do this, what would you say?
Avery Hearnsberger:I would say do it. 100% without a doubt. You will gain experience and learn things about yourself that you never even knew. I learned so much. I learned how to do hard things for one.
Dr. Amber Narro:Yeah. We talked about
Avery Hearnsberger:that. Yeah.
Dr. Amber Narro:You can do hard things.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. I had thought that I did hard things with school in the past with organic chemistry which was very, very hard in my other classes. But through this, I learned there are hard things outside of school and life stuff that is hard and Goldwater being one of them, and I did one of them.
Dr. Amber Narro:Alright. So I'm gonna ask you another question here. You don't look like somebody who'd be studying biology. Right? Most of the time when we think about biologists, they're they're men.
Dr. Amber Narro:Right? Are you finding that there's some girls around you now and that y'all are really kinda coming into this into this area and and getting a little woman power around you? So many girls. There are
Avery Hearnsberger:so many girls. Most of my friends in my biology classes are girls.
Dr. Amber Narro:Love It is
Avery Hearnsberger:great to see and I was actually talking with, I believe it was doctor Pendarvis in one of our classes, and he mentioned how
Dr. Amber Narro:He's great.
Avery Hearnsberger:He is amazing. If a kid was asked to draw a scientist, many kids would draw men in the past. Nowadays, whenever kids are doing this, a lot of them are drawing women as well, which is foundational. It's great.
Dr. Amber Narro:It's interesting that you say that considering that we had a woman in STEM talking to us at the NCHC and she mentioned some of the same things that, you know, she was along she's in she's in the public eye, and she absolutely see kids look up to her and things like that, but sometimes still, they were drawing pictures of men. And then she was so excited when she started seeing pictures of her, like, the in the drawings when she's she's like, oh, I'm making a difference.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. That is what I aspire to be. I aspire to just future generations to look up to women and knowing that we can be foundational and contribute to the general knowledge as well. Indeed. What do you want to
Dr. Amber Narro:be when you grow up?
Avery Hearnsberger:Well, my whole life whenever I grow up, I've always wanted, I've always said I want to be a pediatrician.
Dr. Amber Narro:Mhmm.
Avery Hearnsberger:I want to go into med school and be a pediatrician. After researching the Goldwater and after looking at everything, I realized I have the capability to go into a MD PhD program. And that is what I plan on doing. And I'm have a large interest in a subfield called precision medicine.
Dr. Amber Narro:What does that mean? You keep giving me all these vocabulary words. I feel like there's gonna be a test.
Avery Hearnsberger:I'm sorry.
Dr. Amber Narro:I'm getting nervous. Yes, I
Avery Hearnsberger:have to use Google all the I need
Dr. Amber Narro:to study.
Avery Hearnsberger:To look up what it means. Basically, precision medicine is a way to have patients. So say I would have a patient such as someone with a chromosome disorder or some type of disease, And then I would take data off of this patient, and then I would find new cures for them. I would look into their genome, same way that I do with bench scraper and all my phages. I would look into their genome and find out how can I treat this person?
Avery Hearnsberger:So it would take the lab aspect to the bedside manner.
Dr. Amber Narro:Okay. And when you think about precision precision medicine and what it can do for patients, what what excites you about that field of medicine?
Avery Hearnsberger:It's groundbreaking. It can make somebody that has had just this one size fits all medicine approach no longer have that. It's no more an umbrella but a whole world of possibilities of answers to treatment. Do you feel
Dr. Amber Narro:like it's more individual in its nature?
Avery Hearnsberger:It is so individual.
Dr. Amber Narro:That's what I'm hearing as the layman. Right? Yes. It is individualized care. Indeed.
Dr. Amber Narro:Avery, you have, you know, I I got to learn one of the great things about this process and I'm gonna really try to handle my emotions on this because it was, we submitted our, applications literally with, five minutes left because we were trying to perfect them and make them wonderful. And through that process, I really got to know you as an individual. And, to be honest, like, we didn't we I I don't think we had laid eyes on each other about three months ago, right? I agree. And then, like, but for the last three months, I've really gotten, I feel like somebody that I'm going to have as a lifelong friend in this process because I think you you really I got to know you as somebody who has had some inspiration that's that's surrounding this choice to go into medicine.
Dr. Amber Narro:It's not only about, you know, you you just have a passion for medicine or whatever. You got a real reason behind that. Tell us what that reason is.
Avery Hearnsberger:So, yes, what I have I am so grateful to doctor Nero. Let me start that out because I agree. I agree. Lifelong friend here. But I have an inspiration because of my cousin Blake, and many other numerous family members that I have seen pass away, that most of them from cancer or other diseases.
Avery Hearnsberger:But my cousin, Blake, had trisomy twenty two, which is a chromosome disorder that it is not researched at all really because the patients die whenever they're not supposed to make it past infancy. But Blake lived until he was 31 years old. Wow. Which I actually, whenever I Google and research about it, I don't see any documentation of Blake at all. So that is groundbreaking to me because he lived for so long.
Avery Hearnsberger:What parameters of this chromosome disorder do we not know about that allowed him
Dr. Amber Narro:to live that long? Indeed. Or what caused him to still die so young? You know? Very interesting.
Dr. Amber Narro:And obviously that's something that you're gonna be asking along the way, you know. And we talked a lot about, that you don't necessarily have to have the answers, right? That you're contributing to a large body of knowledge. And I think that that's one thing that students often think that when they're coming to college and they're doing research, what if they don't find something? What if they don't, you know, make something else or they don't invent something or or get to the next level?
