Steven Reilly ’17 (BUS) shares his circuitous path into a marketing thesis project on Daily Fantasy Sports.

As with many things at UConn, the Honors Thesis experience is ultimately what you make of it. To some students, it is a culmination of their undergraduate careers. To others, it is a chance to delve deeply into a topic that they find interesting. And to some, the Honors Thesis is the final lengthy paper that they will complete before stepping into the real world. For me, the Honors Thesis was all of these things and more. My thesis ended up acting as a capstone project that required me to reflect on the different Marketing classes I had taken, and to utilize all of the skills that I had learned. However, it did not begin like this.

Like most students that I have spoken to, my thesis project began with a great deal of uncertainty. I was having trouble finding an advisor largely due to my inconclusiveness towards what topic I wanted to research. I was also anxious about picking a topic that didn’t have a substantial amount of previous scholarly research, since I was so familiar with creating papers that sourced peer-reviewed journals. I knew I wanted to spend the Fall semester of my senior year researching my thesis topic before writing the actual thesis in the Spring, but as August crept up, I recognized that I needed some guidance. I scheduled an appointment with my Honors advisor.

While I had visited my Honors advisor before my senior year, it was never for anything beyond a couple questions about course selection. I had always prided myself on being able to determine my own schedules and course loads, but I also realized that I could use all of the help I could get on my Honors Thesis. When I told Dr. Narasimhan Srinivasan, my Honors advisor, about my issue, he was quick to come up with a solution: He would serve as my Honors advisor for any topic I chose, as long as I promised to show interest and work hard. This sounded like a fair deal to me, and I went to work looking for a topic.

The first couple of topics I discussed with Dr. Srinivasan were viable ideas, but they lacked the element of interest that we had spoken about earlier. I wanted to pick a topic that I could relate to through personal experience. After more deliberation, I decided to study the Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) industry. I have always been a huge sports fan, and the dynamic billion-dollar DFS industry had recently come under scrutiny due to its similarity to illegal online gambling. Dr. Srinivasan encouraged me to research this idea, since I had experience playing the game and had an interest in the industry overall.

While the Daily Fantasy Sports industry is a lucrative one, its relative youth made it difficult to research. While I had skills from my Intro to Marketing classes to analyze Daily Fantasy Sports companies through SWOT analyses and understanding of key business elements, there weren’t many peer-reviewed articles on Daily Fantasy Sports (as opposed to season-long fantasy). The companies that did produce research reports charged a great deal of money for them. Dr. Srinivasan had an inventive way to overcome this obstacle: he recommended that I email the company and see if they would give me the report for academic purposes only. Sure enough, after one persuasive email, the research firm was happy to oblige. With my newly acquired research reports, I was ready to compile my own findings on the Daily Fantasy Sports industry.

In December, with my preliminary research completed, I was prepared to move on to my actual Honors Thesis. While I had learned a lot about the industry, its companies, and its legal climate, I did not feel that I had a good grasp on its customers. In multiple Marketing classes, we are taught that customers ultimately act as the vehicle that determines the value of a product. So, in order to learn more about Daily Fantasy Sports players, Dr. Srinivasan and I created a Qualtrics survey to distribute to those who had played Daily Fantasy Sports in the last 12 months. We submitted the survey to UConn’s Institutional Review Board.

After a fairly lengthy IRB approval process, I was given permission to distribute the survey. Because of our niche target demographic, I needed to get creative with how I procured responses. I distributed the survey on Reddit websites that catered to Daily Fantasy Sports. With the help of the OUR Supply Award, I also distributed the survey through Amazon MTurk, a website that allows you to pay survey respondents a small fee for successfully completing your survey. I had over 1,000 responses to the survey within a couple of weeks.

After a weekend spent brushing up on statistical software that I had learned to use in my Marketing Research class, I was ready to test my hypotheses. A series of different tests revealed quickly that many of my hypotheses were untrue, and many of my projected correlations were not as strong as I thought they might be. Dr. Srinivasan reminded me to not get discouraged, since learning that you are incorrect is a vital part of the research process. Nevertheless, while I had been wrong is some of my assumptions, I found different new and interesting trends that I ended up writing about in my final paper.

In the final weeks of the semester, I completed my Honors Thesis and turned it in to the Honors Office. What a sense of accomplishment! The Thesis experience was truly a journey that forced me to hone many skills that I had gained through my college career. I had used my basic understanding of business elements to break down an industry. I used my understanding of marketing strategy to prognosticate potential next steps companies in the industry might take. I persuaded a research firm to provide me with information utilizing some of the tactics taught in UConn sales classes. I also used statistical testing and writing skills I had obtained in prior classes to put together the final report. Overall, my Honors Thesis was truly a capstone project that revealed to me how many different talents can be combined to create a successful project.

Now that my time at UConn is over, there is so much to remember: experiences, friends, classes, professors, and more. My Honors Thesis experience will be one of the many positive experiences I look back on anytime I reflect on my time at UConn. While the process was a challenging one, it was made easier by Dr. Srinivasan, as well as the many advisors and professors that provided me with a helping hand along the way. I know that I will face many more challenges as I head off into the working world. I can only hope that I will be provided with the same support that allowed me to succeed at UConn in my future endeavors.

Heather Winter ’16 (CAHNR) explored her interest in bioactive food components through undergraduate research. She shares her reflections on the impact of her research experiences in the essay below.

