The Cutting Edge: Scholars and Dollars

Student research at the University ranks from the incomprehensible to the inconceivable. Man-eating tigers, prenatal health care in Alaska and heavy metal music are just a few of the research endeavors undertaken by the select and cerebral few who make up the University Scholars. With stipends up to $2,100 allotted for living and research expenses, and the support of a faculty member, University Scholars have rare, and perhaps unheard of research opportunities for undergraduates. Despite the zaniness of many University Scholars projects, the undergraduate researchers claim they generally request the funding just to satisfy a burning intellectual curiosity. Self-declared "metalhead" James Ingraham, an Engineering and Wharton sophomore, used the University Scholars resources to study whether heavy metal music promotes subversive action last year. Ingraham, chosen as a University Scholar as a high school senior, said he decided to turn his interest in the heavy metal culture into scholarly research "instead of just sitting around my room thinking about it." Ingraham received funding to buy CDs "appropriate for study" and to attend heavy metal concerts. After a 66-page paper which Ingraham described as "hasty and disorganized," and an "elaborate" presentation," Ingraham concluded that a "heavy metal revolution wouldn't work" because "it would be sold to the public at $14.99 an album." A heavy metal group which advocated "tearing down large corporations" would contradict itself after it grew and opened contracts with Time-Warner and MTV, Ingraham explained. Although Ingraham feels that his project was "good for a freshman, or even a sophomore," he believes that "it was not spectacular" enough to be published. In the future, Ingraham plans to use the University Scholar's resources – which he considers to be "one of the best resources on campus"– to study topics of a much tamer nature: prime numbers and responsible computing. An anything-but-tame research project was endeavored this summer by University Scholar Vandit Kalia, an Engineering and Wharton sophomore. Tigers – with and without an appetite for human flesh – and the forests they inhabit were the subjects of a study conducted by Kalia, College sophomore Camilo Camargo and Engineering sophomore Dhaval Shah. The University Scholars and the Environmental Studies Department funded the project, in which the students travelled to a forest region in southeastern India this summer to do research on these fierce felines. However, Kalia never even got to see a tiger while he was in India, although he did manage to see a few rhinos and a white elephant. "The tiger is a very shy creature," he explained. University Scholars coordinator Susan Duggan blames Kalia's failure to spot a tiger on the "bureaucracy" of India's wildlife restrictions. Kalia insists that, even without studying tigers, he learned a lesson while stuck in the mosquito-infested Indian forests. "Nobody cares enough on the whole about wildlife," Kalia said. "People think that there are bigger problems than taking care of tigers." Kalia is not the only University Scholar who ventured away from civilization for a research project. Nursing graduate student Laurie Pollock travelled to rural Alaska in August to study the obstacles preventing women in the area from receiving prenatal care. Pollock's study was aimed to "help better the understanding of why women receive inadequate...prenatal care in isolated rural areas," she stated in her research proposal. She explained that while "studies have identified obstacles to receiving prenatal care in urban areas," very little has been discovered about the obstacles in rural communities. She had a particular interest in Alaska because "rural areas experiencing high infant mortality and low prenatal care services can be found within the isolated regions" of this state. Pollock said she discovered 10 reasons why women in the predominantly Native American areas she studied have trouble getting prenatal care. Among these reasons were problems with getting transportation to a prenatal care unit, domestic violence and alcoholism. Pollock also found that many younger Alaskan women did not seek prenatal care because they didn't want to tell their mothers about their pregnancies. Pollock is currently working on a study of the sex drive of menopausal women. She received a Nassau grant for this project. Lewis Carroll's famous fairy tale about a hallucinating little girl and a tardy white rabbit was the subject of College senior and sub-matriculated graduate student Laura Appleman's research project. Appleman, who joined the University Scholars during her sophomore year, said she applied to be a scholar with the intention of "taking advantage of their funds" to write the paper. Appleman was primarily interested in "how Victorian mores and rules of social conduct were both challenged and upheld in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland," she stated in the research proposal. Appleman was able to spend the summer before her junior year studying Carroll's famous fairy tale at the University, with financial support from the University Scholars. "Alice is radically different from other female heroines," Appleman said she learned. Other heroines written about during that era, Appleman explained, were "insipid" and "cater to men." Appleman went on to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities –Enow headed by former University President Sheldon Hackney – to study feminist aspects of Arthurian literature at Oxford University in Great Britain, Duggan said. As a University Scholar, Appleman said, she was able to work on a level "you usually have to wait for graduate school for." College senior Gary Seiden applied to the University Scholars because he wanted "to study something not offered by the University." Seiden said he was dissatisfied with the courses about jazz music taught by professors in the Music and Folklore departments. He complained that a "historical, not musical analysis" of jazz is taught at the University. So with a grant from the University Scholars, Seiden was able to customize his education. He spent last winter and spring comparing jazz artists' variations in improvisation when performing the same piece. Seiden aimed to compare "the styles and sounds of different jazz musicians" not just in terms of "their non-musical characteristics" such as "cool," "reserved," and"jumpy," but by a more scientific method. Seiden compared different pieces "in terms of their treatment of the basic harmonic structure" with attention to "melody, harmony, and rhythm." Seiden, like many of the University Scholars, said that his motivation for researching jazz was "not completely goal-oriented" – he was just interested in "a way of studying jazz music." Some of the other research endeavors of University Scholars may lead many to believe that there are not only motivated academics, but geniuses among our classmates. Chee-Wee Chew, for example, a College, Engineering, and Wharton senior and sub-matriculated graduate student, went to Geneva, Switzerland this summer to work on a high-energy physics project. Albert LaSpada, a 1986 College graduate, who was accepted to the University Scholars during his junior year, discovered the gene defect responsible for Kennedy's disease. Duggan, who describes University Scholars as the "rare bird" among other students, has very high expectations for her advisees. She says she is sure that they will "go out there and do something which will win them a Nobel Prize." At the very least, Duggan predicts that the University Scholars will "be in the papers somehow."