2013 Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) Awards
SURF is the biggest undergraduate research competition administered by the UCONN Office of Undergraduate Research. I am delighted to announce that 70 UCONN undergraduates have been offered SURF awards for this summer. Members of the faculty review committee commented on how strong the field of 91 applications was this year. SURF applications require research proposals of high quality.
Congratulations to the SURF awardees! Your academic achievements, creativity, and enterprise were ever so evident in your applications. Have fun with your research this summer!
Thank you to the faculty members who supported SURF applicants: mentors, letter writers, and faculty review committee members! SURF represents a collaborative effort between students and faculty. SURF would not exist without the support and participation of faculty members!
Thank you, too, to SURF supporters in the UCONN community. Deans of UCONN schools and colleges and the Provost’s Office helped to fund the SURF competition this year. Alumni, parents, and friends of UCONN also helped fund SURF awards. Our community quilt of funding ensures that SURF supports a diverse array of UCONN undergraduate research!
Once again, congratulations to those students offered 2013 SURF awards.
Margaret Lamb, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Undergraduate Research
SHARE Awards 2013
The SHARE program supports undergraduate research projects in the social sciences, humanities, and arts. We are pleased to announce the 20 awardees for the Spring 2013 semester. Congratulations!
Project Title: Beyond Nation States
Student Apprentice and Major: Matea Batarilo, Political Science
Faculty Mentor and Department: Prakash Kashwan, Political Science
Project Title: When the Courts Make History: the Impact of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Latin America’s Conflict Zones
Student Apprentice and Major: Kattie Bonilla, Political Science and Individualized Major: Latino Immigrant Women to the U.S.
Faculty Mentor and Department: Luis van Isschot, History and Human Rights
Project Title: Altering Health Incentives through Health Independent Systems
Student Apprentice and Major: Shavonda Brandon, Economics
Faculty Mentor and Department: Dennis Heffley, Economics
Project Title: Could a Union Save This Planet? Coding and Analyzing ‘Sustainable Development’: Perspectives of the IUCN Members
Student Apprentice and Major: Carl D’Oleo-Lundgren, Political Science and Individualized Major: International Relations
Faculty Mentor and Department: Prakash Kashwan, Political Science
Project Title: The New Normal: Goodness Judgments of Non-Standard Speech Variants
Student Apprentice and Major: Julia Drouin, Speech Language and Hearing Sciences
Faculty Mentor and Department: Emily Myers, Speech Language and Hearing Sciences
Project Title: A Study of Teachers’ Questioning Sequences in Reading Instruction
Student Apprentice and Major: Rebecca Duchesneau, Secondary Social Studies Education and History
Faculty Mentor and Department: Catherine Little, Education
Project Title: Teacher Questioning and Student Responses: Promoting Higher-Level Thinking
Student Apprentice and Major: Sarah Forte, English Education
Faculty Mentor and Department: Catherine Little, Education
Project Title: Discourse in Linguistically Diverse Mathematics Classrooms
Student Apprentice and Major: Chelsie Giegerich, Elementary Education; English Concentration
Faculty Mentor and Department: Mary Truxaw, Curriculum and Instruction
Project Title: Hunger Amidst Plenty: Social Mobilization on the Right to Food in India
Student Apprentice and Major: Syeda Haider, Political Science
Faculty Mentor and Department: Shareen Hertel, Political Science
Project Title: Latina/Latin American Transnational Narratives of War and Violence
Student Apprentice and Major: Krisela Karaja, Spanish and English
Faculty Mentor and Department: Guillermo Irizarry, Literatures, Cultures, Languages
Project Title: Contemporary Indian Art
Student Apprentice and Major: Julianne Norton, Psychology
Faculty Mentor and Department: Kathryn Myers, Anthropology
Project Title: Divorce and Well Being
Student Apprentice and Major: Hagar Odoom, Human Development and Family Studies and Political Science
Faculty Mentor and Department: Edna Brown, Human Development and Family Studies
Project Title: Gullah Voices: Watch Night
Student Apprentice and Major: Cristobal Ortega, Journalism and Fine Arts: Concentration in Photography
Faculty Mentor and Department: Mary Junda, Music
Project Title: Caribbean Documentation Project
Student Apprentice and Major: Chelsea Pajardo, History and Psychology
Faculty Mentor and Department: Fiona Vernal, History
Project Title: Gullah Voices: Traditions and Transformations
Student Apprentice and Major: Emily Palumbo, Music and Marketing
