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UW Oshkosh Student Fabiola Navarro shares her research during TRiO Day events in Reeve Memorial Union on April 9.

A total of 29 University of Wisconsin Oshkosh students, who have worked on 23 separate research projects, were accepted to present their research findings at the 27th National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse April 11-13.

It’s just one of a few, high-profile opportunities UW Oshkosh students will have to showcase research in the weeks ahead. They, and their findings, will benefit from bright spotlights in Wisconsin and in Washington D.C.

NCUR, which began in 1987, invites undergraduate students from academic institutions across the country to share their research of varying topics. The conference is part of the Council on Undergraduate Research.

UW Oshkosh history professor Stephen Kercher, who has attended NCUR in the past, encouraged students to attend given this year’s La Crosse host site. He said most of the research students will present is work they have done for classes. The UW Oshkosh Office of Grants and Faculty Development will support UW Oshkosh student involvement in the conference by paying for registration fees, poster production, lodging and transportation.

Kercher is the faculty adviser of four student research projects to be presented at NCUR this year, one of which is Ross Bartelt’s project titled, In the Heat of His Sights: Norman Jewison, Social Change and Film of the 1960s.

“The late 1960s was a very turbulent time in American society because of the great social transitions which were transpiring,” Bartelt said. “This transformation, however, was not necessarily reflected on films coming out of Hollywood at the time.”

Bartelt said he examined films directed by Norman Jewison in the late 1960s and suggested that his contributions to Hollywood have gone unappreciated.

“Using his personal papers, I was able to argue that it was Jewison’s goal to reflect some of the realities of America in his work, and in doing this he anticipated the birth of New Hollywood,” he said.

Bartelt said his research provides an important glimpse into how films changed due to the social transformations taking place during the time period, and said he looks forward to presenting it at NCUR.

“When I stated college I never thought I would get to the point where I would be invited to present anything I researched, so this opportunity for me is really proof of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve accomplished throughout my time at Oshkosh,” he said.

Bartelt will also be presenting his research at Posters in the Rotunda in Madison’s Capitol Rotunda on April 17. The program is designed to give students one-on-one opportunities to showcase research for state legislators and other guests.

A similar event, hosted by the Council on Undergraduate Research, is Posters on the Hill which takes place in Washington D.C.

Student Jacqueline Charapata, who is currently student teaching in Chile, received an award of honorable mention from Posters on the Hill for her research on multicultural education and critical thinking in rural Wisconsin elementary schools. Charapata said the purpose of the research was to determine if teachers are using multicultural literature in ways that engage elementary school students in critical thinking.

“Courses at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh opened my eyes to issues such as white privilege, unintentional discrimination and the unintentional ways schools perpetuate inequities,” she said. “These classes taught me how to promote equality in the classroom and implement authentic multicultural literature.”

UW Oshkosh’s Celebration of Scholarship, set for April 18, will also give students an opportunity to showcase research and creative activities in an exhibition setting.

Kercher said UW Oshkosh’s own research program on campus, the Oshkosh Student Scholarly and Creative Activities Program (OSSCAP), strives to support collaborative research between students and faculty, as well as manages the Student/Faculty Collaborative Research grant programs.

“Really what it’s all about is… finding a way for students who already do research in the course of their programs or make arrangements with professors, find another way for them to showcase or show off what they’re doing and get the experience of presenting their research in public,” he said.

The following  students had research accepted by NCUR. The listings include the faculty advisers who assisted and the titles of their research projects:

  •  Molly Anderson (Stephen Kercher); For the Sake of the Children: How the John Birch Society changed a High School Library and the Nation
  • Steven Bartel (Nadejda Kaltcheva); Improved Distance Estimates to Galactic H II Regions
  • Ross Bartelt (Stephen Kercher); In the Heat of His Sights: Norman Jewison, Social Change and Film in the 1960s
  • Abigail Brooks and Matthew Bohr (Courtney Kurtz); Modulation of STAT Protein Expression in the Lungs of Hibernating Ground Squirrels
  • Timothy Conrad and Vincent Fabbri (Nadejda Kaltcheva); Cepheus Star-Forming Field
  • John Dewitt (Ken Price); Gradings of a Tournament Directed Graph and a Mathematical Puzzle
  • Shannon Fehrenbach (Patrick Bahls); Realizable Sets of Omitted Cycle Lengths in Hamiltonian Graphs
  • Carie Gauthier (Samantha Looker); Metaphors for Writing in Experience and Inexperienced Writers
  • Kelly Genskow (Lauren Waters); The Escherichia coli Small Protein MntS and its Role in Manganese Homeostasis
  • Nathan Koenecke (Steven Winters); A Variation of the Instant Insanity Problem *Will not be presenting*
  • Krista Kroeninger (Jennifer Wenner); The Geochemical Story of the Basalts of Bogard Buttes
  • Ashley Leonardelli (Erin Winterrowd); Applicability of Existing Screening Tools to LGBTQ Victims of Intimate Partner Violence
  • Martin Meder (Marianne Johnson); The Effects of Aquatic Invasive Species on Lakefront Property Prices
  • Tammy Nisbet and Kendra Borksi (Sabrina Mueller-Spitz); Comparative Genomics of a Diverse Collection of Freshwater Bacteria
  • David M. Rice (Stephen Kercher); Lloyd Barbee: Wisconsin’s Civil Rights Leader from Memphis
  • Trevor Sires (Jennifer Schuttlefield); The Impact of Ammonium Nitrate on the Photoactivity of Bismuth
  • Lance Spaude (Stephen Kercher); Death of an Organizational Man: An Advertiser’s Resistance to the FTC and the Creative Revolution in Advertising in the 1960s
  • Gorman Stock (Jonathan Gutow); An Investigation of Human Glutathione Reductase Inhibition Via ab initio Computations
  • Sitha Thor (Teri Shors); Screening and Identifying Hmong Medicinal Plants in the Virology Laboratory
  • Erica Vander Mause (James Paulson); Induction of Premature Chromosome Condensation without Histone H1 Phosphorylation
  • Anna Wright (Paul Klemp and Stephen McCabe); Outside the Town of Malborj & Kidbits (two presentations)
  • Ryan Bures and Benjamin Sajdak (Dana Merriman); Muted Glial Cell Response in 13-Lined Ground Squirrel to Optic Nerve Crush
  • Jamie Antonio Castillo, Sitha Thor and Garrett Heiman (Teri Shors); Examining the Antimicrobial Properties in Punica granatum Aril Exract
  • Papa Fall (Alfred Kisubi); African Student’s Experience of Academic Life in U.S. Public Universities

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