The Tiered Mentoring program in the Buchetl College of Arts and Sciences offers undergraduate research and mentoring opportunities. Each of the divisions have different criteria – please review your area of interest:
Current and past projects are listed below. You can use the menu to see all the projects offered by a department or complete the sign-up form to get started.
Project Background: Extreme rain events are increasing due to climate change. In order to better understand climate changes impacts on freshwater, basic hydrological data needs to be collected (i.e. streamflow) in headwater streams. This is because hydrology impacts many aspects of a stream, such as the available habitat for fish and aquatic bugs, temperature, and erosion. In order to increase data collection, this project aims to create and deploy a low- cost stream monitoring system using ultrasonic sensors and temperature sensors.
Student Benefits: The skills you learn participating in this project aren’t only used for monitoring streams, but can be applied to various fields, or even robotic hobbies! Basic computer programming and circuitry will be taught, so that multiple streamflow devices can be made and deployed in the field. These devices can also be mapped using Geographic Informatic Systems (GIS), which can be learned as well. If interested, basic stream monitoring skills can also be taught, such as: aquatic bug collection and identification.
Learn to be a “Maker” and collect data to help inform about climate change!
Limbs are generally considered essential for movement, and yet despite this apparent limitation, snakes are extremely successful, with well over 3,000 speciesacross a huge range of habitats. Using their elongate bodies, snakes have evolved multiple different modes of locomotion to exploit a variety of environments. Snakes employ up to four different locomotor types: lateral undulation (aka. “slithering”, rectilinear, concertina, and sidewinding, with numerous variations within those types. In some of these types, snakes will vertically lift the body to control ground contact forces, but propulsion is due to horizontal waves. The goal of this research project is to determine whether snakes can use vertical motions to generate propulsion against uneven terrain.
Benefits
