Summertime and the Living is not that Easy
It is finally feeling like summer here in Sioux Falls; the sun is out, the humidity is making my hair frizz, and our summer students are here! We have 10 amazing undergraduates working within the Population Health Group until August 10. They are here through the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE). I, too, was a SURE student in 2011, and I really love being able to be back here in a mentoring role. We will have seven of the students located at our Sioux Falls office and three of them are off-site at our Pine Ridge and Rosebud sites.
While here, they will participate in everything that we do in our day-to-day work plus a few extra things (GRE prep, anyone?) and some of them will be able to gain hands-on experience with data collection and community engagement in our Native American and rural populations. They have already jumped in to their work and integrated themselves into our group. Writing a blog post was completely optional for them but I was able to convince a few of them that it would be the most fun they had this summer.
There are a variety of topics that they have picked out to write on, and I can't wait to hear their perspectives on things. Many of them are from out-of-state and some have never worked with or in Native American settings before; I've already had great discussions with them about their experiences thus far. They are here for just 10 weeks and will be working on various projects that we have going on in our group, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to bring some more diverse perspectives into the blogs. They all come from different places and have unique ideas and experiences that I'm looking forward to sharing with you all!
Even though it is summer, we are all keeping quite busy!
By: Michaela Seiber, MPH | Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate | Population Health Group