Senior Kelly Donovan left her apartment at around 9 a.m. with her poster rolled up in her right hand. Though her presentation time didn’t start until 10:30 a.m. she wanted to see the first half of Summer Undergraduate Research Experience presentations.
SURE is a high intensity research program that students can apply for where they spend a portion of the summer on campus working on their research project with a specific goal in mind.
Elon University also holds a Spring Undergraduate Research Forum, for students to show off the research they have conducted throughout their time at Elon. While students who participate in SURF can spend a large portion of their time at Elon working on their research, students who participate in SURE spend eight weeks working on theirs.
For Donovan these eight weeks were to finalize an accurate prediction method to determine the age of present deep sea coral which is often underreported. For the other 55 students participating in SURE this year some objectives were to start collecting data or finishing their research to get ready to present at conferences in the fall.
Each student receives a $3,000 stipend and must have completed at least their first year at Elon. July 24 marked the end of SURE where students had the opportunity to present their progress to students, faculty and staff.
Donovan, who is pursuing an applied math and statistics double major, has been working on her deep sea coral research for over a year and a half. The lumen scholar wanted to do research on deep sea coral, because it’s an understudied topic of research. She wanted to do this to understand the basic biodiversity metrics of the subspecies. With her double major, Donovan spent the summer creating an algorithm using R, a programming language, to create a code to find out the age of coral reefs in the northern Gulf of Mexico using average growth rate and coral size.
With a deep breath, she unrolls her poster and clips it onto the black aisle provided to researchers. Though she is nervous she knows once she starts talking she will be in the “zone.”
“I am really proud of myself for the summer, because coding has been a struggle for me my entire life,” Donovan said. “I’m just really happy that I am able to come up with something that my mentor is proud of, that I am proud of, and that’s actually going to make a difference.”
For Janice and Sion Ya, they didn’t expect their one-year-old, Naomi, to be a subject of undergraduate research. Under the guidance of associate professor of psychology Sabrina Perkins, junior Olivia Guarino wanted to see how infant hand use could relate to how they relate to problem solving.
“It was great seeing her develop and grow between each session,” said Janice.
Undergraduate research is nothing new to Janice as she often participated in some projects during her own time as an undergraduate student and in vet school.
She says that it’s a family affair. Janice’s sister also paid a visit to SURE this year to see Naomi on Guarino’s poster. She even said that Guarino and Perkins are going to send them a copy of the poster as a keepsake.
For Perkins, she is going into her 9th year as a professor here at Elon and has mentored over 15 students in their own undergraduate research projects.
“This is an opportunity where they develop pride in their work and they realize just how far they’ve come,” Perkins said. “So it’s really a way- I think- of building a lot of their professional identity.”
Associate professor of engineering, Will Pluer, is currently mentoring three students who presented at SURE.
“I think more important than seeing the goal that they ended up with is seeing the process along the way,” he said. “Watching them hit the road bumps and figure out how to move forward, I think that’s the important part about research, especially what you’re trying to do in eight weeks.”
Within the eight week period, senior and exercise science major Dillon Pardue, knew he needed to collect data on his research which focused on the acute effects of Nordic Hamstring exercise. Being on Elon’s football team as a defensive end, he quickly realized that his test subjects were his team mates.
“I care about being stronger, recovering and performing your best,” he said. “ So for me, this was my way to do all those things and I had nothing else to do during the summer.”
With being required to stay at Elon over the summer to train for the upcoming season, Pardue was encouraged by his mentors to participate in SURE during his free time. For Pardue he always wanted to participate in research and get his work published since his goal is to go into sports medicine. He says SURE was a way to show people down the line how much he cares about this field.
Though SURE has come to an end, some people like Pardue are staying within the Elon area for the rest of the summer. As for Donovan she is driving nine hours back to Ohio for a much needed break.