Identity Stories Told by Undergraduate Preceptors in a Biology Laboratory Course

Preceptors, also referred to as learning assistants or undergraduate assistants, play a crucial role in supporting university courses across many college campuses and disciplines. Research on students' experiences serving as preceptors indicates many positive outcomes, including gaining a deeper understanding of course material, developing skills applicable to future careers, and an increased understanding of the learning needs of both themselves and their peers. Studies of the impact of the preceptor experience on student identity in STEM disciplines have found that the experience results in substantial growth in STEM professional identity and disciplinary identity, specifically physics identity. This study builds on previous research regarding the interplay between preceptor experience and identity by exploring the significance of other types of identity in shaping the learning experience of ten preceptors in an introductory biology laboratory course. In this study, I use a framework in which identity is operationalized as a collection of reifying, significant, and endorsable stories to explore the various identities told by preceptors. I then consider the significance of these different identities by examining the relationship between identity, goals, and learning to build a deeper understanding of the preceptor experience. Preceptor identity stories were collected through written autobiographies, reflections, and in-person interviews. Using qualitative methods, I analyzed these stories to determine which various identities the preceptors told and how these identities shaped their learning. The findings from this study indicate that preceptors told three distinct types of identities and that these different identities uniquely shaped the goals and learning of preceptors with those identities. These identities were scientist, teacher, and helper. Preceptors who told a scientist identity focused on their desire to discover new knowledge and enjoyment of the challenges and uncertainty inherent to doing science. Preceptors with this identity had goals centered on doing and learning more science during their time as preceptors. Interestingly, they accomplished these goals but also learned their role as preceptors was more about assisting students in the course than giving preceptors a chance to do more science. Both learning outcomes reinforced their scientist identities. Preceptors with a teacher identity emphasized past experiences teaching, a desire to facilitate student learning, and growth as a teacher during their preceptor experience. They centered their goals for their preceptor experience around improving their teaching skills and a deep interest in student learning. They experienced learning during their preceptor experience that was consistent with these goals, and their teacher identity was reinforced. Finally, preceptors with a helper or service identity expressed empathy for students and told stories centered on care for students' emotional well-being and empowerment. Their goals for their preceptor experience were to ease the emotional burden that a laboratory class can often cause and help empower students through science. They learned their preceptor role made this possible, reinforcing their service identities. These findings demonstrate the vital role of identities beyond disciplinary identities in shaping the preceptor experience. They also illustrate a relationship between identity, goals, and learning that helps explain the variety of learning outcomes observed for the preceptors in this study. This research has implications for informing the approaches of instructors who work with preceptors by considering how different identities can be leveraged to serve both preceptors and the students they work with

Hearing Aid Coverage for Arizona Medicaid: A Model Proposal and Stakeholder Mobilization

To date, there are limited resources in Arizona to support low-income adults, aged 22-64,with hearing loss. This is in part because Arizona does not have hearing health coverage through Medicaid. Medicaid is a state and federally funded low-income healthcare coverage plan. To change this, seven students of the doctor-of-audiology program at the University of Arizona, along with nine faculty members, worked on a multi-semester project to study potential paths for the hearing-impaired low-income adult population in Arizona to gain access to hearing healthcare. One subgroup of three students (A. White, B. Crump, and D. Robillard) proposed a model for coverage of hearing services and hearing devices for adults under Medicaid for Arizona called Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System (AHCCCS). Our model was based on information gathered through a state-by-state comparison covering five categories: diagnosis, follow-up with counseling, hearing aids, replacements/repairs, and aural rehabilitation. The group also proposed an initiative to mobilize stakeholders including primary care physicians, ophthalmologists, and social workers to aid in support for a potential future bill in legislation. The information created from this research project can be used to bring such a bill through legislation to grant AHCCCS hearing-aid coverage for working adults with hearing loss

Chile Crop Water and Nitrogen Demand

This article, published in the VegIPM Newsletter (Vol. 16, No. 16), examines how water and nitrogen demand align with chile growth stages, with 2025 field data showing crops entering peak bloom and nutrient demand by late July.Documents in the Arizona Pest Management Center collection are made available by the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact https://acis.cals.arizona.edu/about-us/arizona-pest-management-center

