KU News Release

KU undergraduate symposium to present extraordinary range of research April 14

LAWRENCE — More than 70 University of Kansas undergraduates will present research on topics ranging from child welfare to DNA sequences at the 10th annual Undergraduate Research Symposium from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 14, in the Kansas Union.

Stanley Lombardo, honors program director and professor of classics, and Jim Roberts, vice provost for research, will welcome the participants and guests to the symposium that is part of the observance of the 50th anniversary of the University Honors Program.

Lombardo said the symposium topics include child welfare, language acquisition, banter of the sexes, cartilage tissue engineering, Irish murals, sea anemones, stem cells, T-cells and DNA sequences.

“Taken as a whole, the symposium gives us a cross-section of human knowledge at its cutting edge, a remarkable achievement for undergraduates or anyone else,” said Chris Haufler, honors faculty fellow and professor of biology.

Craig Nelson, a 1962 alumnus of the honors program and a professor emeritus of biology at Indiana University, will speak at 12:45 p.m. at the Jayhawk Room in the Kansas Union.

Three KU honors students will follow Nelson at 1:15 p.m. with remarks about their projects representing the diversity of research in the symposium. They are:

— Kyle Hesed, Pawnee Rock senior in biology, on “Molecular Techniques Reveal Unrecognized Lizard Diversity in the Philippines.”
— Laura Ann Dague, Washington senior in economics and mathematics, on “Impacts of Four Labor Market Measures on Child Poverty Rates in the United States.”
— Anne McEnroe, Lawrence senior in classical languages and English, on “You Are What You Read: The Evolution of St. Augustine’s Relationship with Virgil.”

Chancellor Robert Hemenway and Joseph Steinmetz, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will join the participants and invited guests at the symposium awards banquet at 6 p.m. in the union. Barbara Schowen, professor emerita and former honors program director, will speak.

The full symposium program listing all presentations, roundtables and poster presentations is online at the honors program Web site.

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