For my Practicum project, I interned for the Plant Germplasm Quarantine Program (PGQP) as a biological technician to complete my practicum through the generation of natural and physical science. PGQP was located at the National Plant Germplasm Quarantine Center. I found out about this internship at PGQP through the use of Careers4terps. On Careers4terps, I got to customize my search to look specifically for internships close to where I lived as well as internships dealing with plants because I have always had an interest in plants. After customizing my search, I found the internship for PGQP. I then updated my resume and then hit the apply button on Careers4terps and automatically my request was sent out. I also had to write up a cover letter, which I had never done before and wasn’t sure what to do, but I found a few resources from the school that showed how to format and what to include in a cover letter when applying to a job (I included that I wanted to use this internship for my Practicum). A few days later I heard back from who would be my supervisor, Dr. Bishwo Adhikari, and I set up an interview.
I recommend for future scholars students looking to find a practicum project through Careers4terps (Handshake) or another job search engine because it makes it easy to find locations that may already be offering internships. Unfortunately, Careers4terps is going away, but it will be replaced with Handshake which will offer similar job searching functions through the school. If you can’t find anything on job search engines, look up sites of missions you are interested in and try emailing the supervisor of the site (or even try interning at PGQP like I did!).
PGQP’s mission is to check various plants from overseas for viruses before letting them into the United States. At PGQP I worked on the poaceae team which worked mainly with grass, bamboo, sugarcane, and rice. I had a large variety of tasks that I learned to do. Some major tasks I had were to collect fresh plant tissues from our green house by collecting some of the younger leaves, next I would extract the RNA from those plant tissues, quantify that RNA, after I would then run PCR testing on the RNA to determine if they had a specific virus or not based on the results, and lastly if the results can back positive we would submit them for sequencing to confirm our results. While I got to do a lot of lab work, I also got to work some in the greenhouses mainly with unpacking shipments of plants and or packing a shipment of plants up to be sent out.
Working at PGQP, I gained more of a perspective and appreciation for the science that goes into keeping our country from an agricultural disaster. While I was there, I was apart of a lot of trainings and got to interact and learn more about how the USDA’s APHIS was form and the reason behind the inspection services. APHIS stands for Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services which was founded to protect our agricultural resources, such as protecting against invasive species from coming over (i.e. insects) plant and animal viruses, etc. In my case, I gained more of an appreciation for the connection between science and society because at PGQP we would test plants for viruses in order to prevent infection of the plants we have here, which would slow down crop production and therefore cost a lot in agricultural damages. Through this, I got to see how science plays a major role in keeping our society safe and preventing against agricultural disaster.
When I first started at UMD, I knew I wanted to go into research and work in a lab, but I never had much experience in a lab. Throughout my first year, I really enjoyed my lab classes, they were always my favorite classes. When I started at PGQP, I hadn’t had much experience in biology based labs, but I really enjoyed the lab work the most during my time there. For me, working at PGQP allowed me to confirm what I wanted to do and to develop more of an interest in plants. Based on this experience, I still want to go into research and work in a lab, but I think I will also be more open to working with plants and I may try to taking more plant related classes at UMD. Overall, I had a wonderful time working at PGQP and I learned a lot about plants and plant pathogens.