Future of the Colorado River – Southwest Ag Summit

This article, published in the VegIPM Newsletter (Vol. 16, No. 4), previews discussions at the 2025 Southwest Ag Summit focused on the Colorado River, highlighting key sessions with policymakers and water leaders addressing negotiation challenges.Documents in the Arizona Pest Management Center collection are made available by the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact https://acis.cals.arizona.edu/about-us/arizona-pest-management-center

Indigenous STEM “Engineering”: An Analysis and Integration of Indigenous Perspective for Cultural Sustainable Engineering Education Curriculum in Higher Education for Native American Students

This study considered how culturally sustainable pedagogy (CSP) can be integrated intoengineering education in higher education. The study was specifically interested in implementing a CSP curriculum in engineering as a way to increase the number of Native American and Indigenous students in the engineering profession. The approach to this study emphasized Indigenous perspectives for culturally sustainable Engineering Education Curriculum in Higher Education for Native American Students. This research considered how the concept of “Ways of Knowing” and CSP understanding in engineering education can be implemented. To collect data for this study, I administered a survey to members of AISES at the national and regional levels in the Southwest. The goal was to obtain students' perspectives on CSP, using Indigenous Research Methodology (IRM) and Quantitative Methodology. This study yielded Indigenous perspectives on a culturally sustainable engineering education curriculum in higher education for Native American students through a theoretical framework of the Indigenous Engineering Education Model (IEEM) developed for this research

Association Mapping of Rice Flag Leaf Primary Metabolism Uncovers Major Multitrait Qtls Related to Yield Performance Under Drought

Rice (Oryza sativa) is the primary food for over one-third of the global population, yet its productivity is increasingly threatened by drought. To better understand the metabolic basis of drought tolerance and grain yield, we performed a metabolic profiling on a panel of 271 indica rice accessions grown under well-watered (WW) and water-deficit (WD) field conditions. The WW field remained flooded, while the WD field experienced 14 days without irrigation at 50% flowering, followed by re-watering until maturity. Flag leaf samples were analyzed using untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) metabolomics and a total of 89 primary metabolites were annotated and quantified. The rice accessions were genotyped via genotype-by-sequencing (GBS), generating a 47K SNP map available for genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We identified 184 QTLs associated with the variation in the metabolite values: 114 under WD, 70 under WW, and 19 shared across conditions. Four high-density regions (HDRs), each harboring ≥4 metabolite QTLs, were found on chromosomes 1, 4, and 11. Principal component 1 (PC1) of each HDR-associated metabolites correlated strongly with grain yield. Fine mapping using a 1.5 million SNP map revealed 35 candidate genes within HDRs, including promising targets such as IAAS (Os01t0785400), NSP1 (Os01t0784900), proteases (Os04t0477900, Os04t0479800), and CYPs (Os04t0480650, Os04t0480700). These genes and HDRs represent valuable candidates for breeding drought-resilient, high-yielding rice varieties

Cotton Insecticide Use Guide: Knowing and Balancing Risks

Audience - agricultural stakeholders (growers, pest control advisors, industry).This two‐page guide offers a concise, practical overview for cotton growers and pest management professionals on how to select insecticides that balance effective pest control with environmental, human, and ecological safety. It presents a rating system that scores products for their efficacy against target pests (such as whiteflies and lygus bugs) and for their risks to beneficial organisms like predatory insects, pollinators, and other wildlife, as well as potential hazards to human bystanders and aquatic life. The guide emphasizes that no product is completely without risk and that informed decisions require weighing factors such as pest control performance, resistance management, cost, and broader environmental impact. Developed by experts from the University of Arizona and USDA-ARS, this IPM (Integrated Pest Management) short serves as a user-friendly reference to help growers choose insecticides that support sustainable cotton production while minimizing unintended consequences.This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 2024-70006-35385 and grants from the Arizona Cotton Growers Association and Cotton Incorporated.Documents in the Arizona Pest Management Center collection are made available by the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact https://acis.cals.arizona.edu/about-us/arizona-pest-management-center

