Megan Downer (she/her)

I was part of a Science Scholars program my first year at Western called AEES (Advancing Excellence and Equity in Science), where I learned a TON about the different research projects happening on campus, how to get involved in science, and all of the awesome instruments available for use at Western. On my favorite day of the quarter, our 8-person class got a demonstration of one of the scanning electron microscopes on campus. The technician showed us a shrimp head she collected from Bellingham Bay during her undergrad research at Western, and we were able to zoom in close enough to take incredibly detailed photographs of the microscopic bacteria living on a hair on the face of the shrimp. The idea of living things that small had always felt like an abstract concept, but it was concrete to me for the first time that day. Every time I take a science class at Western, I see or learn something that rocks my world!