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April 18, 2006
Students report back from NCUR
After spending hours poring over their research, thirty-five students and five faculty and staff members left Hamline on April 5 to spend three days presenting their work at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), held at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.
NCUR is a chance for students from around the nation to present their research to fellow studious undergraduates. English Professor and supervisor Mike Reynolds was “very impressed,” he said, with Hamline students’ performance at the conference.
“Hamline stood out from the [large] NCUR crowd,” Reynolds said.
Over 2,000 undergraduates from all over the country traveled to North Carolina to present their projects on everything from biology to religion to theater to computer science.
Students either gave a 15 minute oral presentation followed by questions, or stood by a poster they created and answered questions of passersby for two hours. Oral presentations could be attended by anyone at the conference interested in the topic.
Senior Rachel Wyman gave an oral presentation on the relation between people’s spiritual lives and their response to chronic pain in physical therapy. She said she found it to be an “excellent” experience.
“It strengthened my presentation skills, as well as being able to answer hard questions while under the spotlight,” Wyman said.
At least one Hamline professor and student attended the oral presentations of their fellow Pipers. They were able to give feedback to the presenter, in addition to the feedback received during the question and answer period after the formal presentation by other conference attendees.
Wyman’s presentation came from research done with a collaborative research grant last summer, while other students presented their honors projects or abstracts from work done in a class.
Junior Chris Chamberlain presented his collaborative research, which he hopes to turn into an honors project. His presentation, “Molecular analysis of a transcriptional silencer in drosophila melanogaster,” is a study of how the DNA of fruit flies reacts to a certain gene expression inhibitor.
Chamberlain said it was interesting to see what other undergraduates around the country have researched, and to get feedback on his own research.
“It’s really helpful to have other people ask you questions. You need to be able to explain your research,” he said. Reynolds said everyone in the group did very well. It was “a great group of people, smart projects, [and] accomplished presentations and posters,” he said.
To be a university representative at NCUR, one must first do research. It can be for a class and can be in any field or discipline, but sufficient research is necessary to be able to present at an academic conference such as NCUR.
Interested students must then go through an application process that includes a 250 word abstract outline of the project. This abstract first must be submitted to and approved by a Hamline committee to receive funding, then submitted to NCUR. Hamline funding is not required to go to the conference, but is helpful. NCUR has no judges, prizes, or awards, simply recognition of hard work and learning from others.
“That’s what these research conventions are all about--people coming together and sharing their ideas,” said Chamberlain.
NCUR takes place every year. The next NCUR will take place in 2007 in California.
Posted by dwright at April 18, 2006 01:23 PM
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