Intrauterine Opioid Exposures and Congenital Heart Disease

The rise in opioid use has impacted women of childbearing age, leading to a surge in children born following intrauterine opioid exposure. While previous studies have suggested associations between opioid exposure in utero and congenital heart disease, there has been limited high-quality data supporting this association. There have been no models testing the effects of sustained opioid exposure on cardiac development or exploration of underlying mechanisms of opioids resulting in CHD. To fill the gap in available literature I pursued three aims. First, I analyzed large deidentified national databases (Vizient and Mariner 170) and identified a significantly increased incidence of both moderate-severe and minor CHD in neonates with substantial opioid exposure (exhibiting withdrawal at birth). This query demonstrated that compared to controls there was increased pulmonary artery stenosis, atrioventricular septal defects, and defects of the aorta. Second, I performed a detailed patient-level analysis of mother-infant dyads with CHD and without CHD in a cohort of infants with substance exposures. This revealed that illicit opioids were used in 100% of CHD dyads, significantly more than non-CHD dyads. Third, I established experimental models in Zebrafish and human cardiac organoids to assess developmental consequences of commonly prescribed opioid, buprenorphine. In zebrafish, buprenorphine exposure resulted in abnormal cardiac morphology, increased chamber size, and cardiac malformations, while co-treatment with naloxone did not mitigate these effects. In human cardiac organoids, buprenorphine impaired differentiation and resulted in dose dependent effects on cardiac conduction. These findings support a link between sustained opioid exposure and disrupted cardiac development and highlight the need for further investigations and patient monitoring.Release after 07/14/202

SYNTAX OF ADVERBIAL PARTICLES IN O'ODHAM: AN ANALYSIS OF HAB

O'odham is a language of the Tepiman branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken across southern Arizona and northern Mexico. O'odham contains a plethora of particles, that is small, typically cliticized, functional elements of an indeterminate syntactic category. Despite O'odham containing so many particles and these particles occurring so frequently (Hale 2001), there has been little pedagogical, descriptive, or theoretical work done about these particles. This is a topic mutually interesting to both linguists (who will need to account for these particles while developing theories that can better encompass languages like O'odham) and the O'odham community (as these particles can be difficult to explain). This project set out to create an syntactic analysis for the O'odham particles hab, cem, "˜ep, "˜i (inceptive), and "˜i (correlative). Hale's Preliminary Remarks on the Syntax and Semantics O'odham Particles (2001) provided the framework for these particles in which this project is situated in. It also provided some hypotheses as to the ordering of these particles which were used as a starting point for this project. This project analyzed sentences containing these particles from A Dictionary of Papago Usage by Madeleine Mathiot (1973) and Legends and Lore of the Papago and Pima Indians by Dean and Lucille Saxton (1969). Based on my analysis, I will present some generalizations about the particle hab

THE EFFECT OF THE DURATION AND INTENSITY OF EXERCISE ON CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity across the world. As of 2023, it's been estimated that each year, more than half a billion people are affected, with greater than 20 millions deaths. Although regular exercise is widely known to be a protective factor against CVD, the optimal combination of exercise duration and intensity for cardiovascular health improvement remains unclear. While common exercise regimens over the past several decades have included combinations of moderate and vigorous exercise, new routines include workouts that last a fraction of the time, but promise the same benefits as longer workouts. This literature review compiles current research on how exercise models, ranging from continuous moderate-intensity training to emerging high-intensity, short-duration protocols such as 12-week sprint interval training, affect key cardiovascular health metrics, including blood pressure, heart rate, vascular resistance, and myocardial function. This review explores the physiological mechanisms behind the benefits induced by exercise, such as mitochondrial biogenesis and angiogenesis, while also considering the role of afterload and preload on blood pressure. Evidence from large longitudinal studies and targeted clinical trials demonstrates that both increased exercise intensity and duration are associated with reduced CVD risk and mortality, though diminishing benefits are observed beyond certain thresholds of intensity. Additionally, the review evaluates the value of recently popularized, time-efficient exercise routines in comparison to established guidelines. The findings highlight the multifactorial nature of cardiovascular adaptation to exercise and underscore the importance of individualized exercise prescriptions to optimize cardiovascular health in diverse populations