Boundless curiosity
Can you get high school students to ignore their cellphones during class?
Could wind power off the East Coast greatly reduce fossil fuel consumption?
What can dance tell us about our relationship to water?
These questions may span a wide range of human experience and academic study, but the answers give just a glimpse of the research and creative achievement that UMBC students will present at two upcoming events.
The 15th annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) will be held Wednesday, April 27, followed by the 33rd annual Graduate Research Conference (GRC) on Friday, April 29.
More than 120 students will present their work at URCAD this year, highlighting the insights gained from long months spent in the lab, conducting fieldwork or analyzing patterns of behavior or movement. URCAD, presented by the Office of Undergraduate Education, gives students a chance to demonstrate their engagement with a field of study while also helping them develop skills that will be beneficial as they continue their studies or start their careers.
A special session this year features “Action Research” conducted by UMBC education students during their student teaching in local middle schools and high schools. Competitive grants of up to $1,500 from the Office of Undergraduate Research support some of the URCAD projects.
Diane M. Lee, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, said the event recognizes that students gain true mastery of their subjects by wrestling with basic research and creative challenges.
“One major goal at UMBC is to create a vibrant community of scholars that includes undergraduates in all facets of disciplined inquiry,” Lee said. “URCAD is the realization of that goal as students share the knowledge they have gained through research and creative achievement. Their inquiry can, and typically does, use all the ways of knowing associated with the arts and with the sciences. The products of their efforts go beyond the oral presentations, poster sessions, exhibits, and performances we delight in at URCAD. Through the process of research and its dissemination, our students develop habits of mind that will serve them well in all of their future pursuits.”
GRC, sponsored by the Graduate Student Association, will showcase research in a range of disciplines from history to engineering and physics. Ralph Semmel, ’92 Ph.D., computer science, is this year’s keynote speaker.
Semmel became the director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL) nearly a year ago. APL, based in Laurel, Md., has close to 5,000 employees conducting and supporting research related to national security.
“We are delighted that Dr. Semmel will speak at this year’s conference as more than 120 graduate students demonstrate their engagement in research,” said Jenness Hall, executive director of the GSA. “This event is an opportunity
to celebrate these students’ achievements as they develop their own careers.”
Selected highlights:
Joshua Francois ’11, mechanical engineering, will present his work modeling the optical stretching produced in Chinese hamster ovary cells through the use of a laser. Given the relationship between cell structure and function, he argues, increased understanding of the elasticity of biological cells can provide insights into the physiological changes they undergo.
William D. Hanchett ’13, financial economics and statistics, challenges the assumption that investors become more averse to risk as they approach retirement. Instead of the gradual decrease in stock holdings and increase in bond investments that financial advisers typically recommend, Hanchett argues that personally tailored portfolio management strategies would benefit older investors with diverse investment preferences.
Emily Kimak ’11, interdisciplinary studies, explores the relationship between humans and nature in her dance composition “Moving to Water.” After expanding her knowledge of ecology and body awareness, and reviewing the literature on performance and visual art related to the environment, she choreographed a piece exploring the motions involved in twisting knobs, washing and drinking.
Christian Solliday ’11, history, will present his research on “Limiting the Distractions of Cell Phone Use in the Classroom.” Working with Linda Oliva, assistant professor of education, Solliday created a system of rewards and incentives to limit cell phone use in two high school social studies classrooms.
Sondheim Scholar Andrea Thomson ’11, political science, investigates methods for gathering information on the performance of economic development programs and explores how this information is used in policy- and decision-making in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. She will present the poster “Worthwhile or Wasteful? An Evaluation of Techniques for Measuring the Impact of Business Subsidies.”
Salma Warshanna ’11, English, traveled to Egypt, where her parents grew up, to explore how being raised between two cultures has shaped her identity. While writing a series of creative nonfiction essays, she realized that the combination of the first-person perspective and a rich description of memories allows memoir to connect to a reader’s sense of self in ways that no other genre can. She explored these issues in “The Past That is Always Present: The Role of Memoir in Identity.”
(4/25/11)
