ASBMB is the major professional society for scientists in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology. The society, which publishes the premier journal The Journal of Biological Chemistry and hosts a yearly national conference, is the accreditation body for undergraduate degrees across the country. The society’s membership includes many Nobel Prize laureates such as the 2017 prize winners in medicine and physiology. 

The Education and Professional Development (EPD) committee is a select group of educators and stakeholders appointed to oversee activities such as the accreditation program, yearly undergraduate national exam, national student chapters and professional workshops for the society. 

Moore has been an ASBMB Education Fellow since 2014, serving on the national exam committee and associated subcommittees since its inception and organizing an exam writing workshop in Tampa, Florida in July. Her appointment to the EPD committee is a select honor, recognizing her contributions to undergraduate education in the field of biochemistry.

She will serve a three-year term and have the opportunity to help shape and guide the direction of undergraduate education for the society.

The Council on Undergraduate Research hosts its “Posters on the Hill” event each year. Presenters are chosen from a national pool of applicants – only 60 students or so from the United States and its holdings are selected to participate.

“This is going to be a good experience for me to see if I enjoy talking with lawmakers about policy,” said Ferretti, a native of Vero Beach, Fla., who was mentored by psychology professor Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler.

Ferretti’s project, “Effects of Parent Guidance on Preschoolers’ Numeracy Skills,” investigates parental guidance strategies in building preschoolers’ emergent numeracy skills. Numeracy, or mathematical literacy, applies not only to school-based mathematics or numbers, but also to the use of mathematics in everyday life.

Emergent numeracy is the mathematical learning that occurs before a child enters formal education. Learning that takes place at home before any formal education can be instrumental in the future success of a child. Games provide parents and children with a social context in which to learn and are an ideal activity in which to observe the acquisition of numeracy skills through guided participation.

Initial observations indicate that the most commonly used strategies were reminders to count and number recognition questions during the game activities. Parents reported that 4-year-olds incorporated math skills developed during the activities into everyday life.

Ferretti and Vandermaas-Peeler expect to prepare a manuscript on the results of their studies for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be selected for this,” Vandermaas-Peeler said. “The selection committee has chosen the highest quality projects to showcase to generate support for undergraduate research. We’re delighted.”

CUR received a record number of applications for the 2009 presentations. Students and their mentors are invited to take part in a general poster session and are scheduled to meet with congressional representatives to discuss the value of and to help voice calls for support for research at the undergraduate level.

Ferretti serves as president of Psi Chi and is involved with numerous volunteer initiatives. She and Vandermaas-Peeler chose to study numeracy because of the United States’ lack of research in the area and the opportunity to better understand parent guidance in a play context. The student-mentor team worked on the project through SURE 2008, in which Ferretti was selected as the Joseph Powell SURE Fellow, and during the academic year.

Ferretti also was honored as a J.E. Rawls Undergraduate Research Scholar for the 2008-2009 academic year and has been accepted to present her work at the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research in April. She will pursue a doctorate in counseling psychology or human development and family studies upon graduation.

Ultimately, Ferretti said, she would like to help families learn good mental health practices. She hopes to work in a community counseling center that focuses on empowering children and families with diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. She is also interested in conducting research and working closely with government officials to foster change in policies concerning American families.

Vandermaas-Peeler serves as director of the Honors Program at Elon. She has been a faculty member for 13 years and has been an active mentor for undergraduate researchers. Many of her students have had work published or presented at national, regional and local conferences.

Melissa Apperson ’07, mentored by associate professor Brooke Barnett in the School of Communications, presented research in 2007 for the Posters on the Hill event.
 

Last Wednesday, 46 Elon students boarded a bus bound Salisbury, Maryland, to participate in the 22nd National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR).  Traveling with the students were five faculty members:  Alexa “Night Talker” Darby (PSY), Evan “Rocko” Gatti (ART), Lauren “Tazo me bro” Kearns (DAN), Anne “Housebane” Marx (LSM), and Karl “Moneybags” Sienerth (CHM/URP).  The conference, which spanned Thursday April 10 – Saturday April 12, was hosted by Salisbury University and included more than 2800 presentations by students from over 300 institutions nationwide.  This year 51±¬ÁÏÍø ranked 5th (up from 6th last year) in the nation in terms of the number of presentations that were accepted for inclusion in the conference, and Elon presenters represented 31 mentors from 16 different departments and all four schools campus-wide. 

