QCC’s Celebration of National Undergraduate Research Week

April 8th - 12th, 2019 is National Undergraduate Research Week. QCC will be highlighting students’ research projects mentored by faculty members all week with virtual showcase!

Speech Communication and Theatre Arts

Professor Heather Huggins, Speech Communication and Theatre Arts, has been working with students to create a practice-based research community at QCC Theatre. Social Presencing Theater is not "theater" in the conventional sense, but uses the embodiment of simple postures and movements to dissolve limiting concepts, to communicate directly, to access intuition, and to make visible both current reality, and the deeper – often invisible – leverage points for creating profound change.  Over the course of one year, Professor Huggins collaborated with a group of students from QCC Theatre to explore the potential of theatre as practice-based undergraduate research. Specifically, they applied SPT to promote global and diversity learning. This emerging community has created many artifacts over the course of this year, including:

• Three day workshop in April, 2018

Participants: Joseph Distl (QCC Psychology), Geovanny Guzman (QCC Theatre), Bibin Shrestha (BA - Theatre, CCNY; AS - Theatre, QCC), Isabel Vasquez (QCC Theatre), Ksenia Volyinkina (QCC Theatre), Yineng Ye (CCNY Theatre; AS - Theatre, QCC)

• Devising theatre on borders and migration, fall 2018

Participants: Celeste Abramowitz, Robert Castles, Joseph Distl (Psychology major), Geovanny Guzman, Waldine Portelus, Jose Ramirez, Isabel Vasquez, Sophia Wise, Yineng Ye (Research Assistant -- QCC ‘16 & CCNY Theatre)  

• Devised performances at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

Participants: Celeste Abramowitz, Phylisha Louis, Isabel Vasquez, Ksenia Volyinkina, and Sophia Wise

• CUNY FDIC poster presentation

Details of Professor Huggins and her students’ research projects, please see here 

English

Dr. Christopher Leary shared the UR project he is working on with students in his ENGL 261 (Autobiography) course.

Dr. Leary is working with seven Honors students on undergraduate research. They have taken up a question posed by the scholar Patricia Odber de Baubeta, who studies editors and translators and asks, “How do these cultural mediators go about making their selections, which criteria do they apply, how do they justify their endeavors?” The title of their project is “How Gatekeepers Think: Inside the Curious World of Anthology Editing”. They try to gain access to the thought processes of editors, how they think and work. One place they look is in the published introductory prefaces of edited anthologies. They start with “open coding.” With an open mind, they just sift through all of the prefaces, labeling passages that seem relevant. With luck, several concepts will keep coming up repeatedly. They have to be patient, and again, open – even open to the possibility that there isn’t anything there, that no intriguing patterns will emerge. Ethical research requires honesty about the findings or lack thereof. That is where they stand now, with six weeks left to work together. However it ends, Dr. Leary feels good about the amount they have learned. As he mentors students on this research, they invariably discuss and plan 1) how to develop research questions, 2) how to apply research methods, and 3) how to research ethically. Sometimes they study these topics intentionally, but other times, the topics just naturally come up in the course of the work. That’s what Dr. Leary likes about UR. He said, “You can’t help but mentor students on these crucial, sticky issues that just naturally come up. “

Click here to read Dr. Leary’s article, “Editing, translation, and recovery work in community college English classes”, published on the journal teaching English in the Two-Year College, March 2019.

Using PHET Simulations to Impart Scientific Research Abilities Among Undergraduates

In Dr. Rex Taibu's class, students work as groups to use PHET simulation tool to conduct research projects. This week, students are preparing for the in-class oral presentation. They are so excited to submit second draft of their research term paper. ;So far, each group has:

• explored a physics simulation
• predicted relationships between pairs of variables
• designed experiments to test predictions
• Submitted first draft of term research paper

Currently, groups are preparing PowerPoint presentations.

Dr. M. chantale Damas created the QCC Space Weather Research Group to engage community college students in scientific enquiry and discovery.

