2026 MSU UURAF Success!

As the 2025-2026 school year is wrapping up, I want to reflect on my mentoring experience. I've been lucky enough to mentor in a few different capacities since arriving at MSU, but being a UURAF mentor for two incredibly talented students, McKenna Kosciolek and Krystin Nelligan, has by far been a favorite. 

For those who do not know, UURAF stands for the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum. Over 1,000 undergraduates participated from colleges across the university, mentored by professors, post-docs, and graduate students. It happens once a year in the spring, and is an amazing opportunity for students to present their hard work.

Both McKenna and Krystin have assisted me in taking photos of microscope slides that I am analyzing for my dissertation (to be defended in Fall of 2026, so stay tuned!). Each decided to take on their own projects using some of these slides, and decided to present them. McKenna presented her poster titled "A Microscopic Analysis into the Relationship between Dietary Intake and Bone Physiology." McKenna analyzed the dental calculus inclusions from two Late Classic period individuals from Pook's Hill, Belize, an open-air site. She was interested in understanding whether the two individuals had evidence of diet-related pathologies, so she analyzed the skeletal remains as well. The remains were not well preserved, so unfortunately she was unable to identify any skeletal pathologies.

McKenna came in second place in the Anthropology and Archaeology section! Congrats to her! 

McKenna presenting at the 2026 UURAF.

Similarly, Krystin's poster (titled "Phytoliths from the Dental Calculus of Teeth Found in the Caves Branch Rockshelter, Belize") also analyzed the difference in dental calculus inclusions between two individuals, but she focused on individuals from Caves Branch Rockshelter in Belize, which contains about 400-500 individuals. She focused on the photosynthetic pathways of the microbotanicals identified, and found that there was evidence of a larger range of microbotanicals in CBR 98 (a mid-adult female) than in CBR 9 (young adult male), including evidence of C4 and CAM plants. 

A week ago, we found out that Krystin actually won first place in the Anthropology and Archaeology section!  

Krystin with her first-place certificate!

I wanted to say thank you to McKenna and Krystin for trusting me to guide them as their mentor. It was a joy and so much fun getting to work with both of them this last year. I can't wait to see what they do next!