Student-run Space program featured at #ScholarlyForum13

One of the wonderful outcomes of campus-wide conferences is discovering some of the great research projects being conducted by our students and faculty. It’s even more impressive when you discover that some projects are happening between departments, and even between colleges, involving graduate and undergraduate students and faculty.

Next Tuesday, we have the opportunity to learn about one such project. OpenOrbiter is a student-conceived and student-run research project looking to launch North Dakota’s first spacecraft in low-earth-orbit and involves participants from Computer Science, Space Studies, Electrical Engineering and the College of Business & Public Administration. Below are just a few of the presentations you can expect to hear:

• OpenOrbiter: A Student-Run Space Program, Anders Nervold, Jeremy Straub, Josh Berk, (Faculty Sponsors, Multiple) Department of Business Administration, Department of Computer Science, Department of Space Studies
• The Development of Payload Software for a Small Spacecraft, Kyle Goehner, Christoffer Korvald, Jeremy Straub (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Ronald Marsh) Department of Computer Science
• A Power Generation System for the OpenOrbiter CubeSat-Class Spacecraft, Zachary Bryant, Matt Olson, Corey Bergrsud, Joshua Berk, Jeremy Straub (Faculty Sponsors, Multiple) Department of Electrical Engineering, Department of Space Studies, Department of Computer Science
• Managing Communications, Outreach and Policy for OpenOrbiter, Anders Kose Nervold, Josh Berk, Jeremy Straub, Marian Courtney (Faculty Sponsor, Sheryl Broedel) Department of Business Administration, Department of Space Studies, Department of Computer Science, Department of Aerospace Sciences

The session involves 20 papers, and begins bright and early on Tuesday in the River Valley Room and continues through the day. You can view the booklet and read the abstracts for all sessions here. 

See the complete schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday on the School of Graduate Studies website. The 12th annual Scholarly Forum is March 5 & 6 in the Memorial Union on the University of North Dakota campus. The event is free and open to the public.

#ScholarlyForum13, March 5 & 6 on the UND campus

The 2013 Scholarly Forum will be held in the Memorial Union next week, and is set to be one of the busiest yet. I thought I would share some facts and figures about this year’s event.

• 12th annual conference showcasing graduate student and faculty research at UND
• 2 Dean’s Lecture Series presentations, Dr Mark Askelson and Dr Timothy Pasch
• 27 sessions
• 106 oral presentations and panels
• 105 posters
• Participants and contributors from every college and school at the University of North Dakota

For details on sessions for each day, and to learn more about the 2013 Scholarly Forum visit http://graduateschool.und.edu/learn-more/scholarly-forum.cfm

For the first time, we will be live streaming the Dean’s Lectures. If you are not able to join us at the Lecture Bowl, you can log in here to view Dr Askelson’s talk, and log in here to view Dr Pasch’s talk.

 

The Evolution of the Scholarly Journal: Digital Convergence and Broader Impacts

Dr Timothy Pasch will discuss the evolution of the scholarly journal for the Dean’s Lecture Series.

Dr. Timothy Pasch of the Communication Program will share some exciting insights into the future of scholarly publishing. Dr. Pasch is one of our two Dean’s Lecture Series presenters during the annual Scholarly Forum. I sat down with Dr. Pasch to learn more about his research in this area.

This presentation will be at the Lecture Bowl on the University of North Dakota campus, at noon on March 6th. It is free and open to the public.

Can you talk a little about your Dean’s Lecture Series presentation, The Evolution of the Scholarly Journal: Digital Convergence and Broader Impacts?

Granting agencies such as the NSF and others require, as part of their proposal process, explanation of how the grant recipient will disseminate the knowledge they will glean from their research. It’s no longer enough to simply gather research and create the knowledge, for after you have accomplished this, you are required to “share the wealth”, or disseminate that knowledge. This (in part), is what is referred to as Broader Impacts. Grants and journals serve a purpose closely related to (but not exactly) this.

Modern research is still embedded in the paradigm of the printed word on paper (journals). Digital journals, for their part, offer us convenience as they can be read on computers, tablets, and other mobile devices. Even still, the trend is still static – there’s printed text and there is some rudimentary video, but it’s primarily still simply text and image. We’re entering an era where this is no longer sufficient for granting agencies – they are looking for innovative New Media approaches for the dissemination of that knowledge. So artists and other digitally creative individuals have a very important role in creatively disseminating the knowledge of STEM and other researchers – there are exciting collaborative possibilities there.

