Undergraduates given research opportunities
Utah State University undergraduates had the opportunity to show off their research studies Tuesday, with some even winning prizes for their efforts.
The showcase featured many different types of research ideas. The topics ranged from biochemistry to education, and each student group was mentored by a different faculty member from the college.
Student researchers Tim Bennet and Michelle Lundberg, with the help of faculty mentor Larry Boothe, presented their examination of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.
“We wanted to explore how this act affected the intelligence community, and if it will improve the intelligence community and its goals,” explained Bennet and Lundberg in an abstract submitted for the showcase handbook.
Patricia Christophiades’ research examined the effects of increased volume of music on male albino rat behavior and weight.
“The higher the decibel range it is in a certain piece of music their grooming increased,” Christophiades said explaining her conclusion, “weight also increased for those rats that were in the higher decibel range.”
Joyce Kinkead, vice provost for undergraduate studies and research at USU, organized this showcase and believes that research is invaluable for a student’s intellectual growth and development.
“Undergraduate research offers our students hands on application of what they are learning in the classroom, and in turn when they graduate they will be better prepared for professional or graduate school or go right into a career.”
Any undergraduate student at USU can get involved in this showcase next year.
“Simply submit an abstract to us, and we put them in the abstract booklet,” Kinkead explained how to get involved, “to be involved you have to be doing some kind of research.”
Students who don’t have the means to go through with their research ideas can get help from the university.
“We have lots of opportunities in terms of grants to help support them, and those are given out twice a year,” Kinkead said.
-dtrujillo@cc.usu.edu