Success Stories Poster session highlights undergraduate research
| Poster session highlights undergraduate research |
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From McMaster Daily News This is the hallmark of the Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) recipients, a collection of more than 115 students representing every Faculty and every year of undergraduate study, some of whom were able to exhibit the results of their summer research project at a poster session held on Tuesday, Jan. 15 in the MUSC Marketplace. The USRAs are sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Faculties of Social Sciences, Humanities and Business and the Office of the Vice-President, Research and International Affairs. The USRAs provide each student with $5,000 and, under the supervision of a faculty advisor, they have the opportunity to explore possible career opportunities in a research environment, investigate and learn more about an area of research that interests them, enhance their academic experiences and prepare for work at the graduate level. Thirty-five students participated in this year's poster session and in a short stroll through the Marketplace, you would have heard students expound on everything from the "tip-of-the-tongue state" to the muscles and blood tissues inside the body, been enlightened by the music of troubadours, seen examples of Throne of Grace Christian art, learned how to better map the biological function of human organs, exposed to complex math theorems and informed about how round goby fish in Hamilton Harbour have been exposed to PCBs. Allison Sekuler, associate vice-president (research) and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience, organized this year's poster session and also supervised USRA recipient Matthew Pachai, who studied classification images and how we discriminate faces with the vision scientist. Sekuler notes that "the USRAs provide undergraduates with a significant range of benefits that include the opportunity to discover their research passion, further enrich their academic experience at McMaster plus acquire a skill set that is invaluable for both graduate work and the job market." She offers yet another perspective: "The USRAs also provide students with the chance to discover if research is indeed the path they want to take. They might discover that this isn't what they want to do as a career, or perhaps discover that they're better suited for another field of study. Ultimately, the Undergraduate Student Research Awards are all about possibilities and the opportunity for personal growth and discovery." That sentiment was echoed by Humanities student Elizabeth Klein, who discovered that a research career was destined to be her future. "I wanted to find out if I was able to spend days in libraries, on my own, immersed in researching one topic," she said. "I loved the experience and know now that I absolutely want to pursue graduate work and become a professor." When asked, "What do you want to do next?" most USRA recipients answered that they'd like to pursue some kind of graduate work. For Kelsey Norlund, her USRA stint with professor Lesley Warren fast-tracked her from fourth year to the first year of PhD study, continuing the research she did with Warren on the mining industry and the problems associated with waste rock and its effect on the environment. For Ruby Chang and Amy Beth Warriner, their graduate study dreams have been bolstered by the publication of their work in academic journals -- Chang will see her research in a future issue of Neuroscience Report and Warriner has been published in Experimental Psychology. To find out more about how to apply for Undergraduate Student Research Awards, visit: Undergraduate ParticipantsThe following is a list of students who participated in the Jan. 15 poster session, their faculty supervisors and the title of the projects they were involved in during the summer of 2007.
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