- Serving as a teaching assistant in Professor of Chemistry Brandon Cruickshank\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> class.<\/li>
- Hiking for hours on the Navajo Nation to take soil, water, and plant samples as part of Professor Jani Ingram\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> National Cancer Institute-funded Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention project<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>
- Giving back as a mentor in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP)<\/strong><\/a> program that encourages minority STEM students after being a mentee herself.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
All of these opportunities have shown the first-generation college student that it pays to get uncomfortable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was used to knowing so many people, and then walking into a class where you don’t know anyone is kind of scary,\u201d Mitzzy said. \u201cBut I have been doing really well. As I’m getting all this experience being a TA and doing research, and now becoming a mentor, I just feel like I\u2019m opening up and doing a lot of things that I didn\u2019t know I was going to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her pursuit of a Social Science Forensics Minor <\/a>and a Criminology\/Criminal Justice Minor<\/a> demonstrates her desire to use scientific skills in the service of justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFinding answers is basically the whole goal of working in a crime lab,\u201d she said. \u201cI’m really interested in making sure that the right perpetrators are sentenced for their crime. Forensic science is expanding and helping exonerate innocent people and put the correct people in jail for whatever crimes they committed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though analytical chemistry is not forensic science, working in Ingram\u2019s lab will help Mitzzy reach her aspiration since the premise of analytical chemistry is to find the composition of something, whether it is uranium contaminating the water supply or blood or sweat offering an incriminating DNA sequence at a crime scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/179\/2021\/01\/0808_Mitzzy_Lopez_20200305-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cAnalytical chemistry is the specific kind of chemistry that is typically helpful in these fields,\u201d Mitzzy said. \u201cLet\u2019s say we find a water sample on the reservation and people are drinking from the well. Analytical chemistry works to find all the components of water. Specifically what we\u2019re doing in the Ingram research lab is looking for uranium in the water, because uranium is very dangerous to consume and there\u2019s a lot of uranium mines around this reservation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Hiking for hours on the Navajo Nation to take soil, water, and plant samples as part of Professor Jani Ingram\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> National Cancer Institute-funded Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention project<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>