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Murray State Equine Science Professor Pairs Student Interests with Real-World Research

Courtesy of Dr. Shea Porr

WKMS continues a new series of reports called "Racer Scholar Profiles" - highlighting Murray State Faculty research, scholarly and creative activities across colleges and schools. Our guest is Dr. Shea Porr, whose background is nutrition and exercise physiology in horses with the Hutson School of Agriculture's equine program. Dr. Porr speaks with Kate Lochte on Sounds Good about her work with students, from incorporating social media in the classroom to testing hemp as an alternative to traditional horse bedding.

"The thing that I like about being here at Murray State is I have the option - a very large freedom - to choose what to research, so I'm not really locked into a specific program of focus, " says Dr. Shea Porr. When working with students, she has them talk about their interest and develops a project with them. Because of her flexibility, the wide range of projects are tailored to fit the student, from the impact of teaching methods of social media in the classroom to the feeding of a supplement to help prevent ulcers in horses.

Using Social Media as a Teaching Method

One of Dr. Porr's classes is an equine health management class, an advanced level class with as much lab as there is lecture. A student was interested in social media and wanted to see if it could be used in an equine classroom to enhance learning. They paired several assignments with LinkedIn, by posting articles that the students read, then answering questions in the comment area. Since LinkedIn is a professional site, the students had to register and make a resume, then join and interact with professional groups in their field. These groups tend to involve professionals in the field. The students would talk with industry leaders, who helped them with their assignments. The conducting student then compared this method to a more traditional class and the results are being published in the NATCA Journal (National Association of Teachers in Colleges of Agriculture).

Lameness in Horses

Many projects have a medical application. An undergraduate project studied lameness in horses. In an active equine program, you need healthy horses. Within both people and animals, if they exercise for a period of time and then take some time off, they'll lose some fitness. Many times, when coming back into exercise, there's an increase in injuries - this is known as lameness in horses. Dr. Porr's student wanted to see if horses that were off for three months during the summer break had a higher incidence of lameness in the fall semester when the students return to classes. If so, then there'd need to be a change in the management strategy to keep them healthy in the summer months. Some of Murray State's horses go to a 4-H summer camp and remain active, while others stay on campus. The ones who weren't active showed no signs of lameness, so the strategy is solid.

A Supplement to Treat Ulcers in Horses

Because of the way many horse owners manage horses: keeping them in stalls, exercising them differently than they would in the wild, different feeding habits - horses like to graze all day but it's more manageable to give them controlled diets - there are more incidences of ulcers and intestinal issues. It's not as healthy for the horse. Some drugs can be used to help - the same drugs humans take: antacids. But these can be expensive. A company developed a feed supplement and students tested it on the horses. There was a big difference after 30 days and the company is now selling the product on the market.

Hemp as Bedding

In other countries and in some parts of the United States hemp is used for horse bedding. Bedding keeps the horses comfortable and absorbs the urine and the odors that horses may produce. The traditional bedding is wood shavings. The claim is that hemp is more absorbent, better at controlling the odors and has less dust associated with it. Dr. Porr's students recently wrapped up a study where they tested miscanthus, hemp and traditional shavings in a number of horse stalls over a month. They had surveys from students cleaning the stalls and evaluated the depth and absorbency. They are analyzing the data now. On a website where they read about hemp bedding one of the claims was that horses wouldn't eat it, but they found this to not be true because the horses chewed on the hemp. An undergraduate student is working on this study.

Emergency Preparedness and Rescuing Large Animals

Dr. Porr's background is in nutrition and exercise physiology with horses, but she's also interested in large animal rescue. She says while emergency management teams are experts at what they do, they may not be experts at dealing with horses in these situations. Likewise, a horse owner may know how to deal with their horse, but not necessarily how to manage an emergency situation. How do you get a horse out of a swimming pool or an overturned trailer? What if it gets stuck in the mud? A master student developed a program for emergency responders to teach horse owners about response and for horse owners to teach emergency responders about horses and then a third group of undergraduate students who would learn from both. The question then is: did the students feel like they got a better education having had two different experienced groups in the class? The findings will be published at the end of this student's thesis.

Class Instruction vs Real World Examples

Dr. Porr recalls a student going to a competition at an international conference in May. This student spoke with freshmen and sophomore classes about her work and the plan was for them to ask a couple questions, but the question time lasted far longer than Dr. Porr had anticipated. She saw this as a great experience for the conference coming up.

"I try to bring into the classroom the reality. Because there's so many classes that you get taught information that you then never apply or you don't know how to apply. I've been in the industry, I've been in academics, so I can kind of compare the two and give them real world examples, but when one of their peers gives them that real world example, I think that hits home for them really well."

Dr. Shea Porr teaches in the Hutson School of Agriculture's equine program at Murray State. We appreciate the assistance of MSU Jesse D. Jones Endowed Professor of Geosciences Dr. Kit Wesler as ambassador for this series. It highlights faculty pursuing interesting and productive ideas that advance knowledge or create novel works of art and literature, informing their teaching and exciting students.

Murray State's Equine Center

Matt Markgraf joined the WKMS team as a student in January 2007. He's served in a variety of roles over the years: as News Director March 2016-September 2019 and previously as the New Media & Promotions Coordinator beginning in 2011. Prior to that, he was a graduate and undergraduate assistant. He is currently the host of the international music show Imported on Sunday nights at 10 p.m.
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