Download the October 20, 2024 CUR eNews here.
In this issue, you’ll find information on
- Strategic Planning Task Force Update
- Ways to Get Involved and Have an Impact
- Divisional and CUR Awards
- Grant Dialogues 2025
- NCUR 2025
- and more
Download the October 20, 2024 CUR eNews here.
In this issue, you’ll find information on
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) congratulates the following 63 teams accepted to be a part of the 2024-25 Scholars Transforming Through Research (STR) Program. The STR Program is a competitive application-based professional development opportunity for teams consisting of a campus representative and one to three undergraduate students. These teams will participate in a multi-month program aimed at developing their communication and advocacy skills which will empower them to convey the power of the high-impact practices of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative inquiry experience to diverse stakeholder groups.
“This cohort of students and mentors represents the future of research, innovation, and advocacy. Their passion for discovery and dedication to expanding access to undergraduate research opportunities is truly inspiring. As we navigate a pivotal time for both higher education and civic engagement, this year’s STR cohort will be equipped to advocate for the transformative power of research at their institutions and on the national stage. We are excited to support them as they grow into leaders who will make a lasting impact in their fields and communities.”
Lindsay Currie, CUR executive officer
These teams represent 57 institutions from 22 states and are made up of 65 Campus Representatives and 146 undergraduate researchers.
Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Nebraska
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Wisconsin
Building from the success of the previous two years, this year’s STR program begins in November 2024 and concludes in March 2025 with in-person visits with stakeholders and elected governmental leadership in Washington, DC.
The telegraph. The polio vaccine. The bar code. Light beer. Throughout its history, NYU has been known for innovation, with faculty and alumni in every generation contributing to some of the most notable inventions and scientific breakthroughs of their time. But you don’t wind up in the history books—or peer-reviewed journals—by accident; academic research, like any specialized discipline, takes hard work and lots of practice.
And at NYU, for students who are interested, that training can start early—including during an undergraduate’s first years on campus. Whether through assistantships in faculty labs, summer internships, senior capstones, or independent projects inspired by coursework, undergrad students have many opportunities to take what they’re learning in the classroom and apply it to create original scholarship throughout their time at NYU. Many present their work at research conferences, and some even co-author work with faculty and graduate students that leads to publication.
As 2023-2024 drew to a close, the NYU News team coordinated with the Office of the Provost to pull together a snapshot of the research efforts that students undertook during this school year. The nine featured here represent just a small fraction of the impressive work we encountered in fields ranging from biology, chemistry, and engineering to the social sciences, humanities, and the arts.
These projects were presented at NYU research conferences for undergrads, including Migration and Im/Mobility, Pathways for Discovery: Undergraduate Research and Writing Symposium, Social Impact: NYU’s Applied Undergraduate Research Conference, Arts-Based Undergraduate Research Conference, Gallatin Student Research Conference, Dreammaker’s Summit, Tandon’s Research Excellence Exhibit, and Global Engagement Symposium. Learn more about these undergrad research opportunities and others.
Jordan Janowski (CAS ’24)
Major: Biochemistry
Thesis title: “Engineering Chirality for Functionality in Crystalline DNA”
I work in the Structural DNA Nanotechnology Lab, which was founded by the late NYU professor Ned Seeman, who is known as the father of the field. My current projects are manipulating DNA sequences to self-assemble into high order structures.
Essentially, we’re using DNA as a building material, instead of just analyzing it for its biological functions. It constantly amazes me that this is possible.
I came in as a pre-med student, but when I started working in the lab I realized that I was really interested in continuing my research there. I co-wrote a paper with postdoc Dr. Simon Vecchioni who has been a mentor to me and helped me navigate applying to grad school. I’m headed to Scripps Research in the fall. This research experience has led me to explore some of the molecules that make up life and how they could be engineered into truly unnatural curiosities and technologies.
My PI, Prof. Yoel Ohayon, has been super supportive of my place on the NYU women’s basketball team, which I’m a member of. He’s been coming to my games since sophomore year, and he’ll text me with the score and “great game!”— it’s been so nice to have that support for my interests beyond the lab.
Anthony Offiah (Gallatin ’26)
Concentration: Fashion design and business administration
MLK Scholars research project title: “project: DREAMER”
In “project: DREAMER,” I explored how much a person’s sense of fashion is a result of their environment or societal pressures based on their identity. Certain groups are pressured or engineered to present a certain way, and I wanted to see how much of the opposing force—their character, their personality—affected their sense of style.
