Central Falls High School seniors figure out their futures in Providence College’s science labs – News – providencejournal.com

“The sky is my limit,” Jimenez said. “My parents always tell me I can do anything as long as I put God first and I put my mind to it.

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PROVIDENCE — Deep within the bowels of a Providence College laboratory, Janelie Ordonez was bent over a vertex machine that produced a low rumble sound as it shook water samples from the Woonasquatucket River.

“It’s so we can evaporate it,” the 17-year-old said. “It is so we can find the bacteria we’re looking for, shewanella, and run it through PCR.”

The 17-year-old quickly realized she was not talking to another scientist.

“Basically, we are replicating their DNA.”

The research assistant’s supervisor, Brett Pellock, quickly jumped in to explain what was so special about shewanella oneidensis, at a level the Journal reporter could understand.

“It has a really neat metabolism that’s not shared by many bacteria at all,” the PC biology professor said, adding that the bacteria had properties that chemically changes toxic metals and their inherent electric charges. “In terms of how people are thinking about this bacterium they’re thinking about it in terms of microbial fuel cells.”

Pellock added that the bacterium’s ability to break chemical bonds in poisonous metals, such as chromium, to make them safer has implications for environmental cleanup efforts as well.

“That can actually result in changing toxic metals in certain situations,” Pellock said. “Dumping electrons onto metals can alter the clean up of heavy metal contamination.

“Ultimately, this program is a pilot in a way.”

For Ordonez and her research partner, Jacqueline Jimenez, both rising seniors at Central Falls High School, the program could be seen as a pilot for their careers.

“I was thinking,” Ordonez said when asked about her career hopes, “if I got into Brown I’d probably go into Med school and do forensic pathology there.

“Although I’m just a high school student, everyone here has been really nice to me and treated me like a partner,” she continued, adding that she’s been treated with an authority that’s new to her. “Here they treat you as they would treat everyone else.”

“Obviously Central Falls has limited resources so we weren’t able to do as many experiments [as we do here],” Jimenez said. “I was all mesmerized when I went into the Providence College lab for the first time.”

Resources were taken into consideration by Pellock, who said that when he wrote the grants for the program he made sure that the students got a $1,200 stipend for their six-weeks in a lab coat.

“These students basically become a member of our lab for the summer,” Pellock said. “The primary purpose of this [stipend] is to make sure students don’t deal with financial pressure that will compete with their time.

“We talk about the financial barriers for students from under-served communities and groups to participate in these programs and financial is a very real part of that.”

The stipends and project itself were financed through an Equity and Innovation Mini-Grant from The Center at Moore Hall and the Office of Institutional Diversity, both at Providence College.

Jimenez said that the stipend was very much welcome from her end.

“I think it was very necessary just because… Being a rising senior, you have college on your mind 247,” she said. “You have to save up for that and for me, it was either work the whole summer for that or work in the lab.”

As a matter of fact, resource questions such as that is exactly what motivated Jimenez’s mother and father to immigrate to the U.S. from Guatemala 20 years ago.

“I always tell my children that they will grow up to be great and successful people,” Rosa Jimenez, Jacqueline’s mother, said. “They will be able to attain much that we were never able to get.

“In the country that we come from the possibilities are very limited,” she continued. “My parents had six children. They could not afford to give us the educational opportunities that they have.”

Yet for both Jimenez and Ordonez, who said that their interest in science began when they were little, the transition from high school lab to a university-level one presented them with learning curves; though they quickly took on similar mindsets to the college students they worked with over the course of the six-week program.

“It is frustrating when your data gets contaminated,” Ordonez said. “Me and my partner [Jimenez], we ran a gel once which is what you do when you want to replicate the DNA.”

Ordonez then explained that – if procedures were followed correctly – the bacteria should not appear in all water samples.

“What happened is all our samples tested positive for shewanella,” she continued, adding that they had to throw out the samples.

“Sometimes asking questions is not the easiest thing to do when you’re surrounded by so many people who know what they’re doing,” Jimenez said, referring to the PC students and faculty that surrounded her in the lab. “That makes it hard to ask questions but the people around me definitely made it easier.”

“The big picture is we are trying to figure out how shewanella reacts to stress,” Pellock said. “What Jackie and Janelie are doing is some molecular biology to figure out where you can find shewanella in Rhode Island.”

But for the two students, it’s about figuring out their futures.

“I was thinking if I got into Brown I’d probably go into Med school and do forensic pathology,” Ordonez said. “This program helps… It’s really cool because not a lot of people our age get to do this.”

“The sky is my limit,” Jimenez said. “My parents always tell me I can do anything as long as I put God first and I put my mind to it.

“They have always pushed me to be my best and every achievement [of mine] means so much more because they did so much to see me grow.”

— kandrade@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @Kevprojo