About Me
My name is Jenna Holland and I am a Senior student pursuing an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. I will be applying for Graduation with Leadership Distinction through the Research pathway.
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After graduation, I plan to take a gap year. I have completed my undergraduate degree in three years and I want to take some time before going to graduate school to stop and smell the roses, as they say. The past three years have flown by since they were consumed with homework, exams, and extracurricular activities. However, I look forward to applying for graduate schools in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area in the fall. I hope to gain admission into a neuroscience graduate program where I can participate in pharmaceutical research and development.
The dream of a career in neuroscientific research started during an undergraduate research experience that I had in the summer of 2019 at Marquette University. I researched the effects of cysteine-evoked glutamate release in astrocytes, which are the main cell type in mammalian brains. The research group that I was a member of was partnered with a small pharmaceutical start-up company that was trying to develop a drug to help people who suffer with trichotilomainia (a manifestation of schizophrenia which causes victims to compulsively pull out, and in some cases eat their hair). In my experience, the research that I was doing had a significant potential impact beyond the lab. If successful in our goal, the research my group was doing could potentially improve the quality of life of thousands of people who suffer from this disease. Additionally, the research had other potential applications in addiction treatment which furthered the potential applications for the experiments we were performing. I think that it is very easy for scientific experiments to become so specific and extensive that people lose sight of the greater purpose for the experiments and thus lose their passion for the work. I hope that in my future projects, I can instill in students and colleagues the same excitement about research that I felt when I was working at Marquette.
In addition to participating in undergraduate research at Marquette, I conducted research under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Sutton at the University of South Carolina. In this project, I was building descriptors for a computer program that has the power to perform natural language processing. Essentially, this software will be able to scan research articles and pull out perovskite crystal structure synthesis information. This program could then be used in physical chemistry research labs nationwide during the experimental procedure generation process because it can predict if the specified crystal structure will form based on inputted temperature, pressure and starting material information.
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Outside of consulting research during my undergraduate career, I was a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Alpha Lambda Delta, Alpha Epsilon Delta and the University of South Carolina Homecoming Commission. These experiences helped to enhance my undergraduate education by exposing me to diverse groups of people outside of the classroom to expand my horizons. I am profoundly grateful for these experiences, as they were the whole reason I chose to attend UofSC in the first place. I wanted to attend college in a place that was different from the small, Wisconsin town I grew up in. I wanted to see diversity and different cultures. I wanted to meet people beyond the same 5 friends I maintained since kindergarten. I wanted to grow, as a person and a student; South Carolina gave me that.
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In my time with the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, I served as the professional development chair where I learned about professionalism and job interviews--two topics that were not covered in my coursework. As a member of Alpha Lambda Delta, I met other students who were in my year of college that were pursuing a host of different majors and career paths. These people opened me up to the world beyond science and math that I had been so heavily engrossed in. The pre-health organization Alpha Epsilon Delta exposed me to other pre-med students, to medical professionals, and showed me the vast numbers of careers that are available in the healthcare field. This organization single-handedly brought me to the realization that the lifestyle of a doctor is not what I wanted. I may have never realized this, if not for AED. Finally, during my time as the Sponsorship director for the University of South Carolina Homecoming Commission, I met community leaders in Columbia and at UofSC and I was immersed in the great history and traditions of the school that I have come to love.
My experiences at the University of South Carolina, both in and beyond the classroom, have made my impending graduation bittersweet. I am excited to move on to the next chapter in my life and to finally have the opportunity to put into action all of the lessons I have learned over the last three years. However, I am saddened by the thought of leaving the place that has helped me to discover who I am. UofSC will always have a warm place in my heart, but now it's my turn to add to the great legacy of alumni as I pursue my career in scientific research.