Faculty Mentor and Department: Robert Stephens, African American Studies
Project Title: Provision of Emotional Support to Increase Pumping Duration in High Risk Mothers
Student Apprentice and Major: Rebecca Paquette, Nursing
Faculty Mentor and Department: Jacqueline McGrath, Nursing
Project Title: Shared Parenting and its Influence on Post-divorce Fathering
Student Apprentice and Major: Shannon Perkins, Human Development and Family Studies
Faculty Mentor and Department: Kari Adamsons, Human Development and Family Studies
Project Title: The Role of Social Setting in the School Adjustment of Youth Attending Ethnic-Racially Diverse Schools: A Multi-Method, Multi-Dimensional Longitudinal Investigation
Student Apprentice and Major: Andrea Salazar, Human Development and Family Studies
Faculty Mentor and Department: Annamaria Csizmadia, Human Development and Family Studies
Project Title: Perceptual Processing in Individuals with Dyslexia
Student Apprentice and Major: Katlyn Salvador, Communication Disorders and Psychology
Faculty Mentor and Department: Rachel Theodore, Speech Language and Hearing Sciences
Project Title: When the Courts Make History: the Impact of the Inter American Court of Human Rights in Latin America’s Conflict Zones
Student Apprentice and Major: Jack Zachary, Political Science and Human Rights
Faculty Mentor and Department: Luis van Isschot, History and Human Rights
Profiles in Undergraduate Research: Frontiers 2012
[adapted from a story in UConn Foundation's newsletter, Our Moment, May 2012]
On Friday, April 13, 160 UConn undergraduate students showed off their hard work and research at Frontiers in Undergraduate Research 2012. This annual event is the poster exhibition of student research, scholarship, and creative projects, and was a chance for students to highlight their work to the entire UConn community.
Some of this research was made possible through the generosity of UConn’s donors. The UConn Foundation interviewed eight students during Frontiers and asked them about their research and how private giving has helped them follow their dreams.
We hope you enjoy the videos of some of UConn’s brightest students, and perhaps you can join us in person for Frontiers 2013! Just click on the image of the student below to see their interview in its entirety.
James Gaffney ’12
Investigating the Potential of Plant-Derived Molecules for Controlling Multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii
Supported by private giving from the Michael Alpert and Ariana Napier Award
Briana Hennessy ’12
Getting to the Why: Teacher Practices that Support Mathematically Sound Student Justifications
Supported by private giving from the Doug Anton Award
Tyler Reese ’13
Analysis, Probability and Mathematical Physics on Fractals
Supported by private giving from the Roger Cherney Award
Erik Johnson ’12
Development of Inhibitory RNA
Supported by private giving from the Mark E. Karp Award
Allison McGrath ’12
2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space
Supported by private giving from the Roger Cherney Award
Nikisha Patel ’12
Evolutionary Radiation of Protea in the Greater Cape Floristic Region
Supported by private giving from the Roger Ballentine Award
John Peters ’13
Age-Related Structural Changes to the Ependymal Layer Lining the Subventricular Zone Stem Cell Niche
Supported by private giving from the William O’Hara Award
Georgia Thomas ’12
The Anatomical Basis for Low Wood Density in Pelargonium
Supported by private giving from the Roger Ballentine Award
To make a gift to support the Honors Program or undergraduate student research,
please visit this secure online giving page.
Honors Freshmen Conduct Research Through Holster Scholars First Year Program
This summer, six Honors freshmen pursued their passion through individualized, self-designed research projects with funding from the Holster Scholars First Year Program.
The Holster Scholars First Year Program, funded by an endowment established by Robert and Carlotta Holster, provides Honors freshmen with the opportunity to pursue independent and individualized learning experiences. Prospective scholars complete a highly selective application process in the fall of their freshman year, submitting an innovative project proposal. Holster Scholars are eligible for up to $4,000 in funding, and spend the spring semester fine-tuning their project plans. They carry out their research in the summer.
This year, six Holster Scholars pursued a kaleidoscope of investigations, in fields ranging from creative art to neurobiology.
Each Scholar received personalized mentoring from a faculty member in the development and implementation of their projects. Former Holster Scholars also provided peer support to this year’s group.
The 2012 Holster Scholars presented their summer projects last month at the Dodd Center. Among those present were their mentors and donor Robert Holster, himself.
