Crafts & Conversations was established to foster community among TCU students and the residents of a local retirement facility, Trinity Terrace. During monthly meetings, students and residents share their stories while collaborating on season-themed craft activities, including murals, cross-stitching, snow globes, suncatchers, decoupage, and upcycled terrariums. TCU students who volunteer in these monthly meetings build meaningful friendships, combat stereotypes against the elderly, and improve communication and leadership skills. In addition, each event opens with a performance by TCU music students, enabling them to cultivate their craft and share their talent. Even throughout the pandemic, Crafts & Conversations nurtured memories and connections through Zoom and masked in-person meetings. With a commitment to sustainability, this project will continue to enrich the lives of residents at Trinity Terrace and Brookdale Westover Hills, providing dedicated student volunteers with opportunities to strengthen the Fort Worth community.

The Molding Melanin Magic Mentorship Program is an organization seeking to empower minority female high school students at the Texas Academy of Biomedical Sciences (TABS) through in-depth mentorship regarding apply for college, professional school, and pursuing a career in STEM. With the guidance of TCU’s Pre-Health Institute, the program connects high school and college students with similar interests and provides an engaging curriculum of workshops and activities to bolster information received in the classroom setting. Alongside mentorship, the program’s research utilized group audio recordings which were analyzed to capture motivations and themes that emerged from the mentees and mentors during facilitations. The initiation and development of near-peer relationships were widespread and extended beyond facilitations emboldening participants to apply for college and pursue a career in STEM.

Despite bats providing essential ecosystem services, such as pollination, seed dissemination, and pest control, bat populations are facing a global decline due to habitat loss from human activities, including urbanization. We can, however, enhance urban areas to support bat communities by ensuring that suitable resources, such as water, are available and accessible. While availability is associated with the abundance of water sources in an area, accessibility dictates whether bats can physically get to and drink from the surface of a water source. One factor that can influence accessibility is the level of clutter. Clutter represents any physical obstruction present on the surface of the water or in the immediate surrounding area, including vegetation, exposed rock, and debris. Yet, not all forms of clutter are natural. The presence of litter can negatively hinder water accessibility. Thus, in urban areas where litter is more prevalent, a simple litter or trash clean-up scheme could potentially represent an effective restoration activity that community groups could undertake to increase water availability and accessibility for bats in their neighborhoods. To explore this concept, we assessed whether such a community-based clean-up scheme could effectively improve water resource accessibility for bats. For this, we cleared water sources in local parks and neighborhoods of trash monthly during the bat activity season, while conducting behavioral surveys using thermal cameras to determine whether bats drank from these sources. We then compared bat drinking activity recorded at ponds from 2021-2022 prior (i.e., no clean-up) with activity post-clean-up in 2023 to establish if more bats drank. From our results, we hope to inform not only local wildlife conservation programs but also efforts to improve community health.

Mercy Clinic is located in Fort Worth and it serves underrepresented minority adults who live in the 76110 and 76104 zip codes near TCU. It provides free care such as wellness visits, routine checkups, and monthly Women's Health clinics. Through collaboration with the Mercy Clinic staff and medical students at the Burnett School of Medicine, a sustainable approach was taken for the Women's Health initiative. The Women's Health Initiative aims to maintain and further the clinic's Women's Health approach and assist in education. Certain community clinics in the Fort Worth area can face disparities with inadequate funding, limiting the access and quality of patient care. Through a grant provided by the Pre-Health Professions Institute, the Experimental Projects to Impact the Community (EPIC Grant), remedial actions were able to take place for Mercy Clinic, not only improving the quality of patient satisfaction and care but also the sustainability of the clinic by reducing waste. The aid has been able to give access to reusable items such as metal speculums, lighting tools for examinations, and a more efficient way to keep up with patient check-in and management by using laminated paper sheets. This project aimed to aid Mercy Clinic's performance and quality output for the community it looks after.

Despite being entirely preventable, cavities remain the leading chronic childhood disease in the US. The "TCU Tooth Fairies" initiative aims to raise awareness of oral hygiene and improve access to essential oral hygiene resources. We are collaborating with the Mercy Clinic of Fort Worth and local FWISD elementary schools to make a sustainable impact. Our project involves distributing dental hygiene bags and an educational book written and published by TCU students Cayla Prophater and Chie Nguyen to local elementary schools. This has been instrumental in promoting comprehensive healthcare. Each hygiene kit includes a laminated educational card for children's bathroom mirrors, detailed oral health maintenance instructions, and recommendations from local Fort Worth dentists. The TCU Pre-Dental Club has worked with Mercy Clinic Volunteer Dr. Stewart, Fort Worth Pediatric Dentist Dr. Jerod Brazeal, and TCU Alum Dr. Courtney Favaloro, TCU Professor Dr. Virginia Hodges to ensure seamless integration of this project. Our mission is to empower our local community with comprehensive oral hygiene education, fostering lasting improvements in dental health practices and promoting overall well-being.