There’s also a burgeoning opportunity for creative, immersive, convergent journals; so you are simultaneously engaging audio, video, interactivity. For example, you can “visit” a new discovery and engage with it in three dimensions, manipulate it, delve right into it. If you are a musician, for example you can do so much more than simply describe the music – you can have a waveform available for immediate interaction. These are living journals.

Part of your research is looking at communication in marginalized communities. How might the digitization of scholarly journals impact communities that might not have ready access to new technologies?

When you try to use technologies to assist individuals without technology, or those who don’t know how to use it, I’m sometimes asked, “How can it be accessible if you need to buy into the hardware in order to access it?”

One of the arguments we can make is the decreasing cost of getting into a computer or a tablet. When tablets first emerged their cost was close to $2000, however they are available for much less now. And there are a number of initiatives that aim to deliver technology to underprivileged individuals.  It’s also becoming easier to say that it is less expensive to purchase a tablet than to subscribe to a scholarly journal. And with an increasing move toward open source publishing, all of these factors may help to make knowledge much more accessible; although I will discuss models that strive to keep knowledge very closed as well.

What do you think is driving agencies to expect such Broader Impacts?

Funding is becoming more difficult to acquire based on the economy and other factors. When a grant is being evaluated, agencies are less likely to fund projects that don’t demonstrate a direct impact on the communities that this kind of work is designed to empower, or those projects that do not disseminate the knowledge as widely as possible to the target audience.

It is no longer sufficient to solely publish findings in a journal or “just make a website” as the primary vehicle for outreach. There is a greater expectation to have a detailed plan to market and distribute knowledge in a very compelling way. It needs to be engaging and inspiring.

With a greater emphasis on Broader Impacts by granting agencies, do you think this could influence the way in which academics will design their research?

The best proposals will be built around Broader Impacts and will incorporate these aspects from the beginning, rather than having them added as an afterthought, or attachment to the proposal itself.

Dr Mark Askelson, Atmospheric Sciences is also presenting for the Dean’s Lecture Series. His talk, Unmanned Aircraft: From Potential to Reality is scheduled for noon in the Lecture Bowl on Wednesday, March 6th. You can read his interview here.

Both presentations will be streamed live to the web so watch for details closer to the dates!!

Department of Biology @ #SF12und

From tapeworms to salamanders and snapping turtles to songbirds, the Biology department offers one of the largest  sessions in the 2012 Scholarly Forum with 11 oral presentations.  If you are curious to learn more about our graduate student research, or thinking about a graduate degree in Biology, this session is a must.

The Biology session is scheduled for Tuesday, February 28^th beginning at 8:30am in the Lecture Bowl on the second floor of the Memorial Union.

Topics include:

Description and Phylogenetic Relationships of New Tapeworm Rodentolepis gnoseki n. sp. From a Shrew in Malawi, Stephen E. Greiman and Vasyl V. Tkach (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Vasyl V. Tkach) Department of Biology

A Comparative Analysis of Acute Cadmium Toxicity in the Salamanders Ambystoma mexicanum and Ambystoma mavortium, Kenneth Cabarle (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Robert Newman) Department of Biology

Rural Red River Valley Mosquito Ecology and Xenomonitoring, Joseph Mehus (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Jefferson Vaughan) Department of Biology

Wolffian Duct Stabilization in the Common Snapping Turtle, a Reptile With Temperature Dependent Sex Determination, Anthony L. Schroeder and Turk Rhen (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Turk Rhen) Department of Biology

Avian Haematozoa of Some Birds From Malawi, Jacob T. Mertes¹, Holly L. Lutz², Jason D. Weckstein², Vasyl V. Tkach¹ (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Vasyl V. Tkach) Department of Biology, Department of Biology¹,Department of Zoology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL²

Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) Regulation of Early Forebrain Neuralepithelium Development, J.T. Cain, M.A. Berosik, S. Frisch, P.W. Odens, S. Urquhart, S. Dvorak, and D.C. Darland (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Diane C. Darland) Department of Biology

