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April 27th, 2015
www.TheVanCougar.com
Issue XV
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Volume XXV
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First Copy Free
SINCE 1994
PRESIDENTIAL INTERVIEW
•April 27th, 2015• www.TheVanCougar.com
THE VANCOUGAR SITS DOWN WITH SHAIN AND YESENIA P. 2
RESEARCH IN THE GORGE
WSU VANCOUVER, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PARTNER FOR PROJECT P. 3
GRAD SCHOOL PREP PROGRAM STUDENTS GET HEAD START ON GRADUATE RESEARCH P. 4
2015 Research Showcase attracts audience for annual spotlight VanCougs show off the results of their work By JACK MARTIN The VanCougar Washington State University Vancouver’s 2015 Research Showcase took place on Thursday in various locations across campus while students conducted lecture-like talks on their research and showcased their efforts during the year. The student commons were taken over by more than 50 posters of current, and recently finished, student research being highlighted. There was an electronic booth set up for research relating to the renewal of life on Mount St. Helens. A wide range of disciplines were covered including business, environmental science, biology, nursing, engineering and computer science. Projects ranged from determining the market potential of mobile food vending in downtown Vancouver to the public perceptions on jury deliberation and verdicts in infamous cases. A graduate mechanical engineering student, Karen Roberts, stood with her poster highlighting her studies in to
the effects of density on volcanic plumes. She used fog and olive oil to “prime” the air in the lab and used a jet, along with some neon lighting and high-speed photography, to determine the velocity of particles in the air. The jet would propel different gases including argon, helium and regular atmospheric air through the primed portion of the lab. What Roberts found was that the velocity had very little to do with particles moving into the stream, and that density had a much larger effect, which was easily observed via helium jet. Roberts said that she enjoyed her work and learned a great deal. She hopes that her work can be used in creating a more accurate model for particle density following volcanic eruptions. Roberts looked at several other projects and felt that the project discussing trout hatchery impacts on plankton growth downstream was the most interesting. Biology senior Alyssa Payne was studying seasonal changes in caffeine levels at Lacamas Lake. Since there are no known natural causes for caffeine in the Pacific
Alyssa Payne presents her research on caffiene levels in Lacamas Lake | Photo Credit: Jack Martin Northwest, studying these levels can give a good indication to how much human waste is making it into our environment. A vast range of causes including leaking septic systems, outhouses and debris can pump caffeine into the world around it. Payne has been riding her bike around Lacamas Lake every month to obtain oneliter samples of water at specific locations; the samples are then
fed into a machine, which can detect minute traces of a substance. Payne said that the caffeine levels are not harmful to aquatic life, “I’d have to pour a can of soda into a fish bowl for it to be harmful.” The caffeine levels are only measured because they are a good indicator of the human impact on the environment. One of the judges was post-doctoral research fellow,
Jordan Blacktop. This was his first time performing as a judge and he said that the challenge of being a judge is that a lot of the material is outside your range of expertise. This puts the challenge back onto the student presenters, as they have to show some mastery of the art of explaining a complicated see "Showcase," page 4
Science on Tap combines education with an evening on the town By SARAH DORSCH The VanCougar The Kiggins Theatre plays host to many sorts of events, from film screenings to performances and seminars. One such event, Science on Tap, is a scientific lecture series that integrates research exhibition and evening entertainment. Science on Tap is produced in partnership with Washington State University Vancouver and features scientists from colleges and universities in the Pacific Northwest. On April 17, the theme of the lecture was "Tales from the Biology Lab" and featured two local scientists who gave lectures
on two very different topics. First to present was biologist Sarah Shaack from Reed College. Shaack spoke about junk DNA and facts of the human genome that have been popularized in media outlets, yet have since been disproven. Shaack added a drinking game aspect to her presentation by incorporating images of garden gnomes on various slides, prompting the audience to drink every time a gnome appeared. Shaack explained that the human genome is significantly smaller than the general public would think. Shaack said, “In fact, rice has more coding genes than a human being!”