“I truly believe in supporting, training, and
encouraging students who will become the
next generation of scientists and engineers…I
tell them to have fun!”

“It's all in the data…”

in the Classroom, BI-160 Ecology

Dr. Petersen's Environmental Science students (Ecology and Environmental Science classes) are conducting research at a local vernal pool restoration site in partnership with NYC Parks. They are measuring water quality and soil parameters, as well as isolating and classifying aquatic microorganisms. These data are being used to compare natural vernal pools vs. the recently restored pools. The information they obtain will help NYC Parks make decisions about future restoration projects

Participating in Undergraduate Research can help you succeed!

Here are a few examples of how being involved in research has benefitted three students who were mentored by Dr. Moni Chauhan of the Chemistry Department. Undergraduate research at QCC will help prepare you for 4-year college, graduate school, and beyond!

Evens Esperance

• Transferred to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Chemical Engineering major with a scholarship of over $65,000/year.
• Coauthored a peer reviewed article.
• Awarded 10 week $5000 NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) summer internship at University of Pennsylvania.
• 2nd place award at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Symposium (Poster Competition) at William Paterson University, NJ
• Presented research findings at the 25th Annual CSTEP Statewide Student Conference, Sagamore Resort on Lake George, Bolton Landing, NY , April 8th , 2017 and at The 64th Undergraduate Research Symposium of the American Chemical Society-NY Section, Fordham University, May 6th, 2017.

Anjali Gaba

• Transferred to City College of CUNY (Chemical Engineering )
• Coauthored a peer reviewed article.
• 2nd place award at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Symposium (Poster Competition) at William Paterson University, NJ
• Presented research findings at the 26th Annual CSTEP Statewide Student Conference, Sagamore Resort on Lake George, Bolton Landing, NY , April 14th , 2018 and at The 65th Undergraduate Research Symposium of the American Chemical Society-NY Section,York College of CUNY, May 5th, 2018.

Tao Hong

• Coauthored two peer reviewed articles.
• Awarded Jack Kent Cooke 2017 Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, April 2017
• Awarded 2017 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, March 2017
• Awarded 2017 Coca-Cola Community College Academic Team Gold Scholar, March 2017
• Awarded summer internships REU programs from Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering,2016
• Offered (Research Experience for Undergraduate) from Singh Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 2017 and The Center for Photonic and Multiscale Nanomaterials in University of Michigan, 2016.
• Awarded from ACS (American Chemical Society) SCI Scholars Internship Program, Summer 2017.
• Phi Theta Kappa All New York Academic Team, Jan 2017
• Highest individual score in New York State at NYSMATYC Contest (NY State Mathematics Association of Two-Year Colleges), Fall 2016
• 10.Gold medal in the two-year college group (and second overall that includes senior colleges) at the ACS (American Chemical Society) -Long Island section 16th Chemistry Challenge, Spring 2016
• Second place in the CUNY (City University of New York) Math Challenge in Spring 2015 and fourth place in Spring 2016
• NYSMATYC Award for Excellence in Mathematics, 2015-2016
• “Best Poster Award” at the Vanderbilt Summer Science Academy 14th Annual Student Research Symposium, Aug 2016
• “Honorable Mention” at CSTEP (Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program) 24th Annual Statewide Student Conference Poster Competition, Spring 2016
• The Tak (Peter) Wong Award for Excellence in research, Fall 2015 and Spring 2016
• Who’s who Among Students in American Universities and colleges recognition program, April 2016
• Dr. Paris Svoronos Scholarship, for excellence in the field of chemistry, Spring 2016
• SACNAS (Advancing Hispanics/Chicanos & Native Americans in Science) Travel Scholarship, Aug 2016
• 2016 Queensborough Student Government Association Merit Scholarship, Aug 2016
• Continuing Student Academic Merit Scholarship, Fall 2015, Spring 2016 and Fall 2016

Yousif Saleh

• Graduated Fall 2018 with a GPA of 3.96 and transferred to Hunter College.
• Won second place award (Nanochemistry) for the Original Research Poster Presentation at the William Patterson University - 12th Undergraduate Research Symposium in Chemical and Biological Sciences, NJ, April 14th, 2018
• Presented research findings at the Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI), Glendale Community College, AZ, Nov 29-30, 2018; The 65th Undergraduate Research Symposium of the American Chemical Society-NY Section, York College of City University of NY, May 5th, 2018; Undergraduate Research Day, QCC, Dec 7th, 2018.
• Awarded CUNY CRSP (CUNY Research Scholars program) $ 5000 scholarship.

