Enrichment Opportunities

The University of Connecticut Avery Point campus offers many opportunities to enrich undergraduate education.  The University offers an Honors program for students seeking greater academic challenges in a small class setting.  The Study Abroad program facilitates study at institutions around the world, while the Undergraduate Research program involves students in faculty research on the Avery Point campus.  The campus is home to a number of community based technology and marine organizations providing potential work and internships for students.  The Avery Point campus provides education in a small college atmosphere with connections to the community, the University, and the world.

Jose Santana is an undergraduate student who started at UConn in the CAP (Center for Academic Programs - CAP) program at Avery Point. While he was here, he worked as a lab assistant in the Marine Sciences department. With Dr. Penny Vlahos he analyzed samples for dissolved organic carbon and total nitrogen in seawater from samples taken in both Long Island Sound and shallow vent sites in Italy. He also did some sample prep to analyze seawater and vent waters for amino acids and neutral sugars. Dr. Vlahos says, "I trained him on these instruments and methods so we had some terrific discussions about life, choices, priorities, etc... Jose took every bit of advice and I'm thrilled with what he has achieved." Jose also worked with Dr. Annelie Skoog on a research project looking at aggregation of dissolved organic matter to particulate organic matter in the Thames River estuary. He carried out the sampling, the experiments and some of the chemical analysis of the collected samples. He and Dr. Skoog planned the work together, put together a schedule for sampling and experiments, and in the end Jose worked indepenedently on carrying out the project. The work he did served as the basis for continued work by one of Dr. Skoog's graduate students.

The work that Jose did on the Avery Point campus prepared him for a summer internship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2006. Here is his description of his work there: "Dietary supplements containing bitter orange (Citrus x aurantium, L.) as an integrated component have rapidly replaced Ephedra-based supplements for use as weight-loss products. However, the safety of bitter orange-containing supplements has been questioned because synephrine, a key component of bitter orange, has been associated with adverse cardiovascular events. So the research involved developing a method to identify then quantify 2 isomeric forms of synephrine (meta-synephrine & para-synephrine)." Here is a picture of Jose at the lab in Washington, D.C.

This is one example of the enrichment opportunities at the Avery Point campus of the University of Connecticut.