humanities

Research Assistant in Accent/Dialect Study

Opportunity Description

Are you interested in accents or phonetics? Are you great with computers or music theory? This position involves assisting with research into the intonation patterns of various accents, specifically finding pitch relationships in particular speech utterances. There is also an opportunity to attend regular meetings with a faculty mentor and discuss relevant literature and research experiences in order to foster your education in the field.

This opportunity can be taken for course credit, or as a Work Study position (only for students with a federal Work-Study award), and runs in Spring Semester 2019. Students earning course credit can negotiate weekly hours (3 hours for 1 credit, 6 hours for 2 credits, 9 hours for 3 credits). Work-study students work 8-10 hours per week.

The role includes:
* Helping to recruit volunteer speakers of specific accents and request accent samples
* Assisting with recording sound samples from on-campus volunteers
* Orthographic (not phonetic) transcription of spoken samples from sound files
* Analyzing sound samples for fundamental frequency and musical interval relationships using appropriate software (e.g. Adobe Audition). Take screenshots and annotate with appropriate information. Record and organize this data.
* Assist in gathering and organizing related literature for review
* Read and summarize related literature
* Undergo online CITI Program Training Course (if required by IRB). This is online and takes less than 2 hours.
* Perform miscellaneous duties as directed

Student Qualifications
Skills/Qualifications required:
* Have excellent computer skills
* Have excellent communication skills
* Have great organizational skills and motivation

Preferred qualifications:
* Experience/education in any or all of phonetics, accents, linguistics, speech, music, sound engineering, computer science.

How to Apply
Please email your application to jennifer.scapetis@uconn.edu and include:
* Cover Letter (please write about why you would be good at the job and why it interests you)
* Resume
* References (Email or telephone numbers)

Looking to fill this position ASAP. Open until filled.

Mentor: Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer, Assistant Professor
Department: Drama
Email: jennifer.scapetis@uconn.edu
Timing: Spring 2019
Campus: Storrs

• Research Assistant in Experimental Anthropology Lab

Opportunity Description

We have a summer opportunity for students to be research assistants in the project Dynamics of fan’s experience during games.
The task includes editing videos and coding research material.
It will be developed in our lab at Storrs campus.
This unpaid opportunity is ideal for students that have time during the summer from May to August. The desired working time is part time during week days, but it is flexible and can be discussed.
There is a chance the student can extend his/her involvement and become a research assistant for the fall, being registered in a course and getting credits for dedication in the research project.

Student Qualifications
Previous Knowledge and experience in editing videos in iMovies and QuickTime software are required (other editing and viewing programs might be considered).
Excel experience.

How to Apply
The students interested should email us (xygalatas@uconn.edu) until May 15, 2017, listing:
1) previous experience in editing videos, including for personal reasons, and the programs used,
2) previous experience in coding videos, programs used,
3) previous experience in research,
4) availability to dedicate to this project from May-August 2017, and
5) why he/she is interested in this particular project.

Mentor: Dimitris Xygalatas, Professor
Department: Anthropology
Email: xygalatas@uconn.edu
Timing: Ongoing
Campus: Storrs

• Call for Proposals: Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience (SHARE) Awards

The Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience (SHARE) Award is a research apprenticeship program designed especially for students in the earlier stages of their college careers. A SHARE project serves as an introduction to research in a chosen field and helps students develop the skills they will need for further research projects. SHARE awardees spend 10 hours per week during the Spring semester working on a faculty project.

SHARE provides faculty members with eager assistants for their projects, allowing faculty members to focus on their own research interests while introducing future researchers to the realities of research in their discipline. Examples of SHARE apprentice duties include, but are not limited to, performing library research, assisting with experiments, coding and/or analyzing data, and conducting and/or transcribing interviews.

Funding: During the spring semester, student apprentices will receive a $1,500 stipend (paid out as an hourly wage) and faculty mentors will receive a $500 professional development stipend.

SHARE Teams: SHARE teams consist of a faculty mentor and a student apprentice who apply jointly for the program.  Faculty members are encouraged to recruit student apprentices to work with them on a potential SHARE project, and students interested in the program may also approach faculty members to express their interest in a potential project.

Deadline: SHARE Applications (both the Faculty and Student applications) must be submitted by 4:00 pm on October 28, 2013. Additional program details and a link to the Faculty and Student Applications are available online at: http://ugradresearch.uconn.edu/share/.

 

 

2013 Frontiers Program Now Available

We hope that you’re planning to attend the Frontiers exhibition this Friday afternoon or Saturday!

Here’s a link to the program. We have 218 undergraduate students presenting posters for 175 research projects. STEM fields, social science, humanities, and the arts are all well represented. Many students who are presenting their research have received SURF, SHARE, and other Office of Undergraduate Research awards.

frontiers_2013

The artwork for the Frontiers poster was produced by talented Holster Scholars, Kaitrin Acuna and Julianne Norton. The poster was designed by Mallory Matula. Thank you all!

 

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)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.

 

Adapted from a UConn Today story by Lynnette Repollet