Meet Caitlin,

She is an Asian Studies major and an independent researcher. In the future, she plans to pursue a graduate degree in environmental studies. Her advice to future researchers is that you should be ready to dedicate much of your time to your topic. It may be cliché, but you have to eat, sleep, and breathe your topic. Your friends should be able to support you when you rant on and on and on about it. Most of all, you must love it. If you don’t enjoy your research, then you won’t want to push through any issues that presents themselves along the way.

Her research investigated the Buddhist practice of fangsheng; the process of releasing captive animals to obtain good karma. This implementation of fangsheng has introduced large quantities of non-native species to China’s environment and heavily influenced the likelihood of a non-native species becoming invasive, which has caused numerous problems to the ecological cycle. She will then analyze the impact of fangsheng and proposes solutions to resolve these issues.

Read more about her research here…

See our website for more details.

Wednesday, September 7 -- BE THERE

12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m.

COMMONS 331

Independent research/scholarship/creative work allows you to 

• Experience the work of professionals in your field
• Try out a new area in your field; see if you like it
• Work closely with a mentor 
  
• Get paid or earn academic credit
• Apply what you learn in the classroom
• Contribute to the advancement of your field
  

NOW is the time to understand PAID summer programs for NEXT SUMMER. Attend this session and be ready to apply. 

Also, learn about UMBC programs to support research/creative work:

• Undergraduate Research Award (URA) FUNDING for your own project
• Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) where students present their results
• Travel Funding for when your work is accepted at a professional conference
• Publication opportunities in UMBC Review.
  

NOW is the time to get started. Learn how. Sign up here:http://my.umbc.edu/groups/undergradresearch/events/40944 

Wednesday, September 7 -- BE THERE

12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m.

COMMONS 331

Independent research/scholarship/creative work allows you to

• Experience the work of professionals in your field
• Try out a new area in your field; see if you like it
• Work closely with a mentor
  
• Get paid or earn academic credit
• Apply what you learn in the classroom
• Contribute to the advancement of your field
  

NOW is the time to understand PAID summer programs for NEXT SUMMER. Attend this session and be ready to apply.

Also, learn about UMBC programs to support research/creative work:

• Undergraduate Research Award (URA) FUNDING for your own project
• Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) where students present their results
• Travel Funding for when your work is accepted at a professional conference
• Publication opportunities in UMBC Review.
  

NOW is the time to get started. Learn how. Sign up here: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/undergradresearch/events/40944

Meet Isabel,

She is a Global Studies major (with a Spanish Minor), and a Winter researcher. In her free time, Isabel is the director and founder of the Reach Initiative, a mentorship program that assists Baltimore high school women who have an interest in the STEM fields. She is also the Director of SGA’s Service and Community Outreach department as well as the Vice-President of UMBC’s all-female acapella group, the Stilettos.

Her research investigates Fair Trade through a feminist economics lens to see whether it truly can aid in preventing gender violence and discrimination in Latin America. Last winter, she traveled to Honduras where she visited various coffee plantations and “fincas” and interviewed about 25 women about working conditions. Her next step in the process is to transcribing, translating, and analyzing all the qualitative data.

Read more about her research project here...

Meet Rachel,

She is a visual arts major and a URA Scholar. She started off her academic career at CCBC where she found her career path in photography before transferring to UMBC in 2013. She premiered her film "Light Inhibits Light” at URCAD 2016. Rachel graduated from UMBC in May 2016 and is now a freelance photographer.

Her research explored the effect of light pollution in the world today. "Light pollution is a real problem; not only does it cause issues in the environment, it also is a waste of energy." Rachel traveled to the Northeastern United States and into Nova Scotia to capture the dark skies using time lapse photography. With this medium she plans to document amounts of light pollution and to showcase the beauty and the wonder of our night sky in hopes of awakening people to the problem of light pollution.

Read more about her research here…

Meet Daniel,

 His major is Interdisciplinary Studies in Arts Management and a summer researcher. He graduated cum laude this past winter (2015) and currently, he is an Inventory Controller for the Renaissance Fine Arts and Merritt Gallery in Baltimore city.

His research explores the complexities of non-profit Arts Management. Daniel investigated 7 non-profit art centers located across the nation to see how they managed their business and how they could be run with a high level of efficiency. Non-profit Art Centers are a life blood to the creative growth in the arts in every neighborhood, city and town in the U.S.. Have you ever been to one? Do you know where one is located? Can you believe there are more Non-profit Arts Centers than they are McDonalds? I bet you know of a location of the nearest McDonalds. Non-profits Arts Centers are not fast-foods, but they do provide substance for life can survive.

Read more about Daniel's research here...

Meet Vicki,

She is a Media and Communications Studies major and summer researcher. She graduated cum laude this past spring and currently works for Burness Communications, a public interest communications firm in Bethesda, MD. 

Her research investigates how to better understand and define what constitutes the “language” of television and involved a cross-cultural comparative quantitative and qualitative analysis of episodes from a Greek adaptation of the British medical series, Doc Martin. This research is particularly relevant due to the increasing volume of deterritorialized and localized narratives circulating within the global television format trade. She will conduct a cross-cultural analysis of components like narrative structure, sound, music, camera, lighting, and dialogue and demonstrated how these contribute to adapting for cultural proximity in the new setting. This comparative methodology led to an analysis of cultural components such as gender, masculinity, and community. 

Read more about her research here…

Meet Jamshaid,

He is a Mathematics and Statistics major, Meyerhoff Scholar and MARC U*STAR Scholar. Jamshaid was also a participant of UMBC’s Young Scholars program, which allowed him to take classes as a high school student and earn credit. After graduation, he plans to attend graduate school focusing on either applied mathematics, bioinformatics, or computer science. He is interested in a career that involves mathematical modeling, statistics, and computer science.

His research will explore the world of microscopy; one of the main tools in cell biology. The overall goal of his research project is to quantify the differences between image features computed by several feature extraction tools. His approach to this project will be to identify implementations of the same image features across multiple software packages, extract numerical values of image features, and compute statistical variance of image features. 

Read more about his research here…