By Andrea DeHaan, CHaSS Communications Editor
Every year, students from the University of Utah and Utah State University, the state’s two research universities, come together as ambassadors for research at their respective institutions. Organized by USU’s Office of Research, the Research on Capitol Hill (ROCH) event is described as “an annual celebration of undergraduate research” and features students from each of USU’s colleges.
Three students from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences came prepared to engage with legislators and share the results of their research with attendees