For hundreds of UD undergraduates, summer is more about libraries and laboratories than rest and relaxation.
Through the Undergraduate Research Program, which draws about 600 participants each year, apprenticeships with faculty mentors give talented, motivated undergraduates a chance to see and take part in what is happening on the front lines of discovery. Every college, department and research center at the University provides opportunities for interested students to do hands-on research during the academic year or in the summer.

This year, more than 160 undergraduates made presentations on their summer projects at three research symposia held at UD in August. The symposia represented research in arts, humanities, social and physical sciences and service learning.

In one symposium, “Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences in View,” undergraduate research scholars in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Lerner College of Business and Economics presented the fruits of their labor over a three-day period. Talks included an analysis of Major League Baseball player/owner negotiations, girls and violence and a content analysis of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

Other presentations covered such topics as funeral music of 17th-century Mexico, a study of the marine world as creative inspiration, the impact of superheroes in today’s society, “Chaucer’s Scandalous Word-Play” and “The End of the Marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Louis VII of France.”

A second gathering showcasing student researchers was the University’s sixth annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium, in which 135 undergraduates from UD, Delaware State University, Delaware Technical & Community College and Wesley College met to present and share scientific research.

During the symposium, students gave talks and presented posters summarizing their work.

Javier Velasquez, EG ’07, a chemical engineering major, says that his summer research with G-protein coupled receptors, while bringing disappointing results, nonetheless demonstrated the importance of thorough lab work and perseverance.

“I feel that the biggest object of this summer’s project has been to see if graduate school is really worth it, and it is,” he says. “I hit a lot of dead-ends, but I learned a lot and hope to go into the biomedical field.”

Jennifer Schnitker, AS ’08, says she also felt that the demands of the program prepared her for graduate school. “I chose my research topic because it incorporated aspects of both inorganic and organic chemistry,” she says of her work with scorpionates, a class of versatile chemical compounds. “But, one of the most interesting things I learned through my research is that I kind of enjoyed hitting setbacks. I liked the challenge of trouble-shooting and figuring out what caused the bumps in the road, and I also enjoyed learning how to move beyond them.”

The third symposium on campus highlighted service-learning projects.

Last year, the annual Service-Learning Scholars Symposium drew eight undergraduates who made presentations about their summer research projects.

“This year, we’ve doubled that number,” Susan Serra, coordinator of UD’s Office of Service Learning, said at the symposium. She congratulated the 16 scholars who gave overviews of their summer work and called their research “service as a commitment to the community.”

Provost Dan Rich predicted that the symposium would have to be held in a larger room next year as service learning spreads across campus. “Seven to eight hundred students are participating in service learning courses this year. Stay tuned,” he said.

Student research projects included teaching math and promoting reading at community youth centers, archaeological work in Old New Castle, Del., helping create a web site for the Delaware Public Policy Institute and studying motor development through movement education in preschools.

In addition to those who participated in the August symposia, other undergraduates conducted research through a variety of summer programs. Two engineering students, for example, got hands-on experience at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y

Christopher Dixon, EG ’07, a computer engineering major, and Saka Okyere-Asiedu, EG ’08, a civil engineering major, were the first UD students to participate in the 10-week Faculty and Student Teams (FaST) program, in which students work in a real-world research environment.

The FaST program provides an opportunity to contribute to and be on the ground floor of new ideas and exciting projects leading to publications for faculty and graduate school opportunities for students; a highly interactive and stimulating immersion experience in the research environment; sustainable professional relationships between faculty and laboratory investigators; and a supportive approach that reinforces learning through research participation.

UD team members worked with the staff at the laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source, an evacuated tube about 100 meters in diameter where electrons circulate at nearly the speed of light, emitting light whose energy varies from infrared to X-ray frequencies. The extremely bright ultraviolet light from the synchrotron is used to study the properties of novel electronic materials.

The students worked an average of 40 hours a week, wrote a research paper on their findings and participated in a poster competition to conclude the experience.