Andy Bilich ’14 (CAHNR) recently graduated with bachelor’s degrees in Natural Resources and Resource Economics and minors in Political Science and Environmental Economics and Policy. In this essay, he describes his experiences as an undergraduate researcher at the University of Connecticut.

I am originally from San Ramon, California, but I came to the University of Connecticut in the fall of 2010 and will graduate with a BS in Natural Resources and a BS in Resource Economics in May 2014. In my four years at the University of Connecticut I have had the incredible privilege to be an undergraduate researcher. This experience not only prepared me well for the job and graduate school markets, but also gave me the opportunity to travel, present at conferences, and meet and work with professionals in my field.

I got started in the fall of 2011 when I reached out to a Dr. Mark Boyer, the professor of my global environmental politics class, with some questions that had come up in my summer work. I spent the summer as an energy policy analyst intern at Energy Commercialization LLC working on presentations on renewable energy deployment in the Middle East and India and the creation of the California carbon trading market. My professor met with me and we talked about the research and after our discussion, he offered me a research assistantship on his new project. This ongoing research project is looking at local governance for climate adaptation policies. Along with a PhD student, I have been gathering and analyzing climate change adaptation policy and initiatives data for 169 Connecticut townships, which Dr. Boyer is using to write a book about local governance and the issue of climate change. The data will also be published into a database that will allow users to search for specific types of policies and initiatives undertaken by towns with specific demographic, geographic, and economic characteristics. Hopefully this database can help to positively influence future environmental and climate change governance.

During this project, I applied for and was awarded a Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience Award (SHARE). This award provided me with funding to continue the research that I was conducting with Professor Boyer, but more importantly it gave me the ability to attend the Frontiers in Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition as a student researcher. For this event I prepared a poster summarizing some of the preliminary results and trends of the interviews of town policy officials that I helped conduct. This was an awesome opportunity because it allowed me to practice presentation skills and gain a better understanding of the data I was working on and some of the questions that people had about it. This was valuable and practical experience that I built on for future presentations.

In the spring of my senior year I received a Travel Award from the Office of Undergraduate Research which helped me to travel to Toronto for the 55th Annual International Studies Association Conference on Geopolitics and Globalization. As part of this amazing trip I presented some of our research findings on policy drivers for climate adaptation policy in Connecticut towns. I also met professors and researchers from around the world and attended panel discussions on water security, energy deployment and security, environmental justice, climate change, and geoengineering.

It is clear to me that my experience in undergraduate research was the most important and formative thing I did while at the University of Connecticut. As a graduating senior, there is no better piece of advice I can give to current and future UConn students than to get involved with research. The research experience that I have had has given me all of the skills and confidence I need to succeed in the next chapter of my life. This fall I will be building upon this foundation as I pursue a Master’s of Environmental Management in Energy and Climate Resources at the Bren School of Environmental Management at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Carl D’Oleo-Lundgren ’14 (CLAS), an individualized major in international relations, aspires to earn a master’s degree and join the Foreign Service. As part of his undergraduate studies, Carl collaborated on a SHARE Award project with Dr. Prakash Kashwan, a faculty member in the Department of Political Science. The SHARE Award supports research apprenticeships for students majoring in the social sciences, humanities, and arts to enable these students to explore their research interests and build inquiry skills. A summary of this particular SHARE project follows.

Could a Union Save this Planet?
Coding and Analyzing “Sustainable Development”: Perspectives of IUCN Members

The project sought to understand the perspectives of the members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with these specific research questions:

• How does international relations theory compare with practice?
• How do expectations compare with results?
• How promising are results of IUCN projects?

To answer these questions, they:

• Analyzed IUCN records
• Examined IUCN meeting minutes in depth
• Coded trends for systematic analysis

In addition, they examined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), seeking to understand the role of growing civil society participation in international climate change negotiations. In particular, they were interested in the role of networking NGOs.

To characterize these roles, they:

• Researched and indexed the history, goals, values, and methods of “Climate Justice Now!” and the Climate Change Network
• Interviewed officials from each NGO over Skype to ascertain civil society perspectives on:
  • The civil society-UNFCCC relationship
  • Civil society perspectives on their work
  • The future of international climate change action

Ultimately, they concluded that the future of international climate change action is unclear. In the wake of messy negotiations in Copenhagen, the UNFCCC will continue to restrict civil society participation in the short to medium term.

Learn more about Carl’s undergraduate career, including a range of research experiences, in this UConn Today profile.

By Samantha Ruggiero CLAS ’14, originally published March 24, 2014 in CLAS News.

While still in high school, Rebecca D’Angelo was working in the Research Department at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum when she stumbled across an unusual detail in a book about New England whalers. She read that these whalers were apparently using using schooners for their journeys to the sub-Antarctic islands between Australia and Antarctica.

“I thought that was odd because I know that they wouldn’t typically use schooners to whale,” says D’Angelo, currently a senior history and anthropology double major, referring to the small size of schooner boats. “So I looked into it and turns out they were actually catching seals.”

As a native to the Connecticut shoreline, D’Angelo paired her passion for maritime culture with a major in history and anthropology so that she could enrich her understanding of the world’s evolving social, political and environmental patterns.

“We talk about history all the time in the conversations we’re having now about politics, culture, and life,” says D’Angelo. “If you know history, you can identify when public figures are invoking it correctly, and when they are invoking it incorrectly. Understanding history ultimately makes you a better consumer of culture.” Continue reading →

By Samantha Ruggiero CLAS ’14, originally published May 19, 2014 in CLAS News.

If there’s one word that translates UConn senior Krisela Karaja’s story into words anyone can understand – it would probably be “translation.”

Literary translation, says Karaja, is a challenging endeavor because the translator carries the responsibility of not only delivering an author’s message, but also interpreting the cultural background of a word or phrase.

“I like the process of translating poetry because there are so many ways to tackle it,” says Karaja. “There’s no such thing as a literal translation because an expression in Albanian might not have the same cultural baggage if it were just translated word-for-word in English.”

Karaja, a double major in English and Spanish, has spent much of her undergraduate career bridging the gap between language and literature by composing English translations of poems and academic essays originally in written Albanian or Spanish. Born in Albania, Karaja moved to the United States when she was two years old and is a native Albanian speaker. She is also fluent in Spanish.

“My interest in language and literature stems from a natural desire to integrate my knowledge of the Spanish, English and Albanian languages,” says Karaja. “I’ll be reading a really great text in Albanian that isn’t very well-known in English, and think, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could translate and share this?’” Continue reading →

By Samantha Ruggiero CLAS ’14, originally published May 19, 2014 in CLAS News.

Ragini Phansalkar will pursue her MD and PhD at Stanford in the fall of 2014.

For senior Ragini Phansalkar, bridging the gap between different fields of research through her dual degree in computer science and biology has been like solving an exciting puzzle – and one that has taken her around the world.

“I think a lot of the advancements that are going to be needed to overcome today’s medical challenges are going to be achieved through interdisciplinary collaboration,” says Phansalkar. “Biomedical engineering is interdisciplinary, but I liked having the freedom to choose for myself the aspects of engineering and biology that I wanted to integrate, specifically bioinformatics.”

Phansalkar has spent the past four years at UConn combining computational science with biological sciences by working in the labs of Assistant Professor Daniel Schwartz of the Physiology and Neurobiology Department and Assistant Professor Barbara Mellone of the Molecular Cell Biology Department. Phansalkar’s interdisciplinary research experiences at UConn have developed her interest in pursing the medical field, and earned her acceptance to the MD/Ph.D program at Stanford University. Continue reading →