This was a summer research project through the MLK Scholars Program. I did ethnographic interviews with a few people, and asked them to co-design their ideal garments with me. They told me who they are, how they identify, and what they like in fashion, and we synthesized that into their dream garments. And then we had a photo shoot where they were empowered to make artistic choices.
Some people told me they had a hard time conveying their sense of style because they were apprehensive about being the center of attention or of being dissimilar to the people around them. So they chose to conform to protect themselves. And then others spoke about wanting to safeguard the artistic or vulnerable—or one person used the word “feminine”—side of them so they consciously didn’t dress how they ideally would.
We ended the interviews by stating an objective about how this co-designing process didn’t end with them just getting new clothes—it was about approaching fashion differently than how they started and unlearning how society might put them in a certain box without their approval.
My concentration in Gallatin is fashion design and business administration. In the industry some clothing is critiqued and some clothing is praised—and navigating that is challenging, because what you like might not be well received. So doing bespoke fashion for just one person is freeing in a sense because you don’t have to worry about all that extra stuff. It’s just the art. And I like being an artist first and thinking about the business second.
Lizette Saucedo (Global Liberal Studies ’24)
Major: Politics, rights, and development
Thesis title: “Acknowledging and Remembering Deceased Migrants Crossing the U.S.-Mexican Border”
My thesis project is on commemorating migrants who are dying on their journey north to cross the U.S.–Mexican border. I look at it through different theoretical lenses, and one of the terms is necropolitics—how politics shapes the way the State governs life and especially death. And then of the main issues aside from the deaths is that a lot of people in the U.S. don’t know about them, due to the government trying to eschew responsibility for migrant suffering. In the final portion of the thesis, I argue for presenting what some researchers call “migrant artifacts”—the personal belongings left behind by people trying to cross over—to the public, so that people can become aware and have more of a human understanding of what’s going on.
This is my senior thesis for Liberal Studies, but the idea for it started in an International Human Rights course I took with professor Joyce Apsel. We read a book by Jason De León called The Land of the Open Graves, which I kept in the back of my mind. And then when I studied abroad in Germany during my junior year, I noticed all the different memorials and museums, and wondered why we didn’t have the equivalent in the U.S. My family comes from Mexico—my parents migrated—and ultimately all of these interests came together.
I came into NYU through the Liberal Studies program and I loved it. It’s transdisciplinary, which shaped how I view my studies. My major is politics, rights, and development and my minor is social work, but I’ve also studied museum studies, and I’ve always loved the arts. The experience of getting to work one-on-one on this thesis has really fortified my belief that I can combine all those things.
Sade Chaffatt (Abu Dhabi ’24)
Major: Biology
Thesis title: “The Polycomb repressive component, EED in mouse hepatocytes regulates liver homeostasis and survival following partial hepatectomy.”
Imagine your liver as a room. Within the liver there are epigenetic mechanisms that control gene expression. Imagine these epigenetic mechanisms as a dimmer switch, so that you could adjust the light in the room. If we remove a protein that is involved in regulating these mechanisms, there might be dysregulation—as though the light is too bright or too dim. One such protein, EED, plays a crucial role in regulating gene expression. And so my project focuses on investigating whether EED is required in mouse hepatocytes to regulate liver homeostasis and to regulate survival following surgical resection.
Stepping into the field of research is very intimidating when you’re an undergraduate student and know nothing. But my capstone mentor, Dr. Kirsten Sadler, encourages students to present their data at lab meetings and to speak with scientists. Even though this is nerve-wracking, it helps to promote your confidence in communicating science to others in the field.
If you’d asked 16-year-old me, I never would’ve imagined that I’d be doing research at this point. Representation matters a lot, and you often don’t see women—especially not Black women—in research. Being at NYUAD has really allowed me to see more women in these spaces. Having had some experience in the medical field through internships, I can now say I’m more interested in research and hope to pursue a PhD in the future.
Kimberly Sinchi (Tandon ’24) Major: Computer Science
Sarah Moughal (Tandon ’25) Major: Computer Science
Project: Robotic Design Team’s TITAN
Kimberly: The Robotic Design Team has been active at NYU for at least five years. We’re 60-plus undergrad and grad students majoring in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, and integrated design. We’ve named our current project TITAN because of how huge it is. TITAN stands for “Tandon’s innovation in terraforming and autonomous navigation.”
