One of the distinguishing features of COPLAC colleges is their focus on undergraduate research. Small class size, close faculty-student
interactions, and funded research opportunities allow top students to work alongside faculty mentors in significant research projects at
all 26 member institutions. COPLAC now hosts a series of regional UR conferences for students at member campuses, and many of these same
students go on to present their work at the annual meeting of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
Metamorphosis is part of COPLAC’s effort to highlight some of the best recent work in undergraduate research. Each semester, faculty
committees at member campuses select two outstanding projects for inclusion in Metamorphosis.
The first edition of Metamorphosis will feature papers of presenters at the Southeast Regional Undergraduate Research Conference
held November 2009.
Research papers and posters can be viewed by moving your cursor over the green categories
listed below (View All, Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Professional Programs).
View All is the default view.
The Search bar allows you to search the database by author name, topic, title or key words
within the document.
A Study of Dominance and Mate Choice in a Captive Troop of Mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx)
M. K. Brown
Sonoma State University
Mentor(s): n/a
Recent research in Gabon suggests mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) live in large, “female-led”
troops with peripheral males who compete for access to females during the breeding season. This
social structure differs greatly from captive conditions where a single male and a few females are
housed together year-round, which may affect female-female and male-female interactions. The
results reported here come from a year-long study of one troop (n=5) of captive mandrills housed
at the San Francisco Zoo. Dominance interactions were documented and “best fit” dominance
hierarchies were calculated and analyzed along with other group interactive behaviors. During
the study period, two significant demographic changes occurred: 1) a planned, artificial change
to female reproductive ability; and 2) an unplanned illness of the dominant female. The
dominance hierarchy, which was stable at the beginning of the study, began to break down and a
new dominant female emerged by the end of the study. The male also expressed behavioral
changes as mating opportunities were presented to him. My research illustrates that even in
captivity, dominance hierarchy remains an important element in mandrill social structure and
that demographic changes can impact it as well as male mate choice. This provides new insight
into the social behavior of a relatively little known primate species and provides valuable
information for captive mandrill breeding programs.
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Class Creates Crash: How Poverty and Industrial Prosperity Are Degrading the Forests of Brazil and Appalachia
Tanya Widen
University of North Carolina Asheville
Mentor(s): Dr. Brian Butler
Deforestation is a perilous threat to some of the most diverse and useful habitat on earth, as well as a major factor in desertification. Understanding how people and economic inequality directly affect forest resources is vital to creating sustainable conservation that does not cause further human suffering. This paper explores reasons for deforestation in two of the most diverse biomes on earth: the Amazon rainforest of Brazil and the temperate forests of Appalachia. By using the method of literature review, it is apparent that many similarities and differences occur in land use and their effects. In both of these areas, rural and indigenous cultures have been reduced to poverty by the actions of rich multinational and/or large corporations as forest resources are milked for short-term profit. Wealthy exploitation has left behind widespread destruction and waste; while the poor also mismanage the surrounding land in their desperation to survive in an age of growing living standards. This comparison also examines how these social classes, along with the government, are involved in current sustainable efforts to conserve forest ecology for local prosperity and future generations.
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Downtown Proud
Larissa Propest
Midwestern State University
Mentor(s): n/a
My photo essay is titled, "Downtown Proud." I took pictures of the abandoned and decaying bulidings of a once booming business area in Wichita Falls, Texas. I am able to show the stark contrast of past and present business buildings with older pictures depicting their heyday. This is a social problem in many cities around the country. The allure of builidng the new and discarding the old instead of repairing it has become the new norm of the consumer society. My photo essay addresses this issue in the form of business structures.
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Environmental Transformation, Migration and Conflict: Resource and Identity Issues in Contemporary Diasporas
Anita Hagy Ferguson
Southern Oregon University
Mentor(s): Dr. Jody Waters
Multiple interrelated factors have forced migration throughout history. This study considers how resource scarcity relates to conflict, how scarcity and conflict can propel migration, and how intercultural tensions relate to conflict in sending and receiving countries.
This study further considers a possible link between climate change and conflict considering the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the posited links between climate change, resource scarcity, resource abundance and dramatic weather events.
Understanding of future climate change as it relates to conflict necessitates an examination of historic migration forces. This study, conducted from June to August 2009, reviews literature drawn from a cross-disciplinary examination of scholarly research and organizational white papers and reports from geography, political science, conflict resolution, intercultural communication and anthropology.
No direct link between climate change and conflict was confirmed in the literature but a clear connection between resource scarcity, conflict, and migration was established, as was the prominence of intercultural and political discord in resource scarcity and migration circumstances. Environmental change is likely to force migration into adjacent developing countries that are already tapped for resources rather than to countries further away which may have better capacity to handle migration, and this heightens the potential for resource-related conflict.
The existence of some commonality amongst migrational push and pull factors allows us to learn from history and present day situations. However, research findings reveal a need to develop integrated migration adaptation and mitigation strategies that address the correlative aspects of migration and conflict forces.