Identifying Landscape-Level Patterns in Grassland Songbird Communities, Jessica Shahan¹, Brett Goodwin¹, and Brad Rundquist²  (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Brett Goodwin) Department of Biology¹, Geography Department²

Development of the Hypothalamus and Pituitary Gland in the Snapping Turtle, Chelydra serpentine, K.L. Gruchalla and T.E. Rhen (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Turk Rhen), Department of Biology

Identification of an E3 RING-H2 Ubiquitin Ligase from Poplar Trees that Negatively Impacts the Feeding and Development of the Defoliating Pest, Orgyia leucostigma, Justin Burum, Brett Gross, Aubree Wilke, Alicia Grant, Jessica Greer, and Steven G. Ralph (Faculty Sponsor:  Dr Steven G. Ralph) Department of Biology

Haemosporidian Parasites in Grassland Passerines of Northwest Minnesota, Danielle Kvasager, (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Jefferson Vaughan) Department of Biology

Grassland Songbird Responses to Vegetative Structure and Composition Within the Devils Lake and Arrowwood Wetland Management Districts, Dustin J. VanThuyne, Brett J. Goodwin, and Kathryn A. Yurkonis, (Faculty Sponsor, Dr Brett Goodwin) Department of Biology

Poster Session @ #SF12und

The poster session runs from 2-4pm on Tuesday, February, 28^th 

One of the most exciting events of the annual Graduate School Scholarly Forum is the Poster Session.  It could easily be characterized as the busiest two hours of research exchange and conversation on campus.  Research typically happens tucked away in the rooms and labs of each respective department.  But the poster session brings together this remarkable diversity of research from across campus under one roof.  Those who attend the Poster Session have an opportunity to mingle with fellow students and discuss their research during the 2 hour session. This year there are 83 posters from across the University’s colleges and departments including McNair, Geography, Earth System Science and Policy, Space Studies and many others. Join us in the Ballroom on the second floor of the Memorial Union.

A sampling of posters included:

• The Plane Truth: Recent Prints – An exhibition from the printmakers in the Department of Art & Design
• The Fritz at 50: Illustrating the Use of Digital History in Commemorating the Chester Fritz Library, Department of History
• The Influence of Mass Media on Climate Change Public Discourse, Department of Earth System Science and Policy
• What Could Possibly Happen in a Million Years? Landscape Evolution in the Southern Transantarctic Mountains, Department of Geology
• Improving Care Through Language Interpretation, Department of Nursing

See the complete listing of posters here.

 

Roundtable to focus on Human Culture and Intercultural Issues

Human Culture Roundtable – Monday February 27 @ noon in the River Valley Room, Memorial Union

In addition to the busy two-day schedule of the upcoming Graduate School Scholarly Forum, an exciting new component has been added to this year’s line-up.  Yuliya Kartoshkina, a PhD student in Educational Foundations and Research, has arranged a roundtable session for graduate students and faculty.  This will be a remarkable opportunity for students to come together to discuss their research, methodology, literature, publications.

This year the conversation theme will focus on “Human Culture & Intercultural Issues.”  The roundtable is intentionally designed to be interdisciplinary with the goal of helping students explore various angles of human culture and provide opportunities for networking and future professional collaborations.  The hope is that students from across the disciplines, including sociology, communication, history and other related fields will come to share their ongoing research.

All graduate students and faculty conducting research on this topic are invited and encouraged to attend.  The human culture roundtable will be held Monday, Feb. 27 over the noon hour, in the River Valley Room on the second floor of the Memorial Union. And The Graduate School will provide pizza!

Publish or Perish Panel at #SF12und

Panel: The Publish or Perish Syndrome  – for new and future faculty – Monday @ 8:50am

The “Publish or Perish Syndrome” continues to put demands especially on tenure seeking faculty that ultimately affects their overall productivity as well as the quality of work for the graduate students they advise, teach, or mentor in various research projects. The panelists will make brief presentations and field audience questions pertaining to overcoming this writing syndrome. Key writing issues that the panelist will explore include: Best strategies for increasing writing efficiency, setting realistic goals in scholarly writing, monitoring progress toward personal writing goals, creating and supporting a community of scholarly writers, and sharing tips/techniques for a healthy work and life balance to ensure success in writing for publication.

