Today! Dean’s Lecture Series features Dr Susan Ellis Felege at #ScholarlyForum14

Dr Susan Ellis-Felege, Wildlife Biologist, will discuss her research on avian ecology at noon today.

This year, the School of Graduate Studies again highlights outstanding faculty research through the Dean’s Lecture Series and we are delighted to announce the 2014 speaker is Dr Susan Ellis-Felege. Dr Ellis-Felege’s talk, “Birds’ Eye View“, will feature her research using nest cameras to understand avian ecology, and her collaborative Wildlife@Home project, bringing together UND biologists, computer scientists and the larger community to manage and analyze the vast digital data collections of video that enable the team to monitor nesting habits of North Dakota birds.

Dr Ellis-Felege’s presentation is Tuesday, 11 March at 12noon in the Lecture Bowl at the Memorial Union. If you are not able to join us in the Lecture Bowl, you can view the presentation via our live stream at: https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/birds/

The 2014 Scholarly Forum is March 11 & 12 on the University of North Dakota campus and is hosted by the School of Graduate Studies.The event is free and open to all.

Facts and Figures for #ScholarlyForum14

The School of Graduate Studies’ annual event starts tomorrow and continues Wednesday, showcasing graduate, undergraduate and faculty research and scholarship from around the UND campus. Here are some data on this year’s event:

• 13^th annual conference showcasing research and scholarship
• Since 2002, more than 1830 oral presentations, posters and exhibits have been presented
• This year we have 24 sessions featuring 20 departments and the Graduate Student Association
• 102 oral presentations
• 89 research posters in the Ballroom
• 12 posters by McNair students
• 2014 is the second largest Scholarly Forum
• Dr Susan Ellis-Felege is the 2014 Dean’s Lecture presenter on Tuesday at noon. It will also be live streamed.
• SGS will present the 2013 Dissertation Award to Blake McCann on Wednesday at noon

For details on sessions for each day, and to learn more about the 2014 Scholarly Forum visit the School of Graduate Studies website.

Showcasing research from College of Engineering and Mines at #ScholarlyForum 14

The annual Scholarly Forum showcases graduate research from around UND

The School of Graduate Studies’ annual Scholarly Forum showcases graduate and faculty research and scholarship from across the University of North Dakota’s campus. One of the largest participants is the College of Engineering and Mines, with oral and poster presentations from Chemical, Mechanical, Civil, Sustainable Energy and Electrical Engineering and Geology. For the past few years, the College has used the forum as a perfect backdrop to showcase their students’ work.

This year’s event features presentations from various departments in the College, with topics such as:

• Economic Dispatch for Power Systems with Renewable Generation, Siby Jose Plathottam (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Hossein Salehfar) Department of Electrical Engineering
• A Legacy of Past Climate Change on Today’s Landforms, Risa Madoff (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Jaakko Putkonen) Department of Geology
• On the Development of Fly Ash as a Cementitious Material, Surojit Gupta, M. F. Riyad, T. Hammann, R. Johnson (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Surojit Gupta) Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Microbial degradation of lignin for valuable chemicals production, Fnu Asina (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Yun Ji) Department of Chemical Engineering
• Electroencephalogram Signal Processing Based on Pattern Recognition for Early Seizure Detection, Leila Azinfar (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Reza Fazel Rezai) Department of Electrical Engineering

Learn more about the session schedules for Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12, and the listings for the Poster session on Wednesday afternoon.

UND’s Graduate Student Association to host a panel at #ScholarlyForum14

The University of North Dakota’s Graduate Student Association will host a panel session at the 2014 Scholarly Forum on Wednesday, March 12^th at 1pm.

The panel, How to make the best out of your graduate school experience, will be lead by Masters and Doctoral students representing a variety of departments and who are close to graduation.

Join the GSA to discuss:

• How to make THE MOST of the courses during your program
• What are the BEST PRACTICES in writing a thesis or dissertation?
• How to prepare for the JOB SEARCH while still in school

All graduate and professional students are invited and encouraged to attend.

Bring your questions and best practices to share with other graduate during the Q & A questions and learn more about our organization and what it can do for you as a graduate student.

The panel is scheduled for Wednesday March 12th at 1:00 pm in the Badlands Room. The Poster session will follow in the Ballroom at 2pm. Learn more about the 2014 Scholarly Forum on the School of Graduate Studies’ website.