Apart from those record-breaking numbers, Elon students were notable in other ways as well.  For many years, presentations by Elon students at external regional, national, and international conferences have stood as testimony to the excellent mentoring they receive from our faculty members.  “People have told me ‘you’re doing a great job with the Undergraduate Research Program’, but the reality is that all the growth and recognition the Program has seen comes directly as a result of the superior mentors we have and the exceptional students who work with them,” said Sienerth.  That quality in research and mentoring is most evident at a large, multi-disciplinary national conference  like NCUR, where students are able to compare and assess not only the level of research in which they are participating, but also the strong guidance they receive in preparing for the presentations themselves.  “You could tell that we put an extreme amount of effort into our presentations and backed them with quality research,” said Stephanie Murr (HST).  Similarly, Amy Duncan (ENG) noted that “The quality of Elon students’ presentations was impressive, on a completely different level than a lot of the other ones I saw.  Students knew what they were talking about and articulated it well.  It made me proud to be an Elon student — and I know that sounds cliché, but it’s nice to have bragging rights!” 

In addition to making their own presentations, students participate in the conference by attending other Elon presentations, selecting interesting presentations by non-Elon students to attend, and generally supporting the travel group.  “There was a sense of community amongst the different disciplines the Elon participants represented and we each supported each other by attending one another’s sessions”, said Marella Peele (PSY).  The group also enjoyed a very nice meal out at the Chateau De’Ville (more fondly known as Chef Fred’s Chesapeake Steakhouse) one evening while at the conference.

Intense research experience
Learning from an expert
Earning summer money

S U R E  represents
undergraduate research at its best!  Student researchers earn a stipend
while spending eight weeks working full-time on a project in collaboration
with a faculty mentor with substantial and recognized expertise in the
discipline. 

To learn about what our SURE student/mentor teams did last year, click .

Both Vandermaas-Peeler and Sienerth were elected as secretary in their respective divisions, with duties to include maintaining meeting minutes, facilitating communication within the division, and generating and disseminating a divisional newsletter. Sienerth also serves on the Constitution and By-laws committee of CUR, which will be involved this year in making changes related to the Executive Board’s more significant governance authority and to the charge by the Council to make election procedures more transparent to the membership.

The 2008 meeting will include the biennial National Undergraduate Research Conference. Elon faculty members interested in developing presentations, workshops, or interactive sessions for the 2008 meeting should contact Sienerth (sienerth@elon.edu) or Vandermaas-Peeler (vanderma@elon.edu).

Faculty interested in becoming members of CUR and/or standing for election as councilor should contact Sienerth (sienerth@elon.edu).

Four faculty members went with the group as well: Dr. James Barbour (Economics), Dr. Jessica Gisclair (Communications), Dr. John Reilly (Chemistry) and Dr. Karl Sienerth (Chemistry and Director, Undergraduate Research Program).

The conference began on the morning of Thursday, April 21. Each day began before 8:00 a.m., with students valiantly trying to snag a shuttle to make it to the 8:45 starting sessions on time, and sessions often ran until after 6:30 p.m.

Students had the opportunity to hear plenary lectures by such notables as Nobel Laureate John Fenn and critically acclaimed author Mary Doria Russell. As usual, Elon students came away from the conference with the realization that they are well-mentored and typically better prepared for public presentation than those at most other institutions represented at the conference.

Follow this link for a listing of the Elon students attending NCUR 2005, along with their presentation titles and the names of their mentors.

The paper deals with resolving a long-standing controversy in Organic chemistry over why certain types of molecules are more acidic than others. To resolve the conflict, Dr. Karty pioneered a methodology based on theoretical calculations using a series of model compounds.

Dr. Karty’s work has been well-received in the discipline, and has resulted in student-coauthored publications in the Journal of Organic Chemistry (2004) and the flagship publication of the ACS, the Journal of the American Chemical Society (2003).

Earlier in the week, two of Dr. Karty’s research students (Rachel Naumann and Geoffrey Lynn) presented results of their research at the meeting.