TCU Chemistry Club has established a once-per-week science club at Burton Hill Elementary School in Fort Worth to provide 16-30 3rd-5th grade students the opportunity for academic and personal growth. We provide hands-on learning experiences, foster scientific curiosity, and teach them to learn to think like a scientist through engaging experiments in chemistry, physics, and biology. Beyond academics, our focus extends to providing mentorship, building confidence, and encouraging students to pursue a STEM career path. The consistent, engaging activities require the TCU Chemistry Club to effectively recruit volunteers, organize activities, and communicate throughout the project. This presentation will focus on qualitative analysis of the project by exploring the meaningful relationships developed, students' transformative experiences, and their personal growth, showcasing our commitment to impactful STEM education in 3rd-5th grade students.

The Beautiful Feet Ministries Clinic & the True Worth Clinic are two nonprofit clinics that provide free, comprehensive medical and dental care for the homeless and underserved communities in the Southside area of Fort Worth. The patients served by these clinics encounter unique challenges in their medical journey, stemming from impoverished living conditions, financial instability, and restricted access to medications.

The goal of the “Medication Compliance Initiative” is to enhance patients’ ability to adhere to prescribed medication regimens. This initiative has introduced waterproof bags and cross-body fanny packs into the clinics, offering patients a secure means to store and safeguard their medications from adverse weather conditions, potential theft, and additional unforeseen circumstances. These intentional carry solutions not only ensure physical integrity of medications, but also empower patients to seamlessly incorporate their treatment plans into their daily lives, promoting better health outcomes and overall well-being for our patients.

Oral reading accuracy is an important measurement to assess language proficiency in educational settings. We aim to quantify misclassification rates when reading scores are assessed by humans versus an AI scoring system using speech recognition. The project breaks down misclassification rates into two components: True Positive, where human or AI systems correctly identify the correct words, and True Negative, where they correctly identify the incorrect words. For each reader, and conditional on the true score, the number of true positives and true negatives is assumed to follow binomial distributions. We propose two solutions to estimate misclassification rates, the first model assumes true scores are available, while the second model explores binomial and Poisson distribution structures for true scores with the minimization of normed Euclidean distance when the true scores are not observed. The models are evaluated through a study of elementary school students using ten passages of different lengths and difficulty.

Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) is evidenced-based nutrition therapy provided by a Registered Dietitian/Registered Nutritionist (RD/RDN) to help treat medical conditions. The purpose of the study was to evaluate current understanding and perception of the RD/RDN role in healthcare among undergraduate pre-health students. Following IRB approval, a convenience sample of TCU pre-health students (n=94) completed an electronic survey. Data were coded into and analyzed using SPSS 29. Over 23% (n=22) of participants had taken a nutrition course. Participants were asked their opinions regarding the importance of the RD/RDN in improving quality of care for patients with a variety of diseases including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, stroke, cancer, chronic kidney disease, Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorders, and ulcerative colitis. Over 55% (n=52) reported that the RD/RDN would be important in the care in all of these conditions. When asked if they would either refer a patient with a specific disease to an RD/RDN for nutrition counseling, provide a nutrition handout, briefly educate patient on nutrition themselves, or recommend online nutrition information from an official source, over half of participants would refer to an RD/RDN for obesity, celiac disease, heart disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, Crohn’s Disease, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorders and ulcerative colitis. Fewer than half of participants would refer patients with Parkinson’s Disease, cancer and stroke to an RD/RDN. Less than a quarter of pre-health students have taken a nutrition course and therefore most are likely unfamiliar with MNT recommendations appropriate for various chronic diseases.

Almost 7% of seniors living in Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington were food insecure in 2020, while 2.4% were classified as having very low food security. A cross sectional descriptive design study evaluated current factors contributing to food insecurity (FI) among older adults living in vulnerable areas in Tarrant County, Texas. Sites were identified using demographic information collected from US Census Bureau public data repositories and covered household income, percent with a disability, percent without a car, age >65 years, percent >65 years with a disability, and percent >65 years in poverty. Meals On Wheels (MOW) of Tarrant County administration identified three at risk community sites, which were Southside Community Center in Fort Worth (site 1), Bedford YMCA in Bedford (site 2), and Magnolia Apartments in Arlington (site 3). Following IRB approval, researchers interviewed 48 older adults at these sites. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS and NVivo, respectively. Participants were 74.1+/-7.7 years of age with a range of 61-93 years. Over 83% (n=40) were female, while 16.7% (n=8) were male. Participants were 58.3% (n=28) White, 33.3% (n=16) Black/African-American, and 6.3% (n=3) Asian. Over 29% (n=14) of participants identified as Hispanic. Participants (36.2%, n=17) agreed that, “Most older people I know are able to afford enough food to eat” and (66.7%, n=32) reported causes of FI related to finances including low income, loss or lack of jobs, inflation, lack of or limited government assistance. Participants at sites 1 and 2 reported that raising awareness is most needed, while those at site 3 reported that food was most needed to help older adults with FI. FI causes and barrier to resources can help identify solutions specific to improve the quality of life for older adults in these areas.