Local students win national science competitons

PABLO — SKC students Caleb Marceau, Josh Marceau and Katie McDonald recently competed at the American Indian Higher Education Consortiums (AIHEC) annual conference in the ANLSAMP Poster and Oral Research competition in Rapid City, South Dakota. Caleb won first place in the oral competition with his research presentation entitled, "Stability Measures of Heat-Shock Protein Complexes Using Resonance Energy Transfer from Sulfolobales found in the Acidic Hot Springs of Yellowstone National Park", while Josh's presentation entitled, "Structure-Function Relationships of Reverse Transcriptase Subtypes from Pathogenic and Non-Pathogenic Strains of Feline Immunodeficiency Virus" and Katie's presentation entitle, "Genetic Description of Reverse Transcriptase Subtypes from Strains of the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus Using Laser Gene(tm) Software (DNAStar, Inc.)" placed first and second respectively in the poster competition. Also, SKC's Science Bowl team placed third with Zachary Underwood as captain, Clinton Shepard, Lowell Yellowhorn and Katie McDonald as alternate. SKC Faculty member William "Bill" Swaney coached the Science Bowl while Corky Clairmont was the onsite coach.

The All Nations Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (ANLSAMP) sponsored the Science Poster and Oral Competition as well as the Science Bowl. ANLSAMP sponsors these competitions as an avenue for tribal college students to showcase their research and knowledge.

The goal of ANLSAMP is to double the number of American Indians achieving Bachelor's Degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). ANLSAMP has 36 partners institutions including tribal colleges across a 13 state area and are funded by the National Science Foundation. ANLSAMP is the largest LSAMP in the nation and the only alliance who specifically focuses on American Indians, the least represented minority in any of the STEM fields. ANLSAMP is housed at Salish Kootenai College at the Indigenous Math and Science Institute (IMSI).

For more information in regards to the AIHEC Conference contact Steve Dupuis, IMSI-ANLSAMP Director at Salish Kootenai College. Steve can be reached at 275-4996 or send an e-mail to steve_dupuis@skc.edu.