About the Panelists: Drs Sagini Keengwe, Rick Van Eck, Robert Stupnisky (Teaching and Learning Department) and Dr Cynthia Prescott (History Department) are all prolific writers in their areas of specialization. They have authored and/or edited scholarly books/book chapters, and several journals articles in different refereed journals. Drs Keengwe, Van Eck, and Prescott are North Dakota Spirit Faculty achievement Award Past Recipients.

Our graduate community on the map

It is a rare opportunity for The Graduate School to bring the community of scholars and researchers together – but the 2011 Scholarly Forum did just that. We were pleased to host presentations and posters for more than 200 of our graduate students as well as some faculty. To mark the 10th anniversary of the event, and take advantage of this rare opportunity, we invited our participants to mark their hometowns on our map.

 

Our Grad Community on the Map

The Power of the Poster Session

Reposted from Teaching Thursday

Elizabeth Howell, Graduate Student, Space Studies, University of North Dakota

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

At last week’s scholarly forum Elizabeth Howell, a professional journalist and space studies graduate student, and Bill Caraher, an assistant professor in the department of history, decided to write a post that tried to capture what they liked the most about the poster session.

At first, they thought that they might combine their posts to make a single list of tips for a great poster, but their impressions were so different and so complementary, that they decided to preserve their individual perspectives in a single post.

By Elizabeth Howell

Years ago there was a show that ran on television where the host would throw a dart at a map of the United States, show up in the town and find a phone booth (remember those?), then open up the phone book and pick a name at random.

The host would then show up at that person’s door and have them tell a story – tell the most interesting thing about their lives.

That was the same experience I felt strolling along the posters at last week’s Graduate Forum. There were students who had put years of their life into a few words – often, drawing on personal experience to bring their research to life.

Take Jessica Steinhauer, who became inspired to look into distance-delivered mental health when, as a nurse practitioner, she had the chance to try it out herself.

“There’s a perception that it’s not as good of a therapeutic treatment, but that’s maybe a generational thing,” she pointed out, saying that older people just may not be as comfortable on a computer or over the telephone.

I saw so many posters where students brought their personal experiences to the table – whether it be finding better fertilizer for crops, treating selective mutism through art or studying the degradation of moraines in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains.

And really, the best research is about storytelling – but how best to convey that on the limited amount of space that a poster provides?

• Be passionate about your subject. If you enjoy what you do, you’re far more likely to put the effort into making the poster look like more than just a big block of text.
• Make your research about people. Admittedly this is tougher when working in the pure sciences or in engineering, but there are still ways to bring humans into the equation. How does the research affect the public? How will it benefit humanity – or even a small group of humanity?
• Think of how you’d describe the research to your grandmother. Imagine a person who has no background in your work – that would be the average person reading your poster on the Scholarly Forum floor. Keep your words non-technical and the description of your research to the point.
• Include questions, and avenues for future research. This encourages the audience – your readers – to participate and to suggest their own ideas, putting the core of the story in their own minds.
• Most of all, be present at the poster. “Present” doesn’t mean checking your iPhone, or chatting exclusively with your buddy at the poster next door. Talk to the people that come by. Conversations can be tough, but every person you met was once a stranger – and you never know what you can learn.

By Bill Caraher

I love Elizabeth’s emphasis on the poster as story telling, and, in particular, her emphasis on the poster as the basis for a conversation about research both as an ongoing concern and as something that will continue into the future. And she’s right, of course, people make the poster! But there are some ways that draw people to the poster and to intrigue them enough to draw them into conversation, and here are my observations along those lines.

• Flashy colors. A few of the best and most noticeable posters used some kind of flashy color to attract my eye. While I know that poster sessions shouldn’t necessarily be driven by visceral reactions to common advertising ploys, bright colors do draw the attention to content.
• Visual Content. The best posters also relied heavily on pictures, charts, diagrams, and other illustrations. Posters are really ideal for communicating visual data. Our poster included too much text and it was tricky for people to find the time and space to stop and read a text heavy poster in the bustle of the poster session. Some of the best posters communicated their message through straight forward diagrams and visual images.
• Non-linear. I’ll admit that despite my training as a historian, I find linearity boring.  Posters that depicted linear processes from one stage to the next did not attract me. I found myself drawn to posters that captured non-linear character of processes.  Posters are a great place to experiment with non-linear explanations and descriptions because they allow the reader to engage the content of the poster from multiple starting points. Just as long blocks of text make engaging of the content of a poster difficult in the bustle of a crowded ballroom, a non-linear approach allows viewers to engage the content of the poster from different angles and directions.
• So many icons. I really liked the posters that marked the project’s affiliation, partners, and funding through icons. It made it easy to understand the institutional basis for the research without having to read some small thank-you text at the bottom of the poster board. It reminded me of the importance to developing a slick logo or icon for our organization!
• QR Codes and more information. One thing that our history poster DID do right is to include QR codes to allow the viewer to quickly get additional information on the material present. QR codes worked so much better than a clumsy url directing the viewer to a website. In fact, the QR codes worked so well that they actually drew attention and comment to our poster!

