{"id":46912,"date":"2019-09-04T10:57:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=46912"},"modified":"2019-09-04T10:57:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:57:50","slug":"students-mentoring-students-stretches-boundaries-of-learning-at-fort-hays-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=46912","title":{"rendered":"Students mentoring students stretches boundaries of learning at Fort Hays State"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien
<\/strong> University Relations and Marketing
<\/em> Two Fort Hays State University students are taking advantage of the philosophy, \u201cTo teach is to learn twice.\u201d

Drake Kee and Wyatt Engel began the fall semester at FHSU with a different perspective on learning after mentoring other students assisting with their chemistry research project.

Kee and Engel spent part of their summer working at a camp on campus with visitors from the Daejeon Science High School for the Gifted in Daejeon, South Korea.

The Korean students, led by Kee and Engel, helped with a research project of designing and fabricating new organic materials to harness solar energy.

\u201cThe best way to learn is through teaching someone,\u201d said Kee, a junior biology major from Beloit. \u201cI taught the Daejeon students things they didn\u2019t know, and I learned some things from them, too.\u201d

Besides getting exposed to more research opportunities, working with the Daejeon students also served as a cultural education.

One particularly valuable lesson Kee said he learned was how to communicate in ways that the Daejeon students would understand him, taking into account their limited knowledge of the English language.

\u201cThis definitely pushed Drake and Wyatt to be better communicators,\u201d said Dr. Arvin Cruz, associate professor of chemistry.

Cruz is in charge of the research project and recruited Kee and Engel to participate. They both were eager for the unique opportunity.

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to get to do this kind of research as an undergrad, so I feel really fortunate to be here at Fort Hays State,\u201d said Engel, a sophomore chemistry major from Victoria.

The duo accompanied Cruz to the American Chemical Society Conference in Orlando, Fla., last spring, and presented Kee\u2019s paper on the project.

Cruz said having undergrad students involved in research projects is not all that uncommon. What makes this situation unique is the supervisory roles Kee and Engel were charged with as well as taking on a level of research that is usually done at much larger research universities.

\u201cThis is a high quality research project, on something that\u2019s really in demand. And this is being done by underclassmen who haven\u2019t yet taken advanced courses in chemistry,\u201d Cruz said. \u201cWhat a great learning opportunity for them.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien University Relations and Marketing Two Fort Hays State University students are taking advantage of the philosophy, \u201cTo teach is to learn twice.\u201d… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46913,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46912\/revisions\/46913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}