Sarah: We compete in NASA’s lunatics competition every year, which means we build a robot from scratch to be able to compete in lunar excavation and construction. We make pretty much everything in house in the Tandon MakerSpace, and everyone gets a little experience with machining, even if you’re not mechanical. A lot of it is about learning how to work with other people—communicating across majors and disciplines and learning how to explain our needs to someone who may not be as well versed in particular technologies as we are.
Kimberly: With NYU’s Vertically Integrated Project I’ve been able to take what I was interested in and actually have a real world impact with it. NASA takes notes on every Rover that enters this competition. What worked and what didn’t actually influences their designs for rovers they send to the moon and to Mars.
Eva Fuentes (CAS ’24)
Major: Anthropology
Thesis title: “Examining the relationship between pelvic shape and numbers of lumbar vertebrae in primates”
I came into NYU thinking I wanted to be an art history major with maybe an archeology minor. To do the archeology minor, you have to take the core classes in anthropology, and so I had to take an intro to human evolution course. I was like, this is the coolest thing I’ve learned—ever. So I emailed people in the department to see if I could get involved.
Since my sophomore year, I’ve been working in the Evolutionary Morphology Lab with Scott Williams, who is primarily interested in the vertebral column of primates in the fossil record because of how it can inform the evolution of posture and locomotion in humans.
For my senior thesis, I’m looking at the number of lumbar vertebrae—the vertebrae that are in the lower back specifically—and aspects of pelvic shape to see if it is possible to make inferences about the number of lumbar vertebrae a fossil may have had. The bones of the lower back are important because they tell us about posture and locomotion.
I committed to a PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis a few weeks ago to study biological anthropology. I never anticipated being super immersed in the academic world. I don’t come from an academic family. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but Scott Williams, and everyone in the lab, is extremely welcoming and easy to talk to. It wasn’t intimidating to come into this lab at all.
Elsa Nyongesa (GPH, CAS ’24 )
Major: Global Public Health and Biology
Project: “Diversity in Breast Oncological Studies: Impacts on Black Women’s Health Outcomes”
I interned at Weill Cornell Medicine through their Travelers Summer Research Fellowship Program where I worked with my mentor, Dr. Lisa Newman, who is the head of the International Center for the Study of Breast Cancer Subtypes. I analyzed data on the frequency of different types of breast cancer across racial and ethnic groups in New York. At the same time, I was also working with Dr. Rachel Kowolsky to study minority underrepresentation in clinical research.
In an experiential learning course taught by Professor Joyce Moon Howard in the GPH department, I created a research question based on my internship experience. I thought about how I could combine my experiences from the program which led to my exploration of the correlation between minority underrepresentation in breast oncological studies, and how it affects the health outcomes of Black women with breast cancer.
In my major, we learn about the large scope of health disparities across different groups. This opportunity allowed me to learn more about these disparities in the context of breast cancer research. As a premedical student, this experience broadened my perspective on health. I learned more about the social, economic, and environmental factors influencing health outcomes. It also encouraged me to examine literature more critically to find gaps in knowledge and to think about potential solutions to health problems. Overall, this experience deepened my philosophy of service, emphasizing the importance of health equity and advocacy at the research and clinical level.
Rohan Bajaj (Stern ’24)
Major: Finance and statistics
Thesis title: “Measuring Socioeconomic Changes and Investor Attitude in Chicago’s Post-Covid Economic Recovery”
My thesis is focused on understanding the effects of community-proposed infrastructure on both the socioeconomic demographics of cities and on fiscal health. I’m originally from Chicago, so it made a lot of sense to pay tribute back to the place that raised me. I’m compiling a list of characteristics of infrastructure that has been developed since 2021 as a part of the Chicago Recovery Plan and then assessing how neighborhoods have changed geographically and economically.
I’m looking at municipal bond yields in Chicago as a way of evaluating the fiscal health of the city. Turns out a lot of community-proposed infrastructure is focused in lower income areas within Chicago rather than higher income areas. So that makes the research question interesting, to see if there’s a correlation between the proposed and developed infrastructure projects, and if these neighborhoods are being gentrified alongside development.
I kind of stumbled into the impact investing industry accidentally from an internship I had during my time at NYU. I started working at a renewable energies brokerage in midtown, where my main job was collecting a lot of market research trends and delivering insights on how these different energy markets would come into play. I then worked with the New York State Insurance Fund, where I helped construct and execute their sustainable investment strategy from the ground up.
