"Natural Curiosity"

Allison Snow: This is the annual Denman Undergraduate Research Forum. We have over 500 students this year and it's a really exciting mix as usual. We have people in humanities and sciences and engineering, health professions. They're doing very excellent work, often on the level of grad students.

Student: So for my research, I'm working on supersonic aircraft inline control. Just so you know, this research is sponsored by the Air Force.

Student: I considered marketing strategies of Ohio agritourism businesses. I put out a survey, asked them basic questions about what kind of advertising methods they were using and how they were marketing their business.

Student: I dressed myself up as a belly dancer and in the photos it looks like I actually know what I'm doing, but then when you see the video, I don't, so it's kind of that idea of culture tagging and how stereotypes exists.

Student: In our title we said that childhood exposure to air pollution does all this. Now, air pollution is a very broad term. There's a lot of molecules, particles in air pollution. So in particular like he mentioned we focus on particulate matter 2.5.

Student: And basically, this is an exploratory study into the world of African American female lawyers and what it means for them to be that representation into the intersection between race and gender within the field of law.

Student: I completed a study on adolescent communal grief entitled "Memorializing on MySpace: Adolescent Communual Grief in the Virtual World."

Student: Mood and anxiety among advanced cancer patients and specifically focused on advanced cancer patients with dependent children.

Student: My research was on the effects of exenatide, which is a drug and it was on the autoimmune development of diabetes. I personally, I have diabetes. It's been really interesting for me because I'm able to directly relate, you know, my life experience to this.

Student: Expressing Hepatitis E virus-like particles: a new live vaccine candidate for non-cultivable foodborne viruses. The final goal, make the vaccine, which I already did, test it, hopefully it's a good result, publish a paper and patent the vaccine.

Student: Common, you know, everyday methods of eradication of bedbugs and usually chemical and they're very labor intensive and they're very expensive. UVC light would be able to penetrate and kill a statistically significant amount of bedbugs in all stages.

Student: Basically this is just a framework to guide other countries into more healthcare assistability and pulling more money into prevention rather than treatment of different diseases.

Student: The attempt to find something to use on a residential landscape instead of turfgrass. I conducted simulated wear tests by using a show and pretty much beating the plants to see how they would tolerate the stress.

Student: So the main question here in the study is, is it smart to be nice? And we looked at perceptions of both competence and warmth. This is kind of like a debate in social psychology right now where there is an in-group and an out-group bias and we're just trying to resolve that conflict in social psych.

Allison Snow: Some of the benefits of doing an undergraduate research project are that the student gets to work very closely with a faculty mentor and sometimes with graduate students. They can take ownership of the project so they learn a lot and then when they go to present it, they gain confidence, they have better presentation skills and they get to meet other people and sometimes they can lead directly to a job. Oftentimes they get more training and this is just a part of their training that you cannot get inside a classroom. It's a really really important part of their education.

Richard G. Smith III: I personally have hired 600 students, graduates out of this university. We were a very small company in the 70's, started hiring out of the Engineering College in the early 80s, 600 to date, 22 of the 40 vice presidents of NetJets are Ohio State graduates. You can tell the temperature level's up and it isn't because the air conditioning isn't working. There's a lot of people with a lot of energy. So it's just a blast. I love it.

Student: Undergraduate research is really fun. It's a lot of work but it gives you a lot of opportunities to know people, to get to know your teacher, to get to know a lot more about your subject. I'm an animal science major, pre-vet, so this is really important for me to know in the long run.

Allison Snow: Students who can get engaged in a project with a faculty and some groups of people that work with that faculty member, they suddenly become part of a family, part of a small community that supports them in all of their education. Even in their personal life. This is a life-changing experience for these students. So even though they're at a very big university, they're able to connect directly with faculty one on one in a very meaningful way.

How do you alleviate anxiety in a cancer patient who fears leaving her young children behind? Design a house that can withstand a hurricane, but is cheap enough that people will build it? Create a drug that helps people quit smoking, without undesirable side effects?

Undergraduate researchers at Ohio State are working on the answers to these questions and hundreds more like them.

At the Denman Forum for Undergraduate Research, more than 500 students showed off the research projects they've been working on for months. At the RPAC, they answered questions and discussed their findings with fellow students, faculty, and judges from private industry. (See a list of Denman winners.)

The Denman gets bigger every year, mirroring how undergraduate research has grown in popularity in Ohio State.

In 2006, the university created an Undergraduate Research Office dedicated to connecting students with faculty needing help on their projects. Allison Snow, who drew national attention for her work as a professor and researcher in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, became the office's director. Snow says undergraduates who work on research projects are better prepared for graduate school and careers. They also work closely with faculty members who serve as mentors.

"This is just a part of their training that you cannot get inside a classroom," she says. "It's a really really important part of their education."

Ohio State's effort to draw young students into the world of research has paid off, Snow says.

Recently, U.S. News and Word Report included Ohio State on a list of the best colleges for undergraduate research. That group includes such peers as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.

That kind of recognition draws notice from the outside world.

Richard G. Smith III is the executive vice president at NetJets, a Columbus-based aviation company. Officially at the forum as a corporate judge, he also sees the event as a way to connect students with internship and career opportunities.

When it comes to looking for employees, he says, Ohio State graduates are "the best."

"I personally have hired 600 students, graduates out of this university," Smith says. "We were a very small company in the 70's, started hiring out of the Engineering College in the early 80s. Twenty-two of the 40 vice presidents of NetJets are Ohio State graduates."