Arts & Sciences at #ScholarlyForum14

Arts & Sciences students are among those to present their research with orals and posters at the 2014 Scholarly Forum

The School of Graduate Studies‘ annual Scholarly Forum showcases the exceptional research and scholarship from the University of North Dakota‘s graduate community.

The College of Arts and Sciences has been hard at work researching and writing presentations for next week’s graduate Scholarly Forum. On Tuesday and Wednesday, their sessions will feature over forty oral presentations with topics such as:

• Adsorption of hydrogen in covalent organic frameworks using Expanded Wang-Landau simulations, Aaron Koenig, Caroline Desgranges, Jerome Delhommelle (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Jerome Delhommelle) Department of Chemistry
• American Imperialism in the Pacific: A Historiographical Investigation, Andrew Larson (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Hans Broedel) Department of History
• New Perspectives on the Occurrence of Absolute Pitch, Greg Schultz (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Katherine Norman-Dearden) Department of Music
• Quantitative Real Time PCR Analysis of An Activation Tagged P. tremula x P. alba Mutant R19-6 Resistant to White Mark Tussock Moth (Orgyia leucostigma) Feeding, Samuel Bandi, Heidi Connahs, Brett Gross, Steven Ralph (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Steven Ralph) Department of Biology
• A perceptual study of correction focus in Akan, Afua Blay (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Amebu Seddoh) Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders
• Poe as Cultural Critic: The Rhetorical Position of Women in the “Dupin Tales”, Meghan Hurley, Rhiannon Conley-Pierson, Anna Kinney (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Heidi Czerwiec) Department of English

The 2014 Scholarly Forum is March 11 & 12 in the Memorial Union, University of North Dakota. To view the presentation schedules and the poster listing, click here.

Award presentation for outstanding dissertation at SF14

Wildlife biologist, Blake McCann will accept his Distinguished Dissertation Award at the 2014 Scholarly Forum

The culmination of a graduate degree results in a dissertation, thesis or creative project and is the student’s opportunity to synthesize the body of knowledge with which they have worked closely for several years. It may also, in the case of a dissertation, demonstrate the contribution of new knowledge to the field of study. 

The School of Graduate Studies recognizes the outstanding work for students who graduated the previous academic year. Academic departments nominate their best graduates, and a committee of emeritus faculty reviews the nominations for award selection.

The 2013 Distinguished Dissertation Award will be presented to Blake McCann, PhD for his work Genetic Relationships for Wild Pigs (Sus scrofa) in the United States: Geographic Origins and Genotypic Distribution of the Species with Implications for Management during the 2014 Scholarly Forum on Wednesday, March 12^th, 2014 at 12:00 pm.  

Blake was unable to join us for the awards reception last year as he was beginning a new job as a Wildlife Biologist at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The School of Graduate Studies is pleased to invite Blake to campus during the Scholarly Forum to recognize his achievement. The timing is particularly fitting since graduate students from the UND Biology department are involved in a day long session of presentations about their graduate research topics.

The presentation will take place in the Lecture Bowl on the second floor of the Memorial Union.  The event is free and open to all. 

Calling for Abstracts for 2014 Scholarly Forum

The School of Graduate Studies is pleased to announce the 13^th Annual Graduate Scholarly Forum, a two-day conference showcasing the cutting edge research and creative scholarship of UND’s graduate community.  Last year’s event was the largest to date with more than 200 participants who presented their research through oral presentations, posters and panel sessions. 

Dr Wayne Swisher, interim dean of the School of Graduate Studies said, “The Scholarly Forum has grown to be the largest gathering of our academic community on our campus. The depth and breadth of graduate research is evident both in the Forum’s growth and the increasing number of interdisciplinary projects”.

The Scholarly Forum is the ideal opportunity to discover the independent and collaborative research projects that engage our graduate community. It allows students to gain valuable presentation experience and feedback ahead of regional and national conferences, and for departments to gather and support their peers and colleagues. For undergraduates interested in an advanced education, the Forum provides a perfect environment to learn more about a research topic of interest and what is expected at the graduate level.

Next year’s Scholarly Forum is set for Tuesday, March 11 and Wednesday March 12. The School of Graduate Studies is now calling for abstracts. If you would like to arrange a special session for your department or have questions about the event, please contact Susan Caraher.

SF Guidelines: http://graduateschool.und.edu/learn-more/sf-guidelines.cfm

Submission form: http://apps.und.edu/scholarly-forum/

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!!