Research Week will display talents of students, faculty
Climaxing in a performance featuring Fry Street Quartet, Research Week will have some traditional activities as well as some new and exciting events, said Anna McEntire, the director of communications in the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.
“Faculty, undergraduates, graduates, scholars, artists – research paints with a broad umbrella in the fact that any type of independent inquiry or study it really comes down to research. That’s what we are trying to highlight this week,” McEntire said.
Jeff Broadbent, associate vice president for research, said, “The idea of Research Week is to celebrate the role of research in the mission of Utah State University.”
Research involves people from many levels of the university, he said.
“We sort of view research as something that you start when you come in the door as an undergraduate student,” Broadbent said. “And it continues all the way through graduate students to young faculty to senior faculty, even to emeritus professors that still come and remain engaged.”
Featuring a new theme for each day, the week focuses on individual researchers and their accomplishments. It offers events and workshops for faculty celebrations Monday through Thursday, and the main event is Friday.
The grand finale of Research Week is “Crossroads,” a free program designed to combine several senses in a demonstration linking science and art. The event will be held in the Performance Hall from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“We’ve never done anything like this before,” McEntire said. “Throughout the hour you are exposed to visual imagery, spoken word and music, all mixed together in a way that helps you feel things instead of just learn things.”
This won’t be the last time students get to see a performance like this on campus, she said.
“There has actually been such a positive response to this performance that they are expanding it,” McEntire said.
She also said the organizers plan to commission an artist and musician to create new work for another program in September, but for now they are just trying to pull off this week’s performance.
“It’s bigger than anything we’ve ever done before,” McEntire said. “Most of our events are not small by any means, but they’re very focused.”
Monday is faculty research day, with an awards gala honoring top faculty researchers of the year at 6 p.m. Tuesday follows with the all-student undergraduate research day.
Starting with a student showcase, running from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the TSC International Lounge and Colony rooms, undergraduate research day provides students with a chance to show off their research to the community. The showcase will be interrupted from noon to 1 p.m. to formally recognize the undergraduate researchers and mentors of the year with the undergraduate research awards.
Wednesday’s innovation and scholarship day kicks off with an event McEntire said will be the other benchmark activity of the week. The D. Wynne Thorne Lecture runs from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the new Agricultural Science Building, Room 101.
Annually awarded to one faculty researcher as the highest research award available at USU, the D.Wynne Thorne career research scholar returns the following year to present at the lecture during Research Week. McEntire said she predicts the event will be highly attended.
“It’s a really provocative and challenging lecture. It’s going to be a great one,” she said.
Graduate research day, on Thursday, is devoted to the Intermountain Graduate Research Symposium, running from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the International Lounge, Colony rooms and Eccles Conference Center. The event includes research posters, workshops and other presentations. Organizers extended the symposium into Friday as well.
The final day of Research Week, Research Workshop Day, provides students with workshops about opportunities for funding, getting involved in campus initiatives and fellowships, and compiling work into a published book. Starting at 8 a.m. at the Haight Alumni House, events follow each other in the same venue until 2:30 p.m.
Thomas Martin, a senior studying physics, will present his research on atmospheric gravity waves at the student showcase.
“They are like waves in an ocean, but they’re up in the atmosphere,” Martin said.
These waves can cause interference to satellites in the upper atmosphere, he said. Martin studied the characteristics and behavior of gravity waves over Antarctica.
“It’s been a great opportunity for me,” Martin said. “I get to see how research is carried out. I see that research isn’t just all these cool explosions and doing really cool things every single moment, but there’s a lot of note taking and a lot of tedious kind of work. Despite that, I still enjoy it.”
Martin said he’s been accepted to a graduate program at University of California, Los Angeles.
“I’ll be doing research for hopefully most of my life after that,” he said.
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– brianna.b@aggiemail.usu.edu
– steve.kent@aggiemail.usu.edu