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Implications of Imitation: Two Postmodern Literary Revisions
Kara Blizzard
University of Alberta, Augustana Campus
Mentor(s): Dr. Paul Harland
Many postmodern works of literature offer alternative versions of earlier works. These contemporary revisions examine social circumstances and ideological constructs that surrounded the making of the earlier texts. J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, for example, is a revision of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe that focuses on imperialism and patriarchy. Coetzee points out the lack of women in Defoe’s work, and in adventure novels in general, by making a woman the protagonist of Foe. Michael Cunningham’s The Hours also comments on women’s past struggles to write: he depicts a fictional Virginia Woolf as she composes her novel Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham’s and Coetzee’s works examine ways in which women have been prevented from writing. Both Foe and The Hours show that social and economic conditions influence the writing of literature; the New Historicism provides a framework for examining this influence. The two contemporary novels suggest that upper-class men have traditionally had voices in both history and literature, whereas women were outsiders with no audience. Coetzee and Cunningham present imaginary perspectives in order to question the accuracy of official histories.
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Militants Seize Mecca: The Effects Of The 1979 Siege Of Mecca Revisited
Marissa Allison
University of Mary Washington
Mentor(s): Nabil al-Tikriti
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Regional model for identifying Peromyscus leucopus and Peromyscus maniculatus
Rauleen Caballas
Truman State University
Mentor(s): Dr. Stephanie Foré and Dr. Hyun-Joo Kim
Distinguishing between Peromyscus leucopus (white-footed mouse) and P. maniculatus (deer mouse) with morphological characteristics is difficult, especially when the species co-occur, and biochemical markers require time and money. The objective of this study was to develop a regional discriminant model based on foot and tail lengths to categorize P. leucopus and P. maniculatus into one of three groups; those that are clearly one species or the other and those that fall in a grey area in between. Museum specimens from six contiguous counties in northeast Missouri were used to develop the model. The model was validated with set of specimens that included all outliers in which species identification was determined with mitochondria DNA markers specific for the two species. This conservative model based on foot and tail lengths was 82.8% accurate with greater accuracy for P. leucopus. Accuracy of the model is increased if the cut off value for group assignment is increased but this increases the number of specimens that fall in the grey area which require genetic identification to confirm species identity.
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Rhythm and Color in Art as Influenced by Jazz
Kelsey Kline
Truman State University
Mentor(s): Shirley McKamie
As jazz music rose to popularity in the early twentieth century, people of all backgrounds were drawn to it. Visual artists recognized the distinctive rhythms and defining colors in jazz as inherently unique, and sought to recreate them visually. Piet Mondrian’s colored, pulsating blocks in Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-1943) and Victory Boogie Woogie , created in the following year, shows that rhythm is an important element in the depiction of jazz music. In regard to color, Henri Matisse’s chromatic improvisations in his famous cut-out work, Jazz (1947), show the importance of color to the inimitable nature of jazz music. In France, Matisse was artistically guided by the concept of jazz; but, as an artist who spent significant time in America, Mondrian was specifically inspired by the sounds of New York City. Ultimately, the new, modern city and the new modern music of jazz went hand-in-hand in their profound influence upon modern art. These artists show the inspiration that can be drawn visually from the rhythms and colors of America’s music: Jazz.
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Terror management in the courtroom: Capital crimes, death accessibility, & interrogation camera angle may alter conviction rates
Jacob R. Spangler
Fort Lewis College
Mentor(s): Brian L. Burke, PhD
This research examines the effects of terror management theory (TMT) and camera angle perspective on jury members. TMT states that humans defend themselves against the anxiety stemming from death awareness (mortality salience; MS) by investing in cultural worldviews, which often results in identification with similar others as well as harsh denigration of criminals. I sought to investigate whether participants’ rating of a suspect’s guilt would be influenced not only by MS but also by whether they watched a video of the suspect or the interrogator, which presumably altered their identification with the suspect. Each participant was either primed with mortality salience (MS) or a control before reading a description of a mock crime and then viewing an 80-second video clip of the beginning of an interrogation with the suspect, with the camera either focused on the suspect or the interrogator for the duration of the clip. Results of two experiments showed that, under MS, participants who watched the suspect-centered video were significantly less certain of the suspect’s guilt—and less likely to reach a unanimous guilty verdict during deliberation—than those who watched the interrogator- focused video, whereas the converse was true for the control participants. Gender also played a role in the verdicts with females finding the suspect guilty significantly more often than males. Results are discussed and directions for future research are offered.
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The Death of the Soul: The Role of Excremental Assault in the Nazi Concentration Camps
Meagan M. Blais
Keene State College
Mentor(s): n/a
During the Third Reich, prisoners within the Nazi concentration camp system were victims of an unconventional type of attack- a tool of genocide that strives not only for the death of the body, but for the death of the soul. Coined "Excremental Assault” by Holocaust survivor Terrence des Pres to explain the systematic subjugation of prisoners to filth as a policy deliberately aimed at humiliation and debasement, this tool became a daily exercise of Nazi totalitarian power. Within the camp system, this extreme “means to an end” sought not only to destroy the physical, but to destroy humanity and strip away dignity and self-worth.
Even behind this madness there was method and reason. Exploring the concept of “death in life,” this work will illustrate the uniqueness and effectiveness of this extreme tool of genocide both psychologically and sociologically demonstrating how it contributed to the execution of such cruel and sadistic Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust.
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