As summer winds to a close and we get ready for the start of another school year, it's time to take a look at what our student-athletes have been up to with our annual Summer Check-In series.

Senior field hockey and softball player Sarah Raab wrote about her experience doing research in the Lehigh Valley.

This summer I spent eight weeks doing research with the Muhlenberg Biology Department. Our research was on the abundance of ticks and the prevalence of pathogens, like ones that cause Lyme Disease, in the Lehigh Valley. Our research incorporated field research as well as more laboratory skills. Along with my fellow research members, we worked in Dr. Marten Edwards' lab.

Our research consisted of going out into the field and collecting ticks from multiple sites within the Lehigh Valley. While in the lab, we prepared ticks from the numerous sites to send to the state labs for pathogen testing. This specific research project is in its ninth year, so tracking trends over the decade was a big part of our summer. Finding the prevalence of tick pathogens is an important public health issue. Our lab also tracks new types of ticks as they come into the Lehigh Valley and the impacts that those species have on humans, wildlife and the environment.

With my research partner, we also created a new project to test different GPS apps in order to ensure that data throughout the upcoming years is as accurate as possible. GPS apps are used to calculate the abundance of ticks, so having the most accurate app is extremely important. We tested three different apps in different landscapes to determine this.

Spending the summer working on this research project was a learning experience. This was my first time doing field research, so I had to learn how to collect samples in the field as it is very different from lab research. This research enabled me to see the different sides of research and allowed me to think about pursuing research after graduation.