Todd Rosenstiel lecturing at The Kiggins Theatre Photo Credit: Sarah Dorsch Shaack went on to say that new discoveries about junk DNA are being made constantly and encouraged audience members to look deeper into
current research efforts and not rely exclusively on the media for new information. Following Shaack’s presentation, Todd Rosenstiel
gave his lecture entitled “Magnificent Mosses.” Rosentiel is a biology professor at Portland State University and also organizes the Center for Life in Extreme Environments. Rosentiel stressed to the audience that moss is so much more than a rooftop nuisance. In fact, he said moss is nature’s toughest survivor and can thrive in many different environments. Rosentiel does a great deal of field research in Antarctica, where moss is growing in large quantities due to glacier melting as a result of climate change. “There are over 110 species of moss in Antarctica and over see "Science on Tap," page 4
2 | CAMPUS NEWS
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Get to know ASWSUV's new president and vice president Shain Wright and Yesenia Herrera talk about challenges and representing diverse voices By: SARAH DORSCH The VanCougar
Join folks in the Library for 10 minutes of “Breathing for Relaxation.”
Yesenia Herrera and Shain Wright | Photo Credit: Shain Wright [in relation] to art and culture, etc. I chose to go to Thailand and interview Kathoey [Thai term for MtF transgender] individuals and I feel like I got an understanding of cultural conceptions and it’s much different than here in the U.S.” Herrera has been involved with student government organizations throughout her higher education career and has gotten the opportunity to attend conferences across the country. “I have been fortunate enough to lobby in Washington D.C. twice and attend the National Conference of Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education in New Orleans for a week; that was probably my favorite.” Herrera said and continued, “I have also attended the National Latina Organization conference in Arizona.” It has been acknowledged by Wright and Herrera that they are not typical students involved with ASWSUV; they feel that their backgrounds will not only
boost retention rates, but also allow for a wide range of student voices to be recognized. “I’m really glad that both of us are not the traditional student employed by ASWSUV,” Herrera said. She also added, “we know that retention rates tend to be higher when students see someone in power who looks like them. For myself, as a Latina, we have already gotten feedback from students saying ‘I’m so glad you are running because I feel represented.’” Wright concurred and said, “As part of the LGBTQ community, people often assume my identity incorrectly, which is fine. For fellow students to recognize that and feel represented is really valuable.” Wright and Herrera are currently deciding which changes they want to focus on first during their executive run. Wright identifies three key challenges, first is educating professors in cultural sensitivity, specifically towards LGBTQ, ethnic and the ESL community,
TH E
Shain Wright and Yesenia Herrera were elected as the 2015-2016 ASWSUV President and Vice-President on March 26 for the. After campaigning on a platform of equal treatment and accessibility for the entire student body, Wright and Herrera are eager to begin their executive run and get to know students on a personal level. Wright is a double major in human development and public affairs and is also pursuing a minor in women’s studies. Herrera is a psychology major with a minor in women’s studies. Herrera is a transfer student from Portland Community College and enjoys reading in her spare time. “My favorite books to read are fantasy series and cheesy romance novels” Herrera said. Wright is currently rereading the Harry Potter novels. “I enjoy experiencing the character development, especially between Harry [Potter] and Ron [Weasley]. It’s something that I really identify with,” said Wright, whose other hobbies include crafting, scrapbooking and knitting. Wright has been heavily involved with student diversity organizations and events while attending Washington State University Vancouver. Equality and gender perception are a few of Wright’s passions and Wright incorporates these concepts in both studies and travels. “I went to Thailand for two and a half months last summer” Wright said and continued, “I learned a ton…because I choose to write papers in classes about gender
Stressed out? Need a few minutes to unwind?
Check the schedule posted in the Library. Come as you are and sit comfortably.