Dr. Amber Narro:And we talked a lot through this process, not only with you, but also with Lorelei and with with Noel that you you're contributing to the body of knowledge. Right? And somebody's gonna pick up what you did and keep running with it. Right? And that's super important as well.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. That is so important. I learned many times in my research. I have spent hours and hours on a failed project before. And
Dr. Amber Narro:You talked about that in your application.
Avery Hearnsberger:I did talk about that. So, basically, I had a whole summer's worth of work that just the project failed. But right now, I'm talking with doctor Anderson about redoing.
Dr. Amber Narro:Doctor Anderson is the head of the department of biology here at Southeastern.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. I am talking to him, and we're talking about reopening this project, which will allow me to pick up this project that I once failed at and retry again.
Dr. Amber Narro:Why would you try it again if it already failed once?
Avery Hearnsberger:I learned so much resilience in that. It I have a deep drive to figure out why did it fail. Okay.
Dr. Amber Narro:So it's not just like it failed too bad, move on. It's figuring out what happened to cause it to fail.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. And I feel like that is the whole point of research. Why has this happened and what is the consequence of it and how can we improve it?
Dr. Amber Narro:Okay. One of the things that, they'll tell us in psychology research and things like that is that just because you don't get an answer, it's not an answer. You know? It's not not valuable to have that. One of the things that they also tell you in research is that it's important for you to say which things are failing so that people don't repeat those, you know, but you're talking about finding out why things failed as well.
Dr. Amber Narro:So there's not only that it failed, but why it did. Right? So sometimes it is worth repeating when you have when you have failures as well. Yeah?
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. It's so worth repeating. There's no no data on a certain subject. It's just as informational as having data because that is saying this data, it did not work this way. So what can we do to make it work?
Avery Hearnsberger:And why didn't it work the previous way? And that's foundational. Awesome.
Dr. Amber Narro:Alright. We talked. You know, this is this is the first application that Southeastern's had, so we have all learned lots of things going through this. And and obviously, you saying that you got a lot out of the process and I have to I I have to say this on air. I've told you this already and I do mean this and it's worth saying that you deserve this.
Dr. Amber Narro:If if if even if it doesn't come to fruition, I wish it would. I mean, I'm putting all the positive vibes out in in the atmosphere right now. We're all surrounding you with lots of applause for doing this hard thing, and the application in and of itself is long and grueling and very reflective and very emotional and and all the things that go with filling out large paperwork large amounts of paperwork. So first, congratulations. And I've I've told you, again, you're deserving of this and and you're just as deserving as anybody else.
Dr. Amber Narro:You got a strong application. I'm here to tell everybody that that application looked good. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited about the potential for it, and thank you for paving that way for others at Southeastern so that we can continue doing this in the future. We appreciate you.
Avery Hearnsberger:Thank you. I thank you all so much because I know I could not have done it without the support of everybody around me. I definitely feel the hands of love.
Dr. Amber Narro:Yeah. Good. Good. And that's what it's about. Right?
Dr. Amber Narro:Right. And now you gotta pass that on. Right. So that's your responsibility and it is to encourage somebody else. Yeah.
Dr. Amber Narro:And by the way, Noelle didn't even know about it until just a few weeks ago, and you're the one that encouraged her to do it too.
Avery Hearnsberger:I did. I told Noelle, I said, you're a sophomore right now. You need to do it right now. Get this experience so next year you have a strong application and you can hopefully get this scholarship.
Dr. Amber Narro:So she knows what to look for.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. She does.
Dr. Amber Narro:And I think that that's important. And one of the things that we can do, you know, I mean, it honestly just came to me. We just put this in two two days ago. So all the, you know, kind of the the debriefing hasn't really happened yet but I think that one of the things that we can do is probably put your application as a sample somewhere to say, here, at least the things that you should be thinking about in the next year. You know, some of the things that you can do.
Avery Hearnsberger:Yes. I plan to for future Goldwater applicants at our school. I hope that I can help mentor and guide them because it was a very, if I'm being honest, tough process. Mhmm. I need, in the future, I would set up deadlines and specific days on whenever you need to get this.
Avery Hearnsberger:So this, this, and this done. So you cannot be banging your head against the wall at the end of the process. Right.
Dr. Amber Narro:And you had three months and and the deadlines and we met over the break. It's not like you, you know, you didn't take any time off from this. You really have been pushing it through. So you didn't drag your feet, but three months almost wasn't long enough. So we we need a year,
Avery Hearnsberger:I'm thinking. Yes. We do. I spent most of the Christmas break going to a little cozy coffee shop and filling out the questionnaire and then meeting with Doctor Narrow and texting her all break but I'm sure I was blowing up your phone. It's fine.
Dr. Amber Narro:It's fine. I loved it.
Avery Hearnsberger:Blowing up her phone saying, oh, I found figured this out. I figured this out. It was a great process.
Dr. Amber Narro:Excellent. Excellent. Alright. We will do it again. Yes.
Dr. Amber Narro:We'll be here, and I'll definitely be grabbing appreciate you, and, I appreciate all our listeners too at KSLUs ninety point nine FM the Lion. We've been at the roundtable today with Avery Hertzberger. She is our first Goldwater Scholarship applicant at Southeastern that we know anything of. Right?
Avery Hearnsberger:Right.
Dr. Amber Narro:So thank you so much for for being that, and thank you for listening here. Join us again on Thursdays and Fridays at 09:00. Y'all have a great day.
