From Student to Mentor: Summer Research Comes Full Circle for GU Alumna
Published: October 15, 2026
Author: Liz Dowell
When Greenville University senior Makenzie Jones joined a research lab at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville this summer, she didn't expect to have all the answers.
In fact, learning to be comfortable without them has become one of the most important lessons of experience.
Jones, a biology and chemistry double major, joined fellow GU student Charlie Burton in an Alzheimer's disease drug discovery project under the mentorship of 2021 GU graduate Ariel Loraine.
Their work examined whether a chemical compound could help treat Alzheimer's disease—a small part of a larger research project Loraine pursued during her doctoral studies. Loraine described the students' work as investigating how the compound might be relevant to treating the disease.
For Jones, the opportunity continued a growing interest in research that began when she joined Professor of Chemistry Scott Pattenaude's research as an incoming sophomore.
This summer, however, placed her in a new environment—and under the guidance of someone who understood what it meant to be a GU undergraduate stepping into research.
Loraine graduated from Greenville in 2021 with double majors in biology and chemistry and a Spanish minor. She later entered a pharmacology and neuroscience doctoral program through the SIU School of Medicine while conducting laboratory research at SIUE.
Years earlier, Loraine had been on the other side of the mentorship relationship as a participant in Greenville's Summer Research Experience.
That connection helped make an intimidating research environment more approachable for Jones.
“Knowing Ariel had once been just like me, an undergrad at GU. It made it easier to talk to and relate to her,” Jones said. “It made the project seem a little less intimidating.”
Over six weeks, that comfort developed into confidence.
Loraine watched Jones and Burton move beyond simply following laboratory procedures.
They began returning to the lab with questions generated from their own reading: What else could they investigate? Could a different part of the biological pathway be targeted? Could what they were learning apply to other diseases?
“Their thinking was already looking at applying different methods,” Loraine said, adding that their ability to think beyond the assigned procedures impressed her. “That is not at all where I was when I was in their shoes.”
That transformation is central to Greenville's Summer Research Experience.
For more than 15 years, the program has placed students in faculty-led research groups for six to eight weeks, giving them the opportunity to work on real research questions rather than experiments designed solely for classroom instruction.
This year, the program also demonstrated what can happen when those experiences extend beyond campus.
Loraine initially wondered whether she was ready to mentor students. By summer's end, she had watched Jones and Burton progress from learning unfamiliar protocols to confidently completing them and asking where the research could go next.
Jones walked away with a lesson that reaches beyond the laboratory.
“It's okay to not know the answer to everything, and that's what research is about,” she said. “Learning and reflection.”
For Pattenaude, that is part of the larger story. Summer research doesn't just produce results; students bring new confidence, curiosity, and a willingness to ask questions back into Greenville's classrooms and community.
And this summer, one former student brought that experience back, too.
Loraine successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in October. As one chapter of her own research journey closes, the students she mentored are continuing theirs—carrying forward the same curiosity that once took her from a GU classroom into the lab.
