The Department of Biology and the Student Research Symposium
05/13/2008
On April 25th, the campus celebrated student research and creative activities at the Student Research Symposium. As usual, many biology students and faculty participated. Here are just a few of the student researchers (more to come). [Go to: http://www.newpaltz.edu/research/srs/SRS08Abstractbook.pdf to see the abstracts of this year's projects.]
Kara is a senior at New Paltz High School and is heading to Brown U in the fall. Her mentor, Dr. Maureen Morrow, who was just awarded a Chancellor's Award, is the director of the Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities program, which includes outreach to the local communities. Maureen is responsible for establishing the Student Research Symposium as a campus tradition.
THE EFFECT OF ACID ON THE USPA GENE EXPRESSION Kara Ramos (New Paltz High School, Senior) Faculty Mentor: Maureen Morrow (Biology)
Professor of Biology, Dr. Maureen Morrow.
ISOLATION OF THE DASH COMPLEX IN C.ALBICANS Matt Zubrowski (Biology, undergraduate) Faculty Mentor: Dr. Waldo (Biology)
HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURES OF NATURAL ACELLULAR POLYM Kseniya Orlik (Biology/ Chemistry, undergraduate) Faculty Mentor: John P. Harrington (Chemistry)
Way to Go
04/23/2008
Igor Gembitsky (Biology '08) presented a poster at the 2008 National Conference on Undergraduate Research at Salisbury University in Maryland (www.salisbury.edu/ncur22). Approximately 2,800 students and faculty mentors attended the conference where students from over 350 colleges and universities presented research representing over 50 disciplines. Students commented that they enjoyed learning about the methodology and results of research in different disciplines. They also benefited from the process of discussing their own research with the individual who visited their poster.
Our three students clearly made an impression -- CUR Counsel Member Dr Larry Wimmers from Towson University ran into to Dr Nolen yesterday and commented that SUNY NP had some great presentations and a great undergraduate research director, Dr. Maureen Morrow.
Habitat Change in the Mohonk Preserve
04/08/2008
Recently, Joe Chernek completed with MA thesis on habitat change at the Mohonk Preserve. His work is an example of the types of collaborative research both our graduate and under graduate students may undertake.
Joe made use of the extensive database at the Mohonk Preserve (which includes continuous weather data back to the end of the 19th century).
He compared the results of the 2007 Breeding Bird Census with those of 1992, 1997 and 2002.
Some changes can be attributed to habitat change due to re-growth of forests and to the lack of a significant presence of natural fires over the past several hundred years.
He made use of GIS technology (look it up!) to map bird territories and species distributions over the study site.
Some changes in the bird census could be due to climate change, habitat change following human disturbance and changes at the wintering grounds of migratory visitors.
Contact Information
Department of Biology
Coykendall Science Building, Room 106
SUNY New Paltz
1 Hawk Drive
New Paltz, NY 12561-2443
Phone: (845) 257-3770
Fax: (845) 257-3791
