Luther senior Jack Jagielski interns at the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine

Luther senior Jack Jagielski spent the summer interning in Rochester, Minnesota, at the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine.

Jagielski, son of Kevin Jagielski and Tamara Imbertson of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a 2015 graduate of Southwest High School. He plans to graduate from Luther in 2019 with a major in chemistry and emphases in a biochemistry and neuroscience.

Working alongside fellow Luther students James Conway and Emma Veum, Jagielski scored sleep studies for muscle tone during the Rapid Eye Movement stage of sleep. The REM stage is often accompanied by muscle atonia, the absence of muscle tone. However, the presence of tone is a cardinal feature of REM sleep behavior disorders or a potential biomarker for certain neurodegenerative disorders.

Jagielski said, “My overall success, quality of work, and quality of my experience was directly determined by my willingness to take on projects outside of my comfort zone and ask questions, and how hard I worked,” he said. In his experience, he had a lot of autonomy in setting his schedule and working on projects. “What I got out of my experience depended on how much I put into it, and that’s a lesson I would like to apply to every new situation,” Jagielski said.

Shadowing doctors across many disciplines affirmed his interest in pursuing a career in the medical field. “I learned a lot about the brain and pathophysiology of specific diseases of the nervous system, but the biggest take away was being humbled about how little I do know. The complexity of the brain is pretty much unmatched by any system in the body and getting to see the ways clinical research translates to patient care was truly inspiring,” Jagielski said.

Approximately 10 percent of Luther students take an internship for academic credit each academic year. The Luther College Career Center assists students with their internship search through resume preparation, networking, online internship searches, career fairs, on-campus interviewing and connecting the student to alumni through the college’s Alumni Internship Program. Students also meet with a faculty adviser prior to the internship to create an internship learning plan that includes learning goals and assessment benchmarks.

An internship work supervisor assists in the process by writing an evaluation of the student at the end of the internship. Students also complete a self-reflection form to help finalize the learning experience.

A national liberal arts college with an enrollment of 2,005, Luther offers an academic curriculum that leads to the Bachelor of Arts degree in more than 60 majors and pre-professional programs. For more information about Luther visit the college’s website: http://www.luther.edu.