Lior Trestman ’15 (ENG) is an Honors biomedical engineering major who became intrigued by the idea of developing his own research after watching the first Holster Scholars present their projects in 2011. He satisfied his desire to explore ways of improving human health and the environment by using microbial fuel cells to purify water while simultaneously creating energy.
“About 1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean water or electricity,” says Trestman. Trestman spent the summer developing and optimizing fuel cells, which take wastewater and, using various chemical processes, reduce the bacteria and other organic matter into more elementary substances. What makes this process different from common methods of water filtration is that it provides clean water while simultaneously creating electricity. With future research and development, this self-sustaining method of purifying water could potentially provide drinkable water and electricity to populations that do not have access to either.
Kaila Manca ’15 (CLAS) is a physiology and neurobiology and cognitive science major. She is interested in the treatment of aphasia, a partial or total loss of the ability to communicate verbally or using written words, in stroke patients. She has had a longstanding interest in the mind and its inner workings, but Manca’s project was directly influenced by her experience with her grandmother’s stroke. “It is always important in research to be passionate about what you are investigating,” says Manca.
For her project, Manca analyzed conversational samples from five participants in graduate student Jen Mozeiko’s research in Contraint Induced Language Therapy on stroke patients, a concentrated approach to the treatment of aphasia. Manca transcribed the samples and analyzed each participant’s word choice. Manca was especially concerned with the type-token ratio of the samples, which measures the vocabulary variation in an individual’s speech. She found that the stroke patients reached a point in their treatment in which their type-token ratio plateaued, indicating a threshold in the variability of their vocabulary. Manca hopes to further pursue this research in the future in order to determine whether aphasia is the true cause of this impasse in communication.
Julianne Norton ’15 (CLAS), a psychology major, was surprised to find that the Holster Scholar Program funded arts-related research projects. “I always thought that research was really just for science majors,” says Norton. “It’s amazing to me that the program accepted creative art projects. It really shows they have an open mind.”
Norton’s summer project was focused on art through postmemory, a fascination that stemmed from having two grandparents who survived the Holocaust. Postmemory refers to the effect of a traumatic cultural event on a second generation; in this case, it refers to the emotions summoned by the photographs and narratives that Holocaust survivors pass on to subsequent generations. Norton took a piece of artwork from each of the past four generations of her family and recreated those pieces, responding to the themes and ideas they evoked through her own paintings and sculpture.
This year’s Holster Scholars will be mentors to next year’s Scholars. “I would highly recommend the program to someone who has found something they are really interested in and want to spend a lot of time looking at,” says Trestman.
“There is no other place where I could have been able to experience the opportunities that have been available to me here at UConn so soon,” Manca adds. “I feel really grateful to the Honors program.”
(adapted from a UConn Today Story by Mirofora Paridis ’13 (CLAS)
Profiles in Undergraduate Research: CLAS SURFers 2012
[ modified from a story By Cindy Weiss, CLAS Today]
Sarah Grout was only six years old when a terrible stomachache at gymnastics practice led to a rushed ride to the hospital, where her appendix was removed before doctors discovered the real problem – an E. coli infection. She spent two weeks in the hospital recovering. Sarah, now 20, spent this summer in a biology lab in Beach Hall, running RNA interference experiments for her research project on how enterohemorrhagic E. Coli, often associated with food-borne illness, sets up its potentially fatal infection in humans.
Robert “Bo” Powers, 27, started college in Georgia as a music major in classical guitar. A treble clef tattooed on his ankle hints at his love of music. But after a move to the New Haven area, a job at Yale-New Haven Hospital and an associates degree earned from Gateway Community College, he came to UConn last fall as an honors student in cognitive science. This summer he designed an artificial neural network that he will use in his research project on metonymy – what causes people to choose certain metaphor-like descriptions. For instance, he wonders, why does a waitress tell the cashier, “The ham sandwich at Table 3 wants his check.”
“Creative use of language has deep implications when considering how languages change within a culture, what is considered ‘cool’ or novel, and how ambiguity is resolved,” he wrote in his research proposal.
First in the lab
Sarah, Bo, and 63 other students at UConn had their first full-time research experiences this summer thanks to Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships that provided them with up to $4,000 in stipend and supply funding and the opportunity to spend ten weeks in the lab. Thirty-nine of the students were from CLAS, and the CLAS Dean’s Office provided $24,000 to the program.
While many of the students have worked on research projects during the regular school year, the nine hours a week they devote then, in between classes, is much less intense. A SURF award gives them the luxury of time to do a literature search, read books on their topic, and design their own experiments.