My journey into scientific research began with a class in nutrition that I took at Manchester Community College, which sparked my interest in researching the medicinal functions of food, and its bioactive components. After earning an Associate’s degree from MCC, I began studies in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Connecticut. I soon learned from my advanced nutrition classes that I was primarily interested in the molecular side of nutrition, and upon the recommendation of my advisor, began looking into research being conducted in laboratories within UConn’s Nutritional Sciences department.

My search led me to contact Dr. Christopher Blesso, whose lab researches the use of bioactive food components, such as polyphenols in elderberries and grapes, for the prevention or reversal of chronic diseases. I started independent study research in the first semester of my senior year, and gained my introductory experience in laboratory work. I shadowed the graduate students and advanced undergraduate students, familiarizing myself with laboratory techniques and the various experiments being conducted in the lab. With mentoring from the graduate students, I learned how to perform assays, such as triglyceride quantification from plasma samples, and carried out data analysis.

As I progressed in the laboratory, Dr. Blesso and I developed ideas for my own independent project, and I chose to learn cell culturing techniques so I could carry out experiments focusing on a bioactive component of milk called sphingomyelin. My interests were in studying the role of sphingomyelin as a dietary intervention for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, modeling the disease state in a cancerous liver cell line. Once I had a plan for my own research project, Dr. Blesso suggested that I apply for the OUR Supply Award to help fund my experiments.

After receiving the news that my OUR application was accepted, I was excited to conduct my own cell culture experiments with sphingomyelin. In addition to cell culture techniques, I learned how to perform lipid and protein extractions, then perform further biochemical assays to quantify the results of my cell culture experiments. Based upon the data I collected, I was able to perform a qualitative analysis of the role of sphingomyelin and determine its active function in reducing lipid accumulation in liver cells. The data I collected provided a foundation for the laboratory to move forward with further experiments to assess the function of sphingomyelin, and its potential mechanisms of action.

My undergraduate research experience allowed me to discover my ability to excel in a laboratory environment, and after graduation, led to the opportunity for me to begin working as a Research Specialist in UConn’s department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, focusing on natural products research.

Along my journey in scientific research as an undergraduate, I gained an incredible amount of knowledge, and developed many skills that have been fundamental for my advancement in research after graduation. I am immensely thankful for those who provided mentorship throughout my undergraduate research, and for the opportunity to conduct scientific research from such an early stage in my career.

Kate Boudreau ’17 (CLAS) earned her bachelor’s degree this spring and shares her serendipitous introduction to health psychology research in this essay.

Upon entering UConn as a Chemistry major, I pictured my future involvement in undergraduate research in a lab filled with beakers, chemicals, and expensive equipment. Even so, research was not at the forefront of my freshman agenda. I was sufficiently overwhelmed trying to find the delicate balance between succeeding in organic chemistry, getting involved in the right extracurriculars, making friends, and sleeping. My only exposure to research that year was my Honors First Year Experience class called Discovering Undergraduate Research, which helped to open my eyes to the many different types of research happening at UConn.

I discovered my research accidentally when I came across an ad in the Daily Digest that piqued my curiosity right at the time that I was considering changing my major. This allowed me the privilege of taking a special one-year, 10-credit class called Obesity Prevention Learning Consortium as a sophomore, that would ultimately change the course of my college experience. In this class, a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students studied the world obesity epidemic in-depth and discussed potential strategies to combatting weight gain to improve global health. In small groups, we designed our own research projects that aimed to change or prevent behaviors that could lead to unhealthy weight gain in UConn students. This class was eye-opening for me because for the first time, I felt like I was taking an active role in my education and getting to learn about a critical issue through the lens of hands-on research experience. Furthermore, as a pre-medical student taking plenty of lab science classes, I was excited to discover the realm of health psychology research as well as the importance and fascination of working with and studying people.

Our projects were completed in Spring 2015 under the guidance of Dr. Amy Gorin, with the encouragement that each group considering furthering their research by submitting abstracts to conferences or editing manuscripts for potential publication. Finding the class and the project rewarding, I jumped at this opportunity to share what I had learned with a community of like-minded researches. Our expectations were low but we were hopeful as we submitted abstracts to international conferences where undergrads rarely present, which made the news even more exciting when we found out our project had been accepted as a poster presentation to The Obesity Society in Los Angeles, California. The pressing question then became: How do we get to California? This is where the Office of Undergraduate Research played a fundamental role.

Thanks to the Office of Undergraduate Research, I was awarded a Travel Grant that assisted with the expenses involved in flying to and staying in California to present my work. Although I could only be in Los Angeles for 48 hours, my trip was overflowing with plenty of new experiences and adventures. Not only did I get to present as an undergraduate at an international conference, but also I experienced the great food in LA, visited the famous farmers’ market, and hiked to the Hollywood sign. Furthermore, being an independent traveler proved to be an invaluable experience in and of itself.
In presenting my poster—a study of college students’ stair taking behaviors in university dormitories with and without motivational signage—I enjoyed the opportunity to talk to experts in the field about my project. Many were interested in what we had done and others provided thoughtful commentary about considerations for future studies. Additionally, I got to talk to other presenters and learn more about recent studies in the field.

I continued working as a Research Assistant in the UConn Weight Management Lab and am completing my Honors Thesis related to a couples’ weight loss study. As a freshman, I could not have imagined that I would be so involved and passionate about research in health psychology come my junior year, but I cannot express my gratitude for the opportunities provided to me at UConn that allowed me to accidentally stumble upon this path. As obesity becomes an increasingly grave problem in the United States, I am certain that I will be involved in combatting it for the foreseeable future as I pursue a career in medicine.