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Westminster Students and Faculty Present at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research

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Posted on Thursday, April 20, 2017

Eight Westminster students attended and presented at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) at the University of Memphis in Tennessee the weekend of April 6-8th. The students all received funding from the Drinko Center for Undergraduate Research to attend the conference.

In attendance were Ashlyn Brown, Sarah Pace, Patrick Gaughan, Lexie Quigly, Daniel Owoc, Andrew Henley, Kaleigh Snider and Rebecca Haynik. The students presented in either poster sessions or oral presentations, and spent the remaining time networking with their peers, researchers in different fields and graduate school representatives.

“NCUR was a great platform to meet others from around the country and to hear what they have been researching at their college,” said Daniel Owoc, senior biology major. “Traveling to NCUR was something that I always wanted to do after talking to upper classmen when I was just starting out at Westminster.”

Thanks to funding from the Drinko Center for Undergraduate Research, students can apply for resources to conduct research projects and/or present at national (sometime international) conferences.

Kaleigh Snider, senior psychology major, took advantage of her opportunities networking with others in the mental health field while senior history major Andrew Henley used his experience at NCUR to help narrow his research focus for his capstone project.

“There were many posters/presentations for many fields, which allowed me to step out of my educational field and observe how other fields and schools complete research,” said Rebecca Haynik who presented her own research on the impact of affective content on memory.

After attending NCUR, senior biology major Sarah Pace says attending URAC made her even more excited to pursue her goal to become an optometrist because she learned so much at the conference.

“NCUR helped me realize the opportunities here at Westminster, and how the students here truly learn to take on the research as their own,” said Sarah. “Our faculty members are some of the best mentors, and NCUR truly showed me this.”

Westminster College faculty members Dr. Karen Resendes and Dr. Timothy Cuff accompanied the students at NCUR and presented a Faculty Action Network (FAN) session entitled “Curricular Integration Through Incrementalism: The Slow Growth and Eventual Institutional Success of Westminster College’s Undergraduate Research and Arts Celebration”. Resendes is an associate professor of biology and co-director of the Drinko Center for Undergraduate Research and Cuff is a professor of history.

For more information, contact Tom Fields at fieldste@westminster.edu or 724-946-7190.