A University of Tennessee professor with a passion for community college education is working with Pellissippi State students to offer summer research internships that are making an impact on individuals as well as the community.
Ian Kilevori, who graduated from Pellissippi State in May, has spent the summer completing one of those internships and will begin the fall semester as a transfer student at the University of Tennessee.
In the summer of 2023, Kilevori completed an internship with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and his goal is to earn an advanced degree in chemistry. So when the opportunity arose for him to complete another internship this summer working side by side with professors and graduate students at the University of Tennessee, he jumped at the chance.
Now he’s performing lab experiments and learning how liposomes enter the blood stream and fuse with cellular membranes. It’s an eight-week opportunity that he believes will help him obtain the skills he needs to be successful in the future.
“I’m grateful to have the chance to be a part of this program and to position myself for my career goals,” he said.
The opportunity came about thanks in part to relationships Pellissippi State professors Rachel Glazener and Garry Pennycuff formed with University of Tennessee chemistry professor Joshua Baccile.
Baccile, a community college graduate, said he started the outreach because of his own experience.
“When I was an undergraduate student, my summer research experience was critical to my continued pursuit of chemistry, and I wanted to create an opportunity like that” for other community college students, Baccile said.
When Kilevori heard the professor’s presentation in the Pellissippi State organic chemistry lab class, he knew he wanted to apply. Baccile recruited a total of four Pellissippi State students – Kilevori, Crystal Davies, Ally Taylor and Samuel Lassiter – with the help of a National Science Foundation grant, to take part in research opportunities with the goal of leading them into a four-year degree program.
Barbara Veith, chairperson of the physical sciences discipline at Pellissippi State, said the summer internships give students a chance to enhance their classroom experience by learning complicated lab techniques that are not taught in a typical lab class.
“This program not only is a pathway for our students to four-year institutions, but also can be a launch pad for graduate studies,” Veith said. “Working with graduate students, even for just a summer, can give them an idea of what grad school would be like.”
Now in its second year, the relationship and the interest Pellissippi State students have in participating continues to grow.
“This program is establishing pathways to four-year degree programs for Tennessee residents through research experiences,” Baccile said. “Not only is this helping individual students expand their future opportunities, it’s directly contributing to the state’s workforce development goals.”
Veith said the relationship also is bolstering the reputation of the college.
“These students are ambassadors for Pellissippi State, demonstrating to the UTK faculty that our students are getting rigorous instruction and a strong knowledge base from our faculty.”