3.4 – Collaboration

Collaborate effectively in a group setting within the discipline.

Throughout my time at Longwood University, I have completed various group projects. However, I have a few that were my favorite. In BIOL 330: Conservation Biology, I really enjoyed collaborating with group members in creating a recovery plan that was actually used and sent off to professionals. We were tasked with creating a recovery plan for an endangered species that currently lacks a sufficient recovery plan. In my group for this course, we did our recovery plan on the Snow Shoe Hare. I learned a lot of information about this species and with the hard work my group members and I completed, hopefully this species can increase in their population.

Another group project that I really enjoyed was in BIOL 450: Biology of Cancer. We chose a type of cancer and compared current data between four different types of carcinomas with the cancer type of our choosing. My group and I chose ovarian cancer, and the data we found was quite interesting. This project was very enjoyable, and different compared to any other group projects I had been a member of due to the task of just comparing data rather than collecting the data.

The last group projects that I really enjoyed was between two of my internships, BIOL 496: Research on Prostate Cancer and BIOL 497: Neuroanatomy of the Rat. These two projects allowed me to gain research experience outside of the typical biology courses. Research on Prostate Cancer was really interesting to me because cancer is a topic that i’m really interested in, so it was fun to do cancer research in undergrad. Neuroanatomy of the Rat earned its way as a favorite due to this project including neuroscience, which is the field of science I love, but also gave me the opportunity to travel to the Association of Southeastern Biologist conference (ASB).

All of these courses and projects have enabled me in becoming confident in my ability to collaborate efficiently and effectively in a group setting within the sciences discipline.

Collaboration is heavily centered around teamwork, and from all of these projects, I have learned how to effectively collaborate and build better teamwork and leadership skills.