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.
The Language of Home: A Cross Cultural Comparison of how Italians and Italian-Americans conceptualize “Home”
Hannah Burgwyn
University of North Carolina Asheville
Mentor(s): Dr. Heidi Kelley
This research explores the concept of how Italians and Italian-Americans construct the notion of “home”. A contribution to the Many Ways Home project, this paper offers a cross-cultural comparison. Through participant-observation and interviews with Italian-Americans in both New Jersey and Asheville, North Carolina (June to October 2008) and Italians in the Tuscan city of Siena (January to June 2009), I analyze what “home” means to my participants by examining the contributions of intersecting factors such as country of residence, socio-economic class and generation. For both groups, the concept of “home” extends beyond the physical dwelling where a person resides to a close-knit community of people. Though Italian-Americans and Italians may differ in the ways they define their “Italianess”, all see “home”, and in a larger sense “homeland” as a defining cultural trait.
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The Sublime Nature of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and The Waves
Tiffany Ann McCormack
Southern Oregon University
Mentor(s): Dr. Terry DeHay
Through a postmodern approach, this paper examines the ways in which Woolf utilizes form and nature imagery in her two novels To the Lighthouse and The Waves to activate the sublime state in the reader. Woolf’s use of imagery fuses with the structure of her novels; in The Waves, imagery is the dominant piece, the interludes that serve to interrupt the story, while in To the Lighthouse, nature overcomes the Ramsay house in the “Time Passing” section. Nature becomes defined as that which is outside of civilization’s order, moving beyond definition. Woolf incorporates aspects of Roger Fry’s formalism to compliment her use of nature-oriented imagery, which purposefully calls attention to the form and not to the content, creating a peculiar effect in the reader. A reader, entering a sublime state brought on by the formal elements, experiences a slower rate of perception of the “real” and civilized world, allowing her reader to slip into the world of the imagination where knowledge and questions that have yet to be developed in the collective knowledge bank suddenly appear. The content and/or language serve to illuminate thematic issues and enhance the sublime state in the reader, while the form is responsible for activating the sublime state altogether, readying the senses for a hyper-perception. Thus, this paper argues that the structure of Woolf’s novels serve to relocate the boundaries of perception outside of the finite knowledge of civilization to the infinite unknown, in other words the sublime.
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Troubled Waters: The Confluence of Local, State and Federal Environmental Policy at the Headwaters of the Dolores River, from the Height of the Cold War to 2004
Rebecca Levy
Fort Lewis College
Mentor(s): Michael Fry, PhD
Guaranteeing a sufficient supply of clean water is one of the biggest environmental problems facing the United States. This problem is dramatically exacerbated in the arid Southwest, where the limited water resources are shrinking, as demand for clean water is increasing. Compounding the problem is the environmental contamination from historic mining activities. Often located near headwaters, abandoned hard rock mines and mine waste piles deposit heavy metals into the streams and rivers of many of the western watersheds. Pollution from historic mining activities further degrades the quality of this limited resource, making the protection of clean water essential to the viability of life in the west.
The town of Rico, Colorado is situated at the headwaters of the Dolores River, a tributary to the Colorado, and is surrounded by abandoned silver, lead, zinc, gold and copper mines. Rico’s mines have been contaminating the Dolores River for over a century. Despite its isolated location, the environmental history of the Rico region illustrates how actions undertaken locally are determined by state and federal policy decisions. These policy decisions are often influenced by national public sentiment and economic trends, rather than empirical science, remedial objectives or local needs.
This study is part of a growing body of environmental history that focuses on the evolution of environmental policy. By incorporating previously unused official accounts from town records, including board minutes and letters, this study contributes to future research on the history of Rico, and on environmental history in general.
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Untangling the passionflower vines: preliminary insights on the phylogeny of Passiflora subgenus Decaloba based upon trnL-F sequences
Nicolle M. Siddall, Anna P. McLean, and Kristen Porter-Utley
Keene State College
Mentor(s): n/a
Passionflowers (genus Passiflora) are vines, lianas, and trees known for their incredible morphological diversity, stunningly beautiful flowers, and edible fruits. Passionflowers allure a variety of diferent pollinators including bats, hummingbirds, butterflies, bees, and wasps. Passionflower butterflies also use Passiflora as host plants, and the relationship between these two groups of organisms is a classic example of co-evolution. The genus is currently composed of five subgenera: Astrophea, Decaloba, Deidamioides, Passiflora, and Tetrapathea. Due to its economic importance, subg. Passiflora has been the focus of most scientific research in the genus while the equally fascinating and species rich subg. Decaloba has been largely ignored; recently published revisionary studies of Passiflora have included at most 35 species from subg. Decaloba. There are many rare species in the subgenus that are currently recognized as threatened or endangered, and it is the largest lineage in the genus possessing species found in both the New and Old World. I present here a preliminary phylogenetic analysis of the subgenus based upon the gene sequences of trnL-F. These sequence data will also be combined with sequences of three other genes (ncpGS, ndhF, and ITS) and used in a separate phylogenetic analysis of the subgenus.
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Who turned down the heat? Activity patterns of Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) under a cue conflict temperature regime.
Jody Rintoul
University of Alberta, Augustana Campus
Mentor(s): Dr. Doris Audet
Daily activity patterns in animals are the product of complex interactions between an
internal biological clock mechanism and extrinsic factors. This study was performed to
investigate the potential effects of temperature on the activity patterns of 12 female Mongolian
gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) under a 12:12 photoperiod. Gerbils were group housed and kept
in either normal conditions with warm temperature (27oC) in the light and cool temperature
(18oC) in the dark, or in a reversed temperature pattern. Data were collected remotely using webcams
and the gerbils’ activity levels compared between conditions. There were subtle but
significant differences between groups in the overall activity of gerbils. Weekly food
consumption and the mass of gerbils at the end of the experiment were also significantly different
between experimental conditions. These results support the hypothesis that ambient temperature
is involved in the regulation of activity patterns in gerbils.
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Women’s Resource Center Research
Michelle Gutsch
University of Wisconsin-Superior
Mentor(s): n/a
Working as the Women’s Resource Center Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin Superior has given me insight into a change in the needs of students at our school. I have conducted primary and secondary research to see if other schools are experiencing a similar change in their need for a Women’s Center. In my paper I discuss the historical importance of Women’s Centers dealing with women’s rights movements. I then go on to discuss that there is a need for equality for all people and a center promoting that equality, rather than just women’s rights, and how that would be much for useful to this generation. I surveyed eight Universities, one of which was a COPLAC school, questioning them about the type of women’s/ gender center they have. I then did some further secondary research on schools based on their websites. I concluded that the center at UW-Superior should be changed to encompass a wider range of diversity, based on what other surrounding universities are doing.
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