CSU plans for summer research
By Michelle McCafferty
“One of my goals is to make sure research projects are accessible to students,” said Provost Mary Jane Saunders. “We realize who our students are. So many of them have to work and to participate in something like this would be a luxury. It shouldn’t be just for students whose parents are footing the bill.”
This desire to get undergraduate students at CSU involved in faculty-run research led to the establishment of a grant program that will fund $500,000 in projects this summer.
Most of the money will go toward student stipends, said Dr. Saunders, so students won’t have to choose between valuable learning experience and a paycheck.
The program was initiated in January, and different colleges submitted proposals for funding by mid-February.
“It’s difficult to get funding for undergraduates on campus, which is a bit peculiar because [undergrads] are just beginning to get interested in things,” said Dr. Robert P. Mensforth, associate professor of biological anthropology.
Mensforth, who received approval for two undergraduate summer research projects, will take his group to Kentucky to explore archaic skeletal remains in Lexington and a cemetery site in Christian County, commonly known as Watt’s Cave.
One of Mensforth’s goals for the Watt’s Cave project is to identify the precise location of the cave by plotting its coordinates with a Global Positioning System. As of now, said Mensforth, there are no maps or references to the site in Kentucky registries. By conducting interviews with people who say they have been to Watt’s Cave and using one site reference he found in a hydrology report, Mensforth hopes he and his students will find an accurate location.
Other objectives include: finding out who the landowners are, taking photos of the site and obtaining permission from the Ohio Historical Society’s Senior Curator of Archaeology to extract human rib bone fragments to determine how old they are and whether they belong to archaic people or European colonists.
Mensforth also hopes to work with his students to write a manuscript called Watt’s Cave: An Archaic Period Seasonal Occupation and Cemetery Site from Christian County, Kentucky to submit for publication in the Mid-Continental Journal of Archaeology.
For the other project, the group will examine evidence of raiding and warfare in archaic bones housed at the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology in Lexington.
“Ohio and Kentucky are good places to look to explore the evolution from hunters and gatherers to tribes,” said Mensforth.
“It’s important to do this now because, in Ohio and Kentucky, we’re losing that land to housing developments. The next 50 years may be our last chance to capture prehistory.”
Funds allocated to these projects will cover student lodging, food and fuel.
Dr. Michael Mauldin, associate professor and director of the Dramatic Arts Program, is also hard at work preparing a summer apprentice program.
The program will work in partnership with a professional theater season and will be open to students from other colleges and secondary schools to take classes for college credit.
“We’re going to hire actors, directors and designers,” said Mauldin.
“The money will go for tuition, housing and to augment masters teachers coming in. It’s a way of recruiting and reaching out to the community.”
All CSU students are welcome to apply, whether or not they are theater majors.
Mauldin, who came to CSU in July, wants to refocus the department and establish higher visibility in the community and on campus.
The drama majors are excited about the summer program, he said, and he looks forward to bringing “such a great mix” of people to CSU.
“There will be high school [students], college [students] and professionals from New York City and Los Angeles,” said Mauldin.
“I’ve always wanted this to be a gathering place of creative people, and we’ll be bringing in people from all over.”
The College of Science will also be in on the research action, putting one undergraduate student to work on a project to develop tough coatings for space masks.
“On the moon, dust tends to stick to everything and it’s very abrasive – much worse than sandpaper,” said Paul Hambourger, associate professor in the Physics Department. “When the Apollo astronauts tried to wipe the dust off, it left scratch marks [on their masks].”
Using a special machine, researchers will apply thin coatings of various materials onto a glass surface. It will then be rubbed on simulated moon dust at the NASA Glenn Research Center to test for scratch resistance and obtain measurements of how well light travels through it.
“Apollo brought back real moon dust, but it’s hard to obtain because it’s irreplaceable,” said Hambourger.
“The dust used by NASA to test our coatings is a volcanic material from Arizona. Many dust experts think this is the closest to real moon dust that’s been found so far.”
The School of Communication plans to pay four students to work on two projects. The first one will examine how people use communication to cope with difficult circumstances and periods of stress, said Dr. Katheryn Maguire, assistant professor in the School of Communication.
Analyzing transcripts of interviews conducted in 2005 with 50 women whose husbands had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, the students will help identify different stress-coping factors and strategies.
The plan, said Maguire, is for the students to spend three weeks working in the analytical stage of a research project reviewing the transcripts and then switch gears to spend the remaining three weeks taking on the formulating stage of another project that looks at how the media portrays military families.
“Sometimes [the families] are portrayed as strong patriots, and sometimes as poor, hurting families,” said Maguire. “We’ll look for regional differences and media type differences.”
"Several students have [family] in Iraq or Afghanistan, so this is of interest to students, too,” said Maguire.
“This gives students first-hand experience with research on an important and timely topic, working with real data on a real project that affects real people.”
These are just a few of the research projects set to take place this summer. Every college will have money to spend, said Saunders, but because it is up to each individual college to publicize its own research project, more information can be obtained by contacting the appropriate dean’s office.