[MEREDITH:] Biology is the study of life and at the University
of Central Oklahoma, there is a wide diversity
of different areas that you can study here.
My name is Meredith Clement
and I received my undergraduate degree in Biology here
at the University of Central Oklahoma.
I'm back at the University of Central Oklahoma
and in the College of Math and Science.
A graduate student here in the biology department at UCO.
>> We have reactants over here, and then what is over here?
>> I also work as an instructor
for the General Biology for non-majors.
I really like teaching the class because you get
to interact with the students.
I like it when their faces, they light up and really catch
onto something exciting.
Biology can be a scary subject.
It's a ton of information to learn,
but the laboratory helps you connect the concepts
to why they're really important.
The College of Math and Science really encourages transformative
learning process.
It's something that everybody here is really proud of
and for me, I think one of the big opportunities
in transformative learning happened while I was traveling
abroad doing research.
We traveled to Greece and Turkey.
We are doing research on honey bees there.
We wanted to compare honeybees here in the United States,
which is an invasive species, to honeybees in the Mediterranean
where they are actually native.
My professor in particular does research involving entomology,
insects and we study honey bees and pollination
and how they interact with the environment and their importance
to our agricultural crops.
[INSTRUCTOR:] Just get over there
and get your rope off the back.
[MEREDITH:] There are so many opportunities
to do research here at Central.
Everything from field research where you're out working
with a particular organism or comparing different species,
to working in a laboratory.
We have professors who do research on turtles and bats,
and we have professors that do research
in the medical field on wound healing.
The opportunities for research start
as an undergraduate here at Central.
[MIRIAM:] After I added the twenty microliters.
>> I'm working with Dupuytren fibroblasts
which is a connective tissue disorder
of the palms of the hands.
And we're studying the cells within the connective tissue
to see how they move, what makes them different from other cells.
I love science because I like to know how things work.
I've always loved the physiology behind your body
or how different structures in your body work.
My name is Miriam Noon and I'm a Biology major
at the University of Central Oklahoma.
I grew up in Oklahoma City.
I moved here from Mexico when I was five.
I attended Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City.
I graduated as one
of the valedictorians for my senior class.
The ones that look like a blob are probably the lymphocytes.
I'm a student in the morning.
The weekdays I'm here or in the lab.
As a research assistant I'm in the classroom.
And in the evenings, I'm a mother.
[OFF CAMERA:] Honey, what is that?
[CHILD:] Dinosaur.
[MIRIAM:] I'm the mother of two young boys,
both under the age of five.
I'm part of Central because of the affordability.
Their tuition is very reasonable.
The location was my primary concern
when choosing a university.
Then when you get here, you also realize the sort
of the hidden gem, that is the science facility,
the science department.
The professors are very passionate about what they teach
and I think that's great.
To be able to be motivated about something, to be motivated
about a subject and to find
that the professor that's teaching you is motivated also
makes you learn that much more.
For me, getting a college degree was a goal I set very early
in life.
With both of my parents not having graduating high school,
I wanted to not only graduate high school,
I wanted to go that extra step.
Earning a degree at Central will help me get to my next goal
which is medical school.
It will be a lot easier to attain
because I graduated from Central.
Because we're such a respected college,
we have such a respected science department.
[SON:] Come with me.
[MIRIAM:] When my children grow up, they're going to say,
"My mother went to college.
My mom was the mother of a five year old and a one year old
and she went to college and she did it."