Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

URCA Assistant & Faculty Awards

Congratulations to the winners of the Fall 2023 URCA Assistant Program Awards!

URCA Research-Based Mentor of the Semester Award

Dr. Joshua Wooten, Department of Applied Health 

Nominated by: Jacob Western 

Dr. Joshua Wooten has guided Jacob Western through basic lab procedures and offered leadership experiences (e.g., mentoring other students, designing timeframes, etc.) over the 6 semesters working together. Jacob and Dr. Wooten are working on a project covering liver inflammation. Jacob is impressed by Dr. Wooten’s ability to take on more responsibilities as Department Chair of Kinesiology and Nutrition this semester and still effectively mentor URCA students and projects. 

Jacob states, “When I do present in the future, I will be prepared thanks to Dr. Wooten’s planning and care into our work. Since my first week as an URCA assistant, he has been training my peers and I on proper presentation and research paper reading skills. This was done in the form of weekly journal clubs, where we would present papers in our field to the URCA team.” “He truly sees us as colleagues, and I could not have asked for a better mentor.” 

 
URCA Creative Activity-Based Mentor of the Semester Award

 Mr. Rodrick Whetstone, Department of Art and Design 

Nominated by: Allison Schwartz 

Mr. Rodrick Whetstone has mentored Allison Schwartz providing opportunities for brainstorming, writing, printing, and attending exhibitions showing the semester’s work. Allision states, “He also has provided me with a book to read and a class to take to provide me with supplemental knowledge, as well as connect me with his resources in graphic design to provide me with an extra boost in my career search.” “The time I have spent working under Professor Whetstone has been more beneficial to me than any class I could have taken.”  

Mr. Whetstone research passion is on Police Brutality, which is very prevalent and important in society. Allison states, “The work has emotion and power, and I believe that if we can show this work at a large-scale exhibition or have it displayed in a place where it will be seen, it has the potential to greatly influence people. I am proud of the work we have produced thus far, and I am very excited about what is to come.” 

URCA Research Assistants of the Semester Awards

Narangoo Tumur, Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Nominated by: Dr. Amardeep Kaur 

Narangoo (Nara) has worked with Dr. Amardeep Kaur for two semesters and continues to have professional and great work ethic. Dr. Kaur states, “she (Nara) is proactive in finishing her tasks; she researches to find a solution if she gets stuck on something before coming to me. Rather than bringing only questions or challenges to me, she also brings possible solutions. She is always excited and enthusiastic to work on the next challenge.”  

Nara has presented poster at the 2023 ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section conference titled “Active Learning and Hands-on Experience using Student-Led Laboratory Development.” She plans on attending the 2024 ASEE Annual conference after submitting the current semester's work. Dr. Kaur states, “I wholeheartedly recommend Nara for this award. She is a credit to the School of Engineering and SIUE.  She is an active student making contributions by being actively involved in several student organizations.” 

Caleb Sutton, Department of Computer Science 

Nominated by: Dr. Rubi Quiñones 

Caleb is pursuing a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and will graduate in Spring 2024 with plans to continue research and obtain a Master’s degree at SIUE. Dr. Rubi Quiñones writes, “Although Caleb has been in my lab for a few months, the research quality of his URCA Project, and his inquiring mind demonstrates him exceeding my expectations of an URCA student, and a promising candidate for a Master’s in Computer Science.”  

“Caleb decided to program a Multi-Agent System (MAS) for simulating honeybee behaviors and seeing the effects of the bee population with varying environmental factors. MAS is a difficult approach because it requires object-oriented programming knowledge to design rules and behaviors for various outcomes that will be implemented on a variety of agents (i.e., objects) with millions of samples. However, he has consistently delivered every week since the semester started. Typically, students need quite a bit of guidance in the experiment design and how to conduct a literature review, but Caleb understood the purpose and requirements, and produced high-quality work. After clarifying the research plan, he is programming three features that have not been considered in literature (hornets, honeybee food robbing, honeybee drifting, and parametrized variables for number of bee hives, hornets, food, etc.). He even designed an experiment setup to test each feature to see how close it simulates the real world. He plans to make it open-sourced to the scientific community, as well,” states Dr. Quiñones.