Undergrad research spotlighted at symposium
Matthew Gabriele, AS ’97: “I love my job. I love my research.”

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4:38 p.m., May 7, 2008--More than 200 UD undergraduates, faculty members, administrators and guests recognized senior thesis candidates at the plenary session of the 25th annual Undergraduate Research Symposium held Saturday morning, May 3, in the Rodney Room of the Perkins Student Center.

University President Patrick Harker, who introduced keynote speaker and UD alumnus Matthew Gabriele, AS '97, thanked those gathered and noted the quality of scholarship on display, emphasizing in particular the ambitious spirit that went into each research project.

“The University places great value on the undergraduate research experience,” Harker said, touching briefly on his own stint as an adviser. “I'm very impressed looking through the book here at all the projects. Many of your colleagues did not take this path, and intense research is not for the feint of heart.”

Harker gave special thanks to UD faculty members and advisers and asked all present to stand for a round of applause before turning the podium over to Gabriele, who graduated from UD with an honors degree in history and now is an assistant professor of humanities and coordinator of medieval and early modern studies at Virginia Tech.

Gabriele, whose lecture was titled “Living in the 11th Century, Still,” shared some memories of his own research symposium presentation at UD before talking about his work as a medievalist, and made the point that solid research, no matter what it entails, has validity and application to contemporary society.

“I love my job. I love my research,” Gabriele said, “and through its many incarnations, it's all been focused on the Crusades.”

Gabriele lectured on the Age of Charlemagne, a period from 814-1100, traced the routes of the first Crusade and touched on the ever-contemporary phenomenon of collective identity, emphasizing that “social memory informs identity, but it also tells people how to act.”

He talked about shades of meaning and changing terminology, focusing particularly on the different definitions of the word “crusade,” and said that another purpose in-depth research serves is to inspire critical, complex thinking. “More than anything else, connections might be made that weren't primarily evident,” he said.

Before closing his remarks, Gabriele added that scholars, too, own a collective identity and that “the nature of scholarship is essentially collaborative rather than competitive.”

This year's symposium included poster presentations, exhibit sessions and oral presentations from 70 UD undergraduates doing research in fields as diverse as music, animal and food sciences, English, history, political science and engineering. Research areas also included ecology, electrical and civil engineering, exercise science, engineering technology, geography, nursing, physics, plant and soil sciences, international relations, philosophy, psychology and wildlife ecology.

A presentation on anthropology and education.
Atieno Oduor, a senior political science major and Degree with Distinction candidate originally from Kenya, said that her research project, “AIDS in Africa: A Case Study on its Impact on the Social Welfare of the Elderly in West Gem Village, Kenya,” took her back to her grandmother's village to conduct 41 one-on-one interviews with elderly people affected by the AIDS and HIV epidemic in rural Africa.

“I wanted to examine how AIDS is affecting the elderly, in particular, in Kenyan villages,” said Oduor, who applied for and received a $4,000 undergraduate research grant from UD last winter to travel to Kenya for the purpose of her interviews.

“Often, the elderly living in remote villages don't have any access to resources or help--the younger people have all left, and there's no transportation to clinics--so I wanted to hear their stories and look at some steps that might be taken,” Oduor said.

David Sophrin, a senior political science major from Wilmington, Del., said that his research project, “The Causes and Outcomes of Secession Movements in American History,” required tenacious and fairly painstaking research, because not much information about secession was readily available.

“A lot has been written on the Civil War, because it's been heavily researched, but there aren't so many articles on secession movements,” said Sophrin, an Honors Degree with Distinction candidate who will attend the College of Law at Syracuse University in the fall. “I ended up using media outlets, such as The New York Times and Boston Globe, as well as books from the library on particular states, which usually had something in them about their individual secession movements.”

The symposium marks the completion of the senior thesis course for UD Honors Degree with Distinction and Degree with Distinction students. Besides recognizing exceptional research work at the undergraduate level, the free public event promotes student awareness of undergraduate research possibilities.

For more information on UD's Undergraduate Research Program and a complete schedule of this year's symposium, visit [http://urp.udel.edu/calendar/symposia/Default.aspx?year=2008].

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photos by Kevin Quinlan, AS '05