 

10 Years of Presenting Graduate Research & Scholarship at UND

The Graduate School at the University of North Dakota hosts the 10th annual Scholarly Forum, March 8-9 in the Memorial Union. The Scholarly Forum highlights the cutting edge research and creative scholarship from all corners of our graduate community.

It was the inspiration of Graduate Dean, Joseph Benoit who speaks with Elizabeth Howell about the vision and development of the annual event.

I’ve heard the Forum happened after you and the then-chair of music, Gary Towne, had a conversation in 2001 about creating a university-wide event to present research. How did you get from that conversation to founding the Forum in 2002?

Shortly after moving to UND, in Fall 2001, I was talking with Dr. Towne in my office.  I referenced a goal that I had set during my interview of increasing opportunities for exchange of scholarly work on the campus and stated that I was planning to develop a research day in the future, but that it would most likely occur in the next academic year.  Dr. Towne asked, why not start now, which resulted in further discussion.  Shortly after our meeting, I moved forward with organizing the first forum.  There was an infectious excitement on the campus about having a university wide event that brought the scholarly community together.  The community of scholars at UND were responsible for the early success.  All I did was plant the seed.

Even the first Forum appeared to be quite multidisciplinary, to the extent that you featured student artwork as well as research. What sort of reaction did you receive from the community following its first run?

The first forum was multidisciplinary by design.   My goal was to have an inclusive event that spanned the breadth of graduate programming at UND.   The response of the campus community was overwhelmingly positive.   Many individuals found potential for collaborative scholarship on the campus and later commented that they did not know that there were other researchers at UND with similar interests.  Others came as spectators and commented that they would be submitting their own presentation next year.

What’s the biggest change you and other organizers have made to the Forum since then?

The format of the forum has not changed much since its inception.   Perhaps the biggest changes have been in the keynote speakers.   In the early years of the forum, we had invited speakers from other universities.   While these were outstanding lectures, I thought that it would be more fitting to have keynote speakers from UND.  More importantly, I saw an opportunity to feature Assistant Professors who were at the beginning of their faculty careers.   As a result, the Graduate Dean’s Lecture Series was started.   These lectures add a unique dimension to The Graduate School Forum and keep the focus on the research conducted at UND.

This year’s theme is “10 Years of Presenting Cutting Edge Research and Creative Scholarship.” Keeping that theme in mind, what will be the highlights of this year’s Forum?

There is no single highlight.  Each presentation highlights the fact that research and creative scholarship is the heart of the university.  Each presentation highlights original work that advances knowledge.   The information disseminated in the Scholarly Forum presentations cannot be found in text books, journal articles and libraries.  It has yet to be published.   The magnitude and caliber of new knowledge generated by UND scholars is the highlight of the Forum.

How do you market the Forum to people outside of the UND community?

The Forum is open to the public, however the target audience  is the UND community. Information about the Forum is available on The Graduate School web site.

UND not only has a variety of disciplines, but also a variety of cultures — many of its students come from out of state, or even out of country. How do you try to bring out that aspect of UND in the Forum?

We do not attempt to bring out differences in cultures of the presenters;  the diversity of presenters is self-evident.   Instead we feature the work of scholars who are contributing to the culture that makes the University of North Dakota one of the premiere educational  and research institutions in the midwest.  To this end, the Forum unites scholars from around the world who have chosen to work and study at UND.

What else would you like to add to this discussion?

I am very pleased with the campus wide support that the Scholarly Forum continues to receive and encourage the UND community to attend the lectures, poster sessions and panel discussions.   It’s the best way to “Learn More”.

2010 Scholarly Forum poster session