I also took a class called “Design with Climate Change” with Peter Anker in Gallatin during my junior year, and a lot of that class was focused on how to have climate resilient and publicly developed infrastructure, and understanding the effects it has on society. It made me start thinking about the vital role that physical surroundings play in steering communities.
In the short term I want to continue diving into impact-focused investing and help identify urban planners and city government to develop their communities responsibly and effectively.
Andrea Durham (Tandon, ’26)
Major: Biomolecular science
Research essay title: “The Rise and Fall of Aduhelm”
This is an essay I wrote last year in an advanced college essay writing class with Professor Lorraine Doran on the approval of a drug for Alzheimer’s disease called Aduhelm—a monoclonal antibody therapy developed by Biogen in 2021, which was described as being momentous and groundbreaking. But there were irregularities ranging from the design of its clinical trials to government involvement that led to the resignation of three scientists on an advisory panel, because not everybody in the scientific community agreed that it should be approved.
When I was six years old, my grandmother was diagnosed. Seeing the impact that it had over the years broke my heart and ignited a passion in me to pursue research.
When I started at NYU, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do in the future, or what opportunities I would go after. This writing class really gave me an opportunity to reflect on the things that were important to me in my life. The September after I wrote this paper, I started volunteering in a lab at Mount Sinai for Alzheimer’s disease research, and that’s what I’m doing now—working as a volunteer at the Center for Molecular Integrative Neuroresilience under Dr. Giulio Pasinetti. I have this opportunity to be at the forefront, and because of the work I did in my writing class I feel prepared going into these settings with an understanding of the importance of conducting ethical research and working with integrity.
Written by: Eileen Reynolds, New York University; used with permission. Find the original article here.
Download the October 6, 2024 CUR eNews here.
In this issue, you’ll find information on
Download the Fall 2024 newsletter from the CUR Psychology Division here.
In this issue, you’ll find
Download the Fall 2024 newsletter from the CUR Chemistry Division here.
In this issue, you’ll find
Download the September 22, 2024 CUR eNews here.
In this issue, you’ll find information on
Download the September 8, 2024 CUR eNews here.
In this issue, you’ll find information on
During spring 2023, students enrolled in Honors 1320 with Professor Joyce Kinkead conducted a research study that has just been published in Young Scholars in Writing, a nationally-recognized journal for undergraduates that seeks articles that make an intellectual contribution to the field. While focusing on the history of writing, the students found that through the ages writing implements have been enormously important. What about tools for writing now? Their IRB-approved study involved developing a Qualtrics survey, coding essays, and analyzing data, culminating in presenting a poster at the 2023 Spring Student Research Symposium.
In YSW, they report on their empirical study of the writing tools preferred by so-called “digital natives.” Spoiler alert! They found that while preference for digital or analog tools depends on the context, many of the college-aged participants reported a preference for tools such as gel pens, ballpoint pens, or mechanical pencils and that their writing tool preferences were often connected to their writing identities. Their study contributes to an increasing interest in the material culture of writing.
Avery Truman, Environmental Studies and Geography major and member of The Statesman staff, took the lead on submitting the article and working through its publication with the journal editors over the past year. In addition to Avery, authors included Dylan Ash, Mason Bodell, Jane Harvey, Clarissa Lloyd, Ellie Miller, Lauren Myers, Hannah Potter, William Spence, Anna Tuite, Isabelle Vasquez, Nevaeh Villastrigo, and Undergraduate Teaching Fellow (UTF) Landon Corbett, who was named Honors UTF of the Year in 2023. Joyce was invited to author a preface to the essay as it is unusual to have so many authors collaborating on one essay.
Young Scholars in Writing is an annual publication founded in 2003. The essay, “Is the Pen Mightier than the Laptop? Digital Natives and Their Preferred Writing Tools” can be accessed here.
Written by: Utah State University; used with permission. Find the original article here
As the leading voice in undergraduate research, the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) recognizes the critical need for comprehensive, adaptable guidelines that set the standard for excellence in this field. In 2012, CUR published its first edition of the Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (COEUR), which contained twelve characteristics that describe a roadmap of best practices. In 2015, COEUR served as a guideline for the establishment of the campus-wide Award for Undergraduate Research Accomplishments (AURA). The 23 campuses that have received this highly sought-after award to date, crafted exemplary undergraduate research programs with sustained metrics of their impact. COEUR has been a critical guide in the success of undergraduate research and a foundation to follow for many institutions globally.