Sessions will be held from April 27 - May 7
With support from the WSU Vancouver Fitness Center. citing that professors sometimes make culturally insensitive remarks during lectures. Second, training professors in using simple technology [such as YouTube] during lectures, since an inability to access videos disrupts class time and students may not not get the full value of the material. The third change is supporting students during the transition to Blackboard in the fall, providing resources such
2015
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The VanCougar | Dengerink Administration Building (VDEN) Room 160 | 14024 NW Salmon Creek Ave. | Vancouver, Wash. 98686 | 360-546-9524
Washington State University Vancouver
AUSTYN HOVEY JACK MARTIN ALEXANDER PERU GREGORY WALKER RAYMOND WEST
as online tutorials and giving forums for students to voice comments or concerns regarding accessibility. Previously, the Students With Disabilities club had voiced concerns about accessibility in the new system. One of Herrera’s key focus areas is the way in which ticket distribution and sale for on and off campus events is handled. Herrera said, “50% of tickets are going to students who are working on campus. Essentially, events are sold out before going on sale because a vast majority are going to student employees.” One way in which Wright and Herrera plan to change this policy is by making tickets available online or to sell them during different time periods on different days to ensure equal access for all students, not just campus employees. Wright and Herrera plan to make themselves approachable for students as a way for them to voice their concerns. “An ASWSUV president a few years back would hang out in the quad and pass out flyers, asking students if they knew what ASWSUV did and what the organization was currently working on. We want to do something similar to that and keep the conversation between student government and the student body flowing,” Wright said. Students can contact Shain Wright at wright.shain@gmail. com and Yesenia Herrera at yesenia.herrera@email.wsu.edu with any questions, suggestions, or concerns for the upcoming 205-2016 academic year. n
CAMPUS NEWS | 3
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WSU Vancouver offers summer research experience for undergraduates
Campus Events
By: ALEXANDER PERU The VanCougar WSU Vancouver has won a three-year research grant from the National Science Foundation. This grant is intended to sponsor a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at WSU Vancouver. The REU project is designed to allow students who would not normally have access to a traditional undergraduate research program to be involved in field research. Undergraduates participate in a summer research project under the supervision of a faculty mentor on campus and will work in the lab with the mentor and other members of the faculty research team to conduct research related to a specific project theme. According to Dr. Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens, the coordinator for the REU project at WSU Vancouver, the National Science Foundation grant allows students to participate in research projects at research institutions during the summer. To that end, the REU is intended for students who may not have undergraduate research opportunities at their own institution. The program is a competitive process, with the winning institutions of the grant tending to be institutions who place heavy emphasis on research. In addition to conducting summer research, student participants will attend seminars and professional development workshops to help them develop useful college and research skills, said Rollwagen-Bollens. Each institution that receives an REU grant must have a research theme under which participants will operate. For WSU Vancouver, the research theme is “landscape ecology and ecosystem dynamics of the Columbia River Basin – integrating aquatic and terrestrial perspectives.” Ten faculty members from WSU Vancouver serve as research mentors for participants. All mentors are affiliated with the School of the Environment, and all have done research relating to local environmental issues. This local research will allow them to direct participants’ research for the theme regarding the Columbia River Basin. Only eight students are accepted for the summer research project. All faculty involved conduct their own research and direct the students under them. In the application for the project, students learned about the ten available mentors and their research. They then picked their top three potential mentors and were then assigned to a mentor. There are no required majors for participation, provided the applicant has an interest in scientific research. To
Tuesday, April 28 n A-Z Financial Aid & Scholarship Workshop 6 p.m. Student Services Center Free Open to All
Wednesday, April 29 n Interviewing Skills 4 - 5 p.m. Student Commons Room 104 Free Open to All
