News > November 1, 2007

By Molly Nevola | Staff writer

An undergraduate independent research symposium featuring studies in all disciplines was attended by crowds of parents and community members alike the afternoon of Oct. 26 in conjunction with Family Weekend.

Highlighting nearly 100 students with presentations on topics that ranged from chemistry to political science to music, the symposium featured a mix of oral and posterboard presentations on topics topics as the study of brain neurons in honeybees, an interpretation of the Greensboro massacre, the reasons behind the ongoing abortion debate and the emotional reactivity of people who are deprived of food for a certain period of time.

Rebecca Alexander, associate professor of chemistry, said that the sessions displaying research most likely originated in the sciences.

In years past the chemistry department and others such as biology put on departmental poster sessions on and off, typically at the end of the summer to display summer research, she said.

At the end of summer 2006, a few professors in the chemistry department expanded this to include any summer student who wanted to present research as either a poster or oral presentation.

“This year we decided to expand further and do it during the academic year when more students and faculty could be included,” Alexander said.

“We thought Family Weekend might be a nice time so students could show off their work to their parents.”

Junior David Rosile, a physics major from Pickerington, Ohio, said he got involved with his research project simply by asking Martin Guthold, associate professor of physics, if he needed any help.

“He explained the projects he was working on to me, and I started doing research my second semester freshman year,” Rosile said.

Rosile is currently working on his project, which is about halfway completed, to find aptamers that will bind to certain target proteins — such as proteins found in breast cancer cells — so that they can be used to deliver medicine directly to the affected area of the body.

Rosile said it is very rewarding to solve problems that have not already been solved.

“It’s refreshing to use the knowledge and skills I have developed in my classes towards a specific goal,” he said.

“I like knowing that my work will help fight disease.”

Senior Christina Chauvenet, a political science major, decided to study Brazilian public health policy, more specifically, the role of community health care workers in diagnosing childhood cancer.

Her idea for the project began with a simple interest in Brazil.

“I had lived in Argentina in high school and wanted to spend more time in South America,” she said.

“After taking some Latin American politics classes Brazil seemed intriguing culturally and politically.”

After looking into various grants to facilitate her desire for graduate school, Chauvenet received the Pro Humanitate grant from the university and was able to study in Brazil for eight weeks this past summer.

Under the direction of her adviser, Jeanne Simonelli, professor of anthropology, Chauvenet returned and wrote a summary of her experience and work, a five-month process, that has now been submitted for publication to the Journal for Latin American Studies.

Chauvenet said her favorite part of the study was how much she learned about researching on her own and dealing with unanticipated problems in the field.

Chauvenet also said that she enjoyed the complete immersion she experienced in Recife, Brazil.

“My Portuguese improved rapidly out of necessity, and I was able to intimately experience Brazilian culture through my friends and host family,” she said.

Junior Eric McAnally, a chemistry and mathematics major from Reedsville, Penn., began working in the chemistry lab on campus for the duration of his summer session this past year.

Alongside his adviser, Ronald Noftle, professor of chemistry, McAnally studied the potential of a polymer film as an ionic or conduction interface in Li ion systems.

“My favorite part was gaining hands-on experience in the lab,” McAnally said

“Sitting in lecture is a valuable resource but there is no substitute for being able to apply what you have learned in actual, laboratory scenarios.”

Sophomore Andrew Collins, a biology major, took a Tropical Ecology course in Peru this past summer with Miles Silman, associate professor of biology, and decided that he wanted to do more research on the topics of species’ responses to climate change.

Collins used data on current distributions of species in the Peruvian forest’s dominant tree genus Weinmannia.

He also used projections for their distributions in other climate scenarios.

He then assessed extinction rates and made relationships between physiological characters and risk of extinction.

Collins concluding that it is important to mitigate climate change and to factor human land use into scenarios of species responses.

“My favorite part about doing it was the fact that I was able to take everything I learned and experienced over the summer in Peru, and turn it into my own work with results representative of the effects of global climate change.”