Tara Robert

Background

About Tara Robert

HORTICULTURE: I have been involved in 750+ hours as a student worker and primary assistant in all facets of the UNCW Greenhouse and teaching gardens. I have worked both under the instruction of the manager as well as independently, often coming in on weekends. I have completed tasks ranging from propagation, seed collection, planting, daily watering, and amending soil nutrients, to landscape design, ornamental horticulture, as well as creating display container gardens and carnivorous plant bogs. During the Spring of 2019, I applied for and was awarded a $1,688.80 TGIF Mini-Grant for my proposal to introduce and maintain a beneficial insect population. I introduced lacewings, minute pirate bugs, as well as parasitic wasps the following Fall to meet our greenhouse's beneficial needs.GENETICS: I have spent 150+ hours working in Dr. Stephanie Kamel's genetics lab where I learned how to perform isolation, cleaning, and extraction of DNA from plant and animal tissues, genomic quantification (via Nanodrop), dilutions, amplification of a set of short tandem repeat (STR) markers, separation of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products by capillary electrophoresis (CE), as well as DNA profile analysis and interpretation. Also assisted in general lab tasks such as racking and autoclaving pipette tips.ANTHROPOLOGY: As an anthropologist, I have been trained to take a holistic approach in research. This out-of-the-box way of thinking is a skill that I now apply to every aspect of my life. I have been trained and have experience in human biology, archeology, as well as cultural anthropology. I have participated in SAGECare LGBTQ Training, AIDS Memorial Quilt Docent Training, and have gone through the IRB Citi Program Certification in Human Research (Social and Behavioral). I have participated in hands-on research ranging from archeological field school where we excavated a slave cabin along the Cape Fear River, to human biological variation research in which we took anthropometric measurements, recorded 24-hour dietary recalls, and assessed a population of college students' nutritional intakes vs energetic expenditures.