No matter what Joseph Richardson does after he leaves N.C. A&T, he plans to spend a lifetime lifting others up — just as others have done for him.

When Richardson wanted to keep chickens in his backyard of his Ahoskie home, his mother told him he’d have to do it the hard way. So Claudia Richardson got her son a Styrofoam incubator for Christmas one year to teach Joseph how to raise chickens from eggs.

When Richardson was in danger of failing pre-calculus as an A&T freshman — “college pretty much hit me like a brick,” he recalled — he sought help from his advisor, Yewande Fasina, Ph.D. She calmed him down and steered him to tutoring. He pulled up his grade to a B+, and Fasina later offered him an assistant’s job in her research lab.

And when Richardson was looking at veterinary schools, he talked once every week with Morgan Cornelius, a 2007 A&T graduate and a new veterinarian. Richardson is majoring in animal sciences just like Cornelius did when he was at A&T, and both are members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

In four years at A&T, Richardson learned a lot about animal science. But he also learned two key life lessons: “how important connections are,” he said, “and how important it is to reach back and pick those behind you up.”

It was through his work in Fasina’s lab that Richardson was accepted into the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences’ Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. For his project, he studied the effects of the salmonella bacteria on the expression of the Trefoil Factor 3 gene in young chickens.

Salmonella is a grave threat to the nation’s poultry industry. Roughly 250,000 Americans get sick each year after eating chicken or turkey contaminated with salmonella. The Trefoil factor 3 gene, meanwhile, plays a key role in protecting the health of the gastrointestinal tract.

By using a challenging gene expression analysis technique known as quantitative real-time-PCR, Richardson found what he suspected: Trefoil factor 3 gene expression increased among chicks infected with salmonella and helped their growth stay on track until their immune systems could kick in. These preliminary findings, Richardson said, have implications for vaccine research.

“They vaccinate all chicks for salmonella in large-scale broiler operations on Day 1,” Richardson explained. “We’re thinking we could use these Trefoil factors to make these vaccines stronger and more efficient.”

Fasina called Richardson “a highly conscientious and dependable student” who has been an asset to her research group.

“He is always about getting the job done and never complains,” said Fasina, an associate professor of animal sciences. “His persistence, wit and hard work have paid off.”

After graduation, Richardson plans to take a gap year and apply to veterinary schools. He’s thinking about becoming a large animal veterinarian, which would let him work with farm animals like horses, cows, sheep, pigs and goats. Or maybe he’ll become what he called “a doctor times two” and get both a DVM and a Ph.D. so he can practice veterinary medicine and conduct research.

Richardson said he is grateful for the support he has gotten at A&T — from Fasina and his other CAES professors; from his fraternity brother turned veterinarian; from Kishaa James, the CAES student support services manager whose office he visits almost every day; and from many others.

“Probably one of the most important things I’ve learned is the power of being able to be lifted up and then lift those behind you up,” Richardson said.

“There’s just something about A&T,” he added. “People just like to take the students and uplift them. When I become an alum, it’ll pretty much be my job to come in and lift up the people behind me.”