Two IUPUC students were recently awarded Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program grants from the Center for Research and Learning at IUPUI.
The UROP application process is highly competitive and involves students and faculty mentors from throughout IUPUI and IUPUC.
Jami Graham, of Columbus, will use the grant for her project entitled “Civil War Visual Culture: Stereoscopic Photography and the Political Cartoons of Thomas Nast,” and Ashley Melton, of Fairland, is working on a project entitled “Effects of Social Exclusion on Adolescent’s Perception of Self.”
Douglas G. Gardner, Ph.D. and lecturer in history, is Graham’s mentor, and Joan Poulsen, Ph.D. and assistant professor of psychology, is Melton’s mentor.
Both students will present results of their research at a special program at IUPUI in the spring and also plan to present at professional and scholarly meetings.
“In terms of our psychology program, this is a boost of confidence that we are providing our students good opportunities to do research and that we are providing challenging courses so that our students have a good foundation of knowledge,” Poulsen said.
“It is always wonderful when we can find a way to challenge our exceptional students with an experience very few undergraduates will ever have,” Gardner said.
Graham, a sophomore history major, is focusing her research on the visual ways the American Civil War was documented and understood. The war was among the first events to be documented by photography. The war also was depicted through political cartoons. Together, photography and political cartoons conveyed information about the war to citizens seeking to understand their troubled times.
Melton is a senior psychology major and her research, which also serves as her required Capstone project for the psychology major, is aimed at studying how aspects of personality and peer interactions combine to determine adolescents’ self-esteem, mood, and cognitive performance.
“These sorts of questions have been asked of adults for years, but little experimental work has been done on adolescents. The implications of this project could contribute to the debate about causes and effects of adolescent self-esteem, and the impact of peer acceptance on academic performance,” Poulsen said.