be considered for participation, applicants had to have at least a 3.0 GPA in college courses and have taken at least one year of college level science courses with a lab component. The majority of applications recieved were from science majors. The REU project will run for three years, culminating in 2017. Each year will feature research projects related to the overall theme of the Columbia River Basin. Students only participate for one summer, but RollwagenBollens hopes the experience will encourage further research and interaction between the students and mentors. She said that the program is hoped to function as a recruiting tool for WSU Vancouver’s research programs and is intended to get participants to think seriously about participating in further projects. The program is not limited to WSU Vancouver undergraduates. It is open to various local community colleges and four year institutions. Because not all of the local institutions are research oriented, the REU allows students to work at WSU Vancouver to get a research experience that they otherwise would not be able to get. The REU program allows students who cannot go away to other national institutions for the summer to participate in a research environment. It is designed to “give all kinds of people access to a summer research experience,” said Rollwagen-Bollens. The program targeted those students who may live in the area but attend institutions out of the area. Students would come home in the summer and be able to do research at a local school. A stipend of $4,725 for the program covers all nine weeks of participation, including commuting costs, meals, and research costs. Additionally, two field trips in the Northwest region are being planned, which will also be covered by the program. Rollwagen-Bollens said that while college credit is not offered,
n Preceptor Workshop and Reception 5 - 8 p.m. Dengerink Admin Bldg., Room 110
the experience is well worth the effort. It is much like an internship, she said, and allows students to get valuable insight and experience in research and other aspects of college scientific work. Students are independent yet engaged with owthers in the lab. The REU program is another effort in a large effort to build WSU Vancouver’s research capacity. Further information can be found at the REU project website at http://www.vancouver. wsu.edu/reu. n
Thursday, April 30 n Graduation Party! 3 - 5 p.m. Student Commons Free Open to Graduates, Faculty and Staff
Friday, May 1 n
Cougs in the Community: May Day Flower Delivery 1 - 5:30 p.m. Free Open to All
Wednesday, May 6 n BA in Education Portfolio Showcase 4:30 - 7 p.m. Student Commons Free Open to All
Saturday, May 9 n Commencement 2015 1 p.m. Amphitheatre Northwest Free Open to All
Monday, May 11 n
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4 | STUDENT LIFE
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University Scholars Honor Program gears students for graduate school Program offers support, funding to undergrad research projects
Students in the University Scholars Honors Program get together for barbeque | Photo Credit: Holly Davis
By: TERESA HOYT The VanCougar
The University Scholars Program commenced at Washington State University Vancouver in 1998 as a way to give undergraduate students research experience. After a 2011 curriculum change, it became the University Scholars Honors Program. Students participating in the University Scholars Honors Program will work on their own research project together with a WSU Vancouver faculty advisor. To qualify for the University Scholars Honors Program, undergraduate students must have a minimum grade point average of 3.5 or higher, complete at least 30 credits or more, and will have to be enrolled for at least four semesters. Due to these requirements, Susan Peabody, director of the honors program, said that it is advisable for eligible students to apply in their sophomore year if at all possible. In addition to the requirements mentioned, students will also need to write an essay and submit two letters of reference. According to Peabody, the honors program consists of undergraduate students from various majors. However, there are more business, history and engineering majors because students in these majors are
required to do research to complete their degree. When students sign up for the Honors Programs, students will have to take four different 300 and 400-level courses. Students in the program attend these classes throughout their junior year. By the end of their junior year, students choose their mentor to guide them throughout their research. Students in the program, just like faculty and graduate students, request funding to do their research. A student can request up to $1000. To recieve funding, students have to submit a proposal that explains how they will go about their research, including their hypothesis and methodology. The money that students request can be used to pay for supplies needed for the research as well as help the student recruit participants for their research project if necessary. Besides research, another major component of the program is the written thesis, a report of at least 20 pages which helps place the research in the context of other work in the field. Students who are working on a project or student teaching also submit a journal as an appendix to their paper. Finally, students share their research with faculty and others in a 15-minute oral presentation which includes visual aids, including audio/
