Students presented individual and group research all-day Tuesday as a part of the annual spring Undergraduate Research Symposium hosted by the University of Minnesota. 

With over 200 participants from different University campuses system-wide, the symposium took place in the Great Hall at Coffman Union across four sessions open to the public. 

Students at all different stages in their undergraduate degree showcased their projects through poster presentations, featuring a range of personal and directed academic research. 

The symposium and its virtual fall counterpart was hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR). Students can register and participate for free, with some additional expenses covered by the Office.

Bridget Bergin, an OUR coordinator, said the symposium allows anyone to present their research and encourages students passionate about any research topic to participate. 

“It’s fun because it’s not organized by any particular research topic or even any program. Anyone who is doing research and also creative projects are welcome,” Bergin said. “The idea is for it to be a welcoming and encouraging environment, and it’s also just good practice.” 

Bergin said the in-person symposium provides students with an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned but also provides them a space to network with peers and faculty. 

“I have talked to a lot of students who get involved with research because they want to pursue graduate school in a field, and they’re like, ‘I just want to learn as much as I can about this thing before applying to graduate school,’” Bergin said. “I think that the symposium gives people an opportunity to practice the skills of growing in confidence in their own abilities to do research.” 

Bergin said the symposium is designed to allow students to showcase their research in a professional but informal format. 

OUR tries to organize each session spatially in terms of topic for there to be similarity amongst presentations, Bergin said. 

Reed Miller, a fourth-year student studying linguistics, presented his academic capstone project on the differences in pronunciation between rap and sung music. 

Miller said he is glad he got to share his work, even though he did not initially plan to present. 

“I am kind of shy when it comes to talking about the things that I research, but getting to see other people presenting their research and the passion that they have makes me want to keep presenting,” Miller said. “I’m happier that I did this today than I was a week ago.” 

Miller said the highlight of the research process for him was listening to music and getting to explore the overlap between dialectal features in rap music and sung music. 

“What I found was oftentimes, for sung music, it’s a lot more simple with how they use the rhymes,” Miller said. “At the beginning of my research, I had a very strong belief that the most essential part of a rhyme was the vowel, and I was surprised to find that people change how vowels sound when they sing music too.” 

Completing his research and presenting was rewarding, and Miller now looks forward to continuing to explore linguistics professionally.

Krys Mustwillo, a fourth-year psychology major with a minor in family and social sciences, shared her senior thesis, which focused on attitudes towards weight bias, particularly in fitness settings. 

Mustwillo worked alongside Dr. Traci Mann, a psychologist and professor in the Health and Eating Laboratory at the University, and said working with a study from start to finish has been her favorite part of the research process. She added she is grateful to have the opportunity to present their findings. 

“I have been working in this lab since freshman year, and it means a lot to be able to bring my college career’s work onto the floor and show it to people,” Mustwillo said. “I hope this inspires more research on the topic.” 

Mustwillo said collaborating with Mann on her research and working in a lab focused on combating weight stigma has been a valuable part of her academic journey. As someone who works in fitness and is planning on going into healthcare, Mustwillo said it was valuable to study the impacts of weight bias firsthand.

“We were thinking that if we were to study this in the settings where it’s the most common there is a chance we could find ways to help those communities and help find ways to minimize the expression of bias,” Mustwillo said. “Our study was built on the basis that we can’t change how people feel about people with larger bodies, let’s see if we can change how they express it.”

Vicky Munro, associate director of OUR, said the concept for the research symposiums originally started in the College of Biological Sciences. OUR later inherited the program to make it more accessible University-wide. 

Munro said the program has been run by their office since 2010 and continued in-person up until COVID-19. 

“We missed maybe two years in person during COVID, but we kept the whole thing going, and at that point, we added the fall symposium,” Munro said. 

The Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium was conducted virtually and continues to be offered each year to undergraduate students. 

Munro said despite it being held remotely, it is run similarly to the in-person event. The main difference between the two is that students must submit a video presentation alongside their research abstracts. 

The research symposiums provide students funded by OUR programs with the opportunity to complete their program requirements, one of which Munro said is presenting their research in a public way. 

“It does nobody any good if you do great research and never share it,” Munro said. 

While presentations can take various forms, like being published or uploading work to the University Digital Conservancy, Munro said the in-person and virtual events offer valuable experience, particularly for students considering graduate school. 

“It helps push research, and it makes students have to answer questions about their research, but it’s good practice to talk about what you’re interested in and keep it short enough where people understand,” Munro said. 

Sara Mohamed, a first-year student majoring in biochemistry who presented her research on finding detection biomarkers for ovarian cancer, said the symposium was an exciting experience that helped her grow as a researcher. 

“It’s helped me make connections and get better at explaining my work and answering questions,” Mohamed said. “I like the environment and how you can walk around and see other people’s work as well.”

Zach Schmitz, a fourth-year student majoring in microbiology and researching climate change and local adaptation in invasive species throughout Minnesota, said the opportunity to interpret results, be curious and present his work to others are significant drivers for him. 

“You don’t get many opportunities to present in this kind of format,” Schmitz said. “I’m from Minnesota, I am proud to be Minnesotan, so it’s also neat to present research that’s focused on ecologically impactful things with Minnesota.”