After ten years, a working group of leaders was appointed by then-CUR President Ruth Palmer to evaluate COEUR and update it for the next era. This team of four, Lourdes Echegoyen, Winny Dong, Buffie Longmire-Avital, and Jeanne Mekolichick, with support from one of the original authors Linda Blockus, took the next two years to review, research, seek input, and update these characteristics to then put forward COEUR 2.0.
“As an original author of COEUR, I am delighted that we have updated the document. A lot has changed over the past 12 years, and as the national voice on the practice of undergraduate research, CUR continues to be a proactive leader. This document provides a blueprint for creating and sustaining campus environments where undergraduate research can flourish,” Stated Linda Blockus, Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of Missouri.
In COEUR 2.0, the authors have made several updates. The number of characteristics has been streamlined from 12 to 11, with the Strategic Planning characteristic now incorporated into the Campus Mission and Culture. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and access have now been strongly emphasized throughout the work, along with highlighting the power of integrating research, scholarly work, and creative inquiry with other high-impact practices, such as community engagement, study abroad, internship, and work-based learning. In addition, separate chapters on these topics have been added to provide the best approaches for research ethics training. Overall, COEUR 2.0 maintains the best practices that support and sustain highly effective undergraduate research environments.
As described by Winny Dong, one of the 2.0 editors, Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, “Working on COEUR 2.0 has been a true pleasure. Not only did it allow me to reacquaint myself with the essential tenets of COEUR, but it also allowed me to envision what those tenets might look like in light of what we have learned about serving students over the past 12 years. I am especially happy to see that inclusive practices have been threaded throughout all of the characteristics in COEUR 2.0 and that a broader set of voices have been included (community colleges, transfer students, non-traditional students, etc.) I hope that others will find that these characteristics of excellence in undergraduate research can help them assess where they are in their journey to provide meaningful undergraduate research for students and be inspired to continue on that journey of reflection and improvement.”
As a user of COEUR and second edition editor, Buffie Longmire-Avital, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Black Lumen Project at Elon University, explains, “My faculty career to this point has been at Elon University, an institution that openly embraced COEUR to develop our undergraduate research program. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with and reflect on the document that has been both directly and indirectly influential to my career as an undergraduate research mentor. COEUR 2.0 centers access, equity, and inclusion in a way that captures not only the diversity that we have in higher education, but also the growing diversity we will have. COEUR 2.0 builds off the conversations, trainings, and efforts CUR and undergraduate research programs have been challenged to engage with. In this version, undergraduate research is an equity driving vehicle not simply a possibility or hope of what it could be. The attention to voices, experiences, and nuanced contexts hopefully not only makes COEUR 2.0 more relatable but provides multiple pathways to excellence in undergraduate research that is accessible to a variety of programs and institutions.”
In CUR’s experience, successful programs exhibit many of the characteristics enumerated in this document. A sneak peek of these 11 characteristics was showcased in June 2024 at CUR’s Annual ConnectUR conference in College Park, MD. The editors were able to host a working plenary to showcase case studies and walk attendees through the COEUR assessment.
“It has been such a wonderful experience working alongside a talented group of URSCI experts to update this important resource guiding our community. Following the positive impact of the first edition, I expect COEUR 2.0 to make an equally important impact in guiding URSCI offices, support, faculty, and programming,” says Jeanne Mekolichick, second edition editor, Professor of Sociology and Associate Provost for Research, Faculty Success & Strategic Initiatives at Radford University. “I’m particularly excited to have DEI infused throughout as these values are foundational to CUR and their treatment in this edition will help folks operationalize at their institutions. I am equally excited to articulate and highlight the connection between the benefits of URSCI and career readiness. Leveraging URSCI for career success has not historically been top of mind for faculty and students. Infusing the URSCI-career readiness connections in COEUR is a valuable next step in providing resources and direction for faculty and programs.”
Maria T. Iacullo-Bird, CUR 2024-2025 President, Assistant Provost for Research at Pace University, explained, “The newly revised Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (COEUR 2.0) provides a masterful pedagogical update that exemplifies CUR’s long-standing intellectual leadership for the undergraduate research community.”
COEUR 2.0 is published electronically in individual chapters for easy consumption and as a full ePub on our website at www.CUR.org/COEUR2 on August 20, 2024.