Science on Tap, continued from page 1 20,000 species worldwide” Rosentiel said. Rosentiel explained the reproductive system of moss and that there are implications that moss-made pharmaceuticals are a possibility in the future. Rosentiel ended his lecture by explaining that curiosity and serendipity lead to scientific discovery, and to think twice before killing the moss upon your roof. The next Science on Tap lecture will take place on May 13. The topic will be Parasites: A Global Health Problem and will Washington State University Vancouver
be presented by Buddy Ullman from the Oregon Health and Science University. Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door and all proceeds fund future Science on Tap events. For more information about Science on Tap and past or future lectures, visit their website at www.viaproductions. org, or contact Amanda Thomas at amanda@viaproductions. com or Michelle Herrmann at michelle@viaproductions.com n
video components. One of the students in the Honors Program, Jeffrey Posey, is currently a junior and a Biology major. His project for the honor’s program is about lung cancer prevention and his academic mentor Lida Dekker, director of the Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Although Posey does not know individuals who have lung cancer, he said that he wants to find ways to reduce the likelihood and to get people to quit smoking in hopes to reduce the lung cancer rates in the State of Washington and the United States at large. Posey has been working on his project for approximately a year. “I like it. It’s a challenge. It forces me to step outside my comfort zone, to work independently.” Posey said, when asked about his thoughts on his project and his experiences in the Honors Program. Students who are interested in learning more about the Honors Program can contact Susan Peabody by email at speabody@vancouver.wsu. edu or Holly Davis, academic affairs program and project coordinator by email at holly. davis@wsu.edu. n
Showcase, continued from page 1 topic in layman terms, so that the judge could easily understand what heir project was and how they accomplished their task. “You learn a lot as a judge, and it’s a lot of fun,” Blacktop said. He wished that he had more time, but he was extremely impressed with the high level of diversity in the research showcase. He said, “You generally want a broad palette for science and we definitely see that here.” Various projects were presented in VDEN 110 during the showcase, which were more in depth presentations on a student’s project. A total of eleven presentations were conducted over the span of two and a half hours. After judging, an award ceremony was held where the top three undergraduate and top three graduate research projects were recognized for their achievements. There were four categories that students could place in: the podium award for both graduates and undergraduates, and the poster category for graduates and undergraduates. Alexander Nevue won first place in the undergraduate podium awards for his dopaminergic inputs to the inferior colliculus. The runners-up were Corrine Murphy for her project on Gender Equality in Manga and Spencer Vaughn for his understanding branding and sub-cultural identity through skateboard graphics project. Mohammad Aghaamoo took first place in the graduate podium awards for his work on computational study on deformability-based Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) separation devices. Elena Mahrt and Megan Slaker were the runners up in this category; Mahrt for her vocal production mechanism of mouse ultrasonic courtship whistles project and Slaker with her project on drug memories. The first place undergraduate
poster winner was Adam Denny for his Life Renewed piece. Darias Saadat-Moghaddam and Christine Sykalo were the runners up in this category. Saadat-Moghaddam’s poster was about the development of novel detection method using charge transport in DNA. Sykalo’s poster was "Slavic Families Speak[ing] About Health: Culture’s Effects on Family Nutrition and Health." The graduate poster first place winner was Kersten Peterson for her poster on using Zebrafish pigment cell mutants to investigate melanoma drug sensitivity. Jeffrey Hoyt was a runner up for his poster on dopamine neuromodulation in the auditory system. Phillip Uribe was the other runner up for his piece about larval Zebrafish lateral line as a model for acoustic trauma. As with the rest of the showcase, a wide range of majors and topics were covered during the presentations. Several topics have already been covered in previous issues of The VanCougar, such as graduate student Megan Slaker’s work in neuroscience with drug memories; these topics can be found on The VanCougar’s web page. More information on the research showcase or the projects presented is available at admin. vancouver.wsu.edu/research/ research-showcase, which also has information from last year’s research showcase. n
Student Media Board documents subject to change The Student Media Board has proposed changes to their governing documents. Interested parties can find these proposed changes at studentaffairs. vancouver.wsu.edu/studentinvolvement/student-mediaboard. Questions, concerns and comments can be directed to smb@vancouver.wsu.edun