Student researcher: Brian Ryu
Faculty mentor: Dr. Kwang Hyu Kim

Research project: Construction of a class schedule website.
Summary of the research: This presentation shows how Django framework generates a server-sided website effectively with Models-View-Templates(MVT). Later, their team have a plan to reuse the Model part of Django framework and replace View-Templates with React Framework.

Brian Ryu spoke on his Computer Science project, “Making a Scheduling Website with Django Framework”.

Student researcher: Ziyan Lin
Faculty mentor: Dr. Wenjian Liu

Research project: Reconstruction Threshold for the Multi-State Hard Core Model
Summary of the research: Ramanan et al. proposed a generalization of the hard core model as an idealized model of multicasting in communication networks. In this generalization, the multi-state hard core model, the capacity C is allowed to be a positive integer, and a configuration in the model is an assignment of states from {0, . . . ,C} subject to the constraint that the states of adjacent nodes may not sum to more than C. This project will focus on the reconstruction bound of the multi-state hard core model on regular d-ary trees. The purpose of this project is to establish the distributional recursion and moment recursion by analyzing the recursive relation between n^th and (n+1)^th generation's structure of the tree. Then we will display the spectrum analysis of the Markov transition matrix and high degree discussion by applying the Central Limit Theorem and Gaussian approximation to approximate the moment recursion obtained from the first stage. Therefore, we expect to figure out the critical reconstruction threshold of the multi-state hard core model.

Student researcher: Ziyan Lin

From Dr. Liu: Having experience of being a mentor makes me appreciate every undergraduate research opportunity highly. To every student I see who has potential and passion about math, I will willing to actively invite them to be part of the undergraduate research program. During our collaboration in the UR project, Ms. Lin demonstrates her talents, passions and determination, and her skills improve significantly these months. Most striking is her ability to tackle challenging material with enthusiasm and endurance. She actually shows surprising curiosity of the unknown as well as desire of knowledge. To open her mind and understand the modern mathematics research, she actively attends the seminars and workshops organized by QCC, Graduate Center and Columbia University, etc. Most important to a career in academics is research competence. As I have explained, Ziyan has an excellent grasp of mathematics, statistics, programming and other skills critical to a successful career in research, such as tenacity and excellent problem solving and critical thinking skills. When we work together, she not only poses thought-provoking questions but always provides many intelligent and creative ideas, and even her insightful perspective often gives me a lot of inspiration. Clearness in future planning, accompanied with determination and perseverance to achieve the plan, is another trait of Ms. Lin I figured out from our communication. Faced with new options as her community college life drawing to a close, she makes up her mind to transfer to a senior college to pursue the further exploring on mathematics and statistics, based on her current academic interests and longer term career goals. In many appropriate interdisciplinary topics related to this project, I have mentored several undergraduates majoring in various quantitative fields. Under my mentorship, most of them have always enjoyed and become strong in areas that require problem solving, analytical and mathematical skills. They are always anxious to combine the knowledge of, and aptitude for, those skills they have studied in various interdisciplinary quantitative fields, including especially probability theory, dynamical systems, statistics, mathematical biology and financial mathematics. Through the research experience most of them have accomplished the great achievements, including research awards, presenting their works on national scholar conference, honor contracts, etc. More importantly, all my students make up their mind to continue the math study at the senior college and graduate school to enhance themselves systematically by studying further quantitative skill.