| More than 100 students from UGA
and other institutions in the state will make presentations at the
annual Center
for Undergraduate Research Opportunities Symposium on April
12–13 at the Tate Student Center. Visual and performing arts
exhibitions will be included in the symposium, which is free and
open to the public.
CURO, a part of the Honors Program, fosters undergraduate research
overseen by faculty. The symposium is one way students learn from
one another, by discussing their research and sharing their creative
and scholarly works with an outside audience. Students from UGA
will be joined by students from Georgia College and State University,
Georgia State University, Georgia Southern University and the Medical
College of Georgia.
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| Ecologist Judy Meyer, who has studied
such issues as river and stream food webs and riparian buffer
designations for the state’s trout streams, will deliver
the keynote address for the symposium on April 12 at 4 p.m.
in Georgia Hall. |
Judy Meyer, Distinguished Research Professor of Ecology, is the
featured speaker for the symposium. She will speak on April 12 at
4 p.m. in Georgia Hall. Her talk is entitled “A Stream Runs
through It: Ecological Insights on Water.” Since joining UGA
in 1977, Meyer has studied a variety of issues, ranging from river
and stream food webs to riparian buffer designations for Georgia’s
trout streams. She was named a national Clean Water Act Hero for
her contributions to protecting and restoring America’s rivers,
lakes, wetlands and coastal waters.
Katherine Sheriff, a third-year student in political science at
UGA, will make two symposium presentations about her research experiences.
After interning at the Georgia General Assembly, she worked with
public relations professor Ruth Ann Weaver Lariscy to study negative
campaigning in the 2002 Georgia elections. She then examined water
policy issues in Georgia with political science professor Charles
Bullock.
Gehres Pascal, a third-year student in biochemistry, has been conducting
research in cell biology and organic chemistry since her freshman
year, but this is her first time presenting at the CURO symposium.
She investigated 12th-century medical practices and cures in conjunction
with contemporary biomedical research. “We must break the
confines of structured and traditional education, work outside the
classroom and be able to convey our ideas so that others may benefit
from our experiences as well,” she says. “CURO makes
all these things possible and so we are fortunate to have this experience
right at our fingertips.”
The symposium includes concurrent presentations of student research,
poster sessions and a student art exhibition. Among the poster presentations
is Christopher Hughes’s experimental wireless art project
in which Internet users can “draw” or “tag”
virtual graffiti on areas of downtown Athens, using a handheld device
within a wireless area. The fifth-year digital media major has been
a CURO summer research fellow and was recently accepted into the
Summer Research Program in Mathematics and Visualization at UGA.
“ ‘Creating a culture of undergraduate inquiry’
is a new maxim we adopted to not only reinforce our mission, but
also show our track record and continued commitment,” says
Pamela Kleiber, CURO coordinator and an associate director of the
Honors Program. “We are grateful to all the people involved
in the symposium and are pleased that UGA students are increasingly
seizing such research opportunities.”
An awards ceremony for best papers in the sciences, social sciences,
humanities, international focus and this year’s newest category—civic
responsibility focus—will be held on April 13 at 4:30 p.m.
in Georgia Hall. The Joshua Laerm Undergraduate Award will be given
by the Georgia Museum of Natural History and the Graduate Assistant
Awards will be presented by the Graduate School.
William Kisaalita, an associate professor of biological and agricultural
engineering, will receive the Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Mentoring Award. Kisaalita is part of a research team working on
nanoscale biosensors to monitor blood sugar levels of diabetics.
“My biggest personal growth during my teaching and research
career at UGA has been the gradual realization that my effectiveness
as a teacher is multiplied several fold when teaching is integrated
in everything I do as a faculty member,” he says.
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