The Science of Gossip | The Experience of Understanding | The Dissection of Discovery
How undergraduates and faculty collaborate to explore, discover and build knowledge
While writing papers and spending time in the laboratory and library are traditional elements of the undergraduate experience, in recent years Virginia Wesleyan has actively encouraged students to undertake the far more demanding task of producing original research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Virginia Wesleyan has created a committee and offered grants to support such research, and it has given students opportunities to present their work at conferences both on campus and beyond.
Research is not just for graduate and doctoral students anymore,” said Dr. William T. “Billy” Greer, Jr., president of Virginia Wesleyan. “There’s an expectation that top liberal arts colleges give students a solid background in research so they can hit the ground running in grad school. At Virginia Wesleyan, we’re providing students with critical research experiences.”
In 2006, more than 50 students – spanning the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences – participated in Virginia Wesleyan’s first Undergraduate Research Symposium. The symposium continues to provide students with the opportunity to participate in serious research from the conception of an idea through planning, research, analysis, presentation and critiques.
“Students are given the opportunity to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and apply that knowledge to their project,” said Dr. Maynard Schaus, Batten Associate Professor of Biology and coordinator of undergraduate research. “Last year there were so many different disciplines doing undergraduate research. It’s starting to become part of the culture here.”
Dan Proud ’07, of Mt. Pleasant, Pa., became the first Virginia Wesleyan student to win a research award at the Virginia Academy of Sciences Undergraduate Research Competition in fall 2005 for his research with harvestmen. He was also recognized at the 2006 meeting of the Virginia Academy of Sciences.
Kimberly Stinedurf ’07, of Norfolk, Va., won a place in the 2006 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) Mellon Undergraduate Fellowship Program, attending a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania, during which she researched the families of nineteen Quaker exiles who were driven from Philadelphia during the American Revolution.
In 2007, Brandan Adams ’08, of Virginia Beach, Va., received a Gilder Lehrman History Scholars program grant sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for summer study in New York City. She attended a one-week seminar at Columbia University where she developed a deeper understanding of American history and the historical profession as a whole.
In April, Katherine Burchett ’09, Kim Fahle ’10 and Kathleen Mabry ’09 traveled with two faculty members to present research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in Salisbury, Md. Attendance at this national conference that brings together more than 2,000 students, faculty members and administrators from more than 300 colleges and universities across the country was a first for Virginia Wesleyan.
Burchett, of Virginia Beach, Va., researched best management structures to reduce pollutant discharge and to mitigate excess water runoff caused by urban development from entering surface waters; Fahle, of Townsend, Mass., studied selected 19th Century artists, examining their portrayal of religious images; and Mabry, of Suffolk, Va., worked with the Virginia Department of Transportation to document and measure the usage of a highway under-crossing by large mammals.
“The participation of our students in NCUR is an important indicator of the growing importance of undergraduate research on our campus,” said Dr. Timothy O’Rourke, vice president for academic affairs and Kenneth R. Perry Dean of the College. “Increasingly, faculty mentors, who are themselves highly regarded scholars, are drawing bright students into the research enterprise. The students, in turn, are winning recognition for their fine work.”
In the pages that follow, students from each of the three academic divisions are profiled to provide an illustration of the exciting research happening at Virginia Wesleyan College. For more information about undergraduate research at Virginia Wesleyan College, visit www.vwc.edu/academics/undergraduate_research/