“It’s really a great opportunity to be able to focus fulltime. I wouldn’t be able to get this much done during the year,” says Grout.
The fellowships make the difference between a summer spent pursuing their passion and a summer spent job surfing.
Devin O’Brien’s research on insects is in the research group of Elizabeth Jockusch, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
If he hadn’t won a SURF award, says Devin O’Brien, a 21-year-old ecology and evolutionary biology major from Ballston Spa, N.Y., “I’d be at home, trying to get a normal job that wouldn’t further me in my career path.” Instead, he spent seven hours a day, five days a week, in the lab.
O’Brien, who is founder and president of the Entomology Club at UConn, studies insects from an evolutionary and development perspective. He’s examining the role that three descriptively named genes – fringe, frizzled, and dishevelled – have on the appendage development of a species of red flour beetle, T. castaneum. Appendages – legs, wings, mouths – are an area of diversity that might be responsible for an insect’s success in the world.
O’Brien came to UConn as a pre-veterinary major, but found that “the more I worked with cows the more I realized I didn’t like them.” After a brief stint as a pre-med major, he scaled down to insects, calling UConn “a great biology school.”
Lab lessons
One of the eye-openers for students about lab life is how an experiment can go awry. Some have found that their carefully planned project had far from the anticipated outcome.
“It’s frustrating, but interesting, because you can come up with all new ideas to see what’s going on,” says Catherine O’Brien, a 20-year-old senior majoring in molecular and cell biology. She filled two large binders with lab reports this summer.
The protein she is studying is linked to various mitochondrial diseases. If biologists could find a way to study it outside of the cell in a reconstituted form, it could advance research into these medical conditions, which have many variations and can affect vision, major organs, muscles and nerves, among other things.
O’Brien, who is from Old Saybrook, started out as a nursing major at Endicott College in Massachusetts. Courses she took there in genetics and microbiology turned her interest to pre-med studies, and she transferred to Clemson. But she missed New England. Before transferring to UConn, she emailed Nathan Adler, assistant professor of MCB, to see if she could work in his lab.
She works independently in the lab, although under the supervision of a PhD student in Adler’s group, Ashley Long. Long encouraged her to stake out her own research territory, and O’Brien says that gave her the confidence to explore her topic. In her previous research experiences at other schools, she was not allowed so much responsibility, she says.
Her SURF summer has taught her that research “is really a thinking process – it’s about how you think and how you approach things. I couldn’t have guessed I would learn so much.”
Profiles in Undergrad Research: Devin Chaloux
Devin Chaloux (2010) came to the University of Connecticut with plans for eventually becoming a band teacher. “But when I got here, I took a mandatory course on music theory designed to broaden student understanding on the subject of music,” says Chaloux, who will be the student speaker at the School of Fine Arts’ undergraduate commencement ceremony. “I was hooked.”
Music theory is the study of the science of music, explains Chaloux. Theorists break down compositions to their basic components in order to understand how and why music works the way it does. “In chemistry there are molecules; in physics there are atoms,” says Chaloux. “With music theory, the basic building blocks that you’re working with are the single notes of a piece.”
Chaloux decided to come to UConn after a stellar piano audition that left him feeling comfortable with the faculty who would later become his close advisors. He studied piano with professors Neal Larrabee and Minyoung Lee, and composition with Professor Kenneth Fuchs. He is graduating this semester with a Bachelor of Music degree in music theory.
One of 24 University Scholars graduating this year, Chaloux developed a senior project titled “A Theoretical and Analytical Approach to Poetry by Emily Dickinson through Composition.” The project allowed Chaloux to work with faculty from both the Department of Music in the School of Fine Arts and the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
“I worked with Professor David Abraham from CLAS to really read into the poetry and develop my own interpretations of the texts,” says Chaloux. “At the same time, I was working closely with Dr. Kenneth Fuchs to create compositions for voice and piano, using Emily Dickinson’s poetry for the text of the songs.”
Chaloux’s project was performed on March 28. He has since been accepted to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he will be working towards a master’s degree in music theory. He hopes to someday earn a doctorate in music theory and become a tenure-track professor.
“I started out wanting to teach band,” says Chaloux. “I never dreamed that I’d wind up where I am today.”
Profiles in Undergrad Research: Alexis Cordone
Alexis Cordone ’14 (CLAS) and her research mentor Clare Costley King’oo, assistant professor of English. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)/UConn Photo)Protestants and Catholics waged bloody wars over doctrinal differences during the Reformation, but an undergraduate research project shows they shared similar views about hell. In a historical study comparing how eternal damnation was depicted in centuries-old religious texts, Alexis Cordone 2014 (CLAS), a religious studies major, found more similarities than differences between the two denominations.
Cordone attributes this unexpected convergence to the fact that what the two groups were reading about hell was virtually the same material. She cites, for example, “a sixteenth-century devotional handbook that was first published by a Jesuit [Catholic],” and then “republished by a Protestant.” Investigating the two versions of the handbook in detail, Cordone says she began to notice that “most of the content about hell in the second publication was exactly the same as that in the original.”
During this historical period, when opposing religious powers were engaged in a struggle across much of Europe, such re-publication methods led to a surprising degree of “ecumenical” thought. This continuity “was not what I would have expected for works written about such a controversial topic during the Reformation,” says Cordone.
Cordone’s opportunity to examine early printed books in detail and uncover insights into what scholars know about the Reformation period, comes thanks to a UConn program that funds undergraduate research in the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
UConn’s Office of Undergraduate Research has taken the initiative to promote and support early career undergraduate research such as Cordone’s. The Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience (SHARE) program encourages a research partnership between a student and faculty member, which exposes the student to research in these disciplines and provides the faculty member with an apprentice for their professional projects.
The program was initiated in 2010 by Lynne Goodstein, associate vice provost for enrichment programs and director of the Honors Program, and the then-director of the Office of Undergraduate Research, Jennifer Lease-Butts, to promote research experience in the early stages of students’ undergraduate careers in the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
Attention to early career research is beneficial for students in the long run, says the current program coordinator of the Office of Undergraduate Research, Gwen Pearson. “The fact that SHARE is specifically for early students makes it unique,” she says. “It’s usually been juniors and seniors that are heavily involved in research. There’s recognition now that if you help freshman and sophomores get ready for that, then they will have an even better experience.”
Early career research is also crucial in preparing students in the social sciences, humanities, and arts for competitive research grants against candidates in the hard sciences who have been exposed to research early on in laboratory courses.
“The students who were able to start in labs in their freshman and sophomore year, by the time they were writing a proposal for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund grant they were more grounded in their work and able to discuss methodology with more authority,” Goodstein says. “We thought that [SHARE] was the equivalent of the lab experiences students in the sciences had.”
Another rewarding feature of the SHARE program is the opportunity faculty members and students have to establish a working partnership. “The research proposal is jointly submitted by the faculty member and the student,” says Goodstein. “[What’s great] about being a faculty member working with ambitious students is the personal satisfaction you get from being able to watch the student develop.”
Clare Costley King’oo, associate director of graduate studies and assistant professor in the English department, agrees that the partnership is a rewarding one. “Training an undergraduate apprentice is no doubt challenging. But the benefits far outweigh the costs,” says King’oo who mentored Cordone in her immersion into Reformation literature.
For her part, Cordone is grateful for the opportunity to help with researching literature relevant to the Protestant Reformation. “It’s given me a better understanding of the development of modern Catholic and Protestant teachings,” she says. “I am also gaining a lot of firsthand experience in understanding the course and development of a research project in the humanities.”
Undergraduate research is intense: for many students, it opens up a whole new world of information they did not know was available to them, notes King’oo. “These grants enable undergraduate students to get a better picture, early on in their careers, of the kind of work we non-scientists do as scholars,” she says. “I hope, in particular, that it will persuade some undergraduates to prepare for graduate work in the social sciences, humanities, and arts.”
Stephanie Godbout, one of last year’s SHARE recipients, is enthusiastic about the research she conducted with mentor JoAnn Robinson, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Godbout’s project was a study of the relationships formed within the JumpStart program between mentors and preschool children. She too says that the partnership opened her eyes to the research opportunities available in the social sciences.
“Prior to my involvement in the SHARE program, I had little knowledge of how research in the social sciences was conducted,” she says. “The program gave me the opportunity to learn how to develop a research question, design a study, collect and analyze data, and ultimately complete a cohesive thesis. In addition, it allowed me to form wonderful relationships with my thesis supervisor, graduate students, and fellow undergraduate researchers.”
As for the impact of the program, King’oo says, “I would certainly recommend the experience – not just to faculty members, but to students, too.”
Applications for the 2013 SHARE program will be available for students and faculty on August 30, 2012. Applications are due in October and winners will be announced in December.
Profiles in Undergrad Research: Danielle Millar
Nursing students do research too–here’s an example! Danielle received a 2011 SURF award from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
At the cusp of graduation, nursing senior Danielle Millar (Nursing 2012) has learned to balance academic and social excellence. She entered the School of Nursing during her freshman year at UConn. “I wanted to be a nurse, because it’s a great integration of science and medicine and social skills,” she says. “You have to have the knowledge to ask difficult questions and genuinely care about the answers you get.”
But Millar wasn’t always so gregarious. “I was a much more reserved person when I came to UConn,” she recalls. Looking back on her growth as a student and the challenges she has conquered in her four years as an undergraduate, she says it wasn’t always easy. It’s clear, however, that she has overcome the initial anxiety she felt when she embarked on her college career.
A student in the Honors Program, Millar has spent the past two years researching the effects of omega-3 fatty acids in treating the symptoms of PMS. Working with her mentor Michelle Judge, she solicited participants from across the University to participate in her research, coordinating more than 50 volunteers. Now that her study is complete and her findings in, Millar is hard at work preparing poster presentations and writing her senior thesis.
In addition to nursing and academics, Millar has been an avid dancer since childhood. She has spent the past four years as a member of the UConn Dance Company, as both dancer and choreographer. “I was in the first generation able to spend all four years in the company,” she says. “We helped to create a lot of structure and set the company up for success.” Millar studies all types of dance, from ballet to jazz, and works at a dance studio in Ellington instructing young ballerinas.
Millar is excited to graduate and begin work as a full-time nurse. A recent summer internship at the UConn Health Center has her eager for the future. Her success was recognized by the School of Nursing this year, when she received the Undergraduate Senior Woman Award in April.
Adapted from a UConn Today story by Devin O’Hara
Profiles in Undergrad Research: Ethan Butler
This video highlights Chemical Engineering student Ethan Butler (EGR 2012). He is President of Engineers Without Borders and interns at the Office of Environmental Policy. Ethan talks about how his research adviser helped him find his career passion in this video.
Profiles in Undergrad Research: Alexandra Raleigh
Curious about what research is like for non-science majors? Here’s an example! Alexandra received a 2011 SURF award from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
To prepare for her dream job of U.S. Secretary of State, Alexandra Raleigh (CLAS 2012) will begin a Ph.D. program in political science at the University of California-Irvine this fall, specializing in political psychology.
“I am deeply patriotic,” says Raleigh, who is graduating with a double major in psychology and political science. “I care about my country’s values, and I want to work really hard to protect those values.” Raleigh says that worldwide, five schools offer graduate degrees in the emerging field of political psychology – which she says can help America avoid military actions by solving problems through diplomacy.
In 2011, two days before she was due to board a flight to Belgium to serve an internship with the U.S. Embassy, she had a car accident. Her injuries included a broken hip. “It was a blessing in disguise that I didn’t go to Brussels,” Raleigh says. “I had the whole summer to prepare for grad school and to work on my research, which turned into my senior Honors thesis.”
Guided by Stephen Dyson, assistant professor of political science, with financing through UConn’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fund, the Mathew Jasinski Research Award, Raleigh created a psychological profile of Saddam Hussein. She researched more than 70 of his speeches and interviews, and by using a computer analysis, generated statistical data demonstrating that his words revealed his specific traits and world view.
Raleigh said she wants to help close the “big gap between academic and government profilers, to create practical applications for profiles. I would like to see more people interested in figuring out how the personalities of Middle Eastern dictators affect what they do. Then maybe we can change how we negotiate, or deter them, increasing diplomatic instead of military measures.”
Raleigh honed her political chops in high school in her hometown of Norwalk, when she served as a delegate at a Model United Nations event at Yale. “And also President Obama being elected,” she says. “I’m half black and half white, and following that election got me interested.” While at UConn, Raleigh gave back to the Model UN program, serving for two years on the executive board and managing the event’s logistics and annual budget of more than $10,000.
A multiple award-winning student, Raleigh, who has an anxiety disorder, says UConn’s Center for Students with Disabilities was “incredibly helpful” in supporting her. “Being in the Honors program and having a double major can be stressful,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought about leaving UConn, but each time I’ve been able to continue. If I’ve learned anything at UConn, it’s how to deal with whatever cards you’re dealt. It hasn’t been easy, but it makes graduating that much sweeter.”
Adapted from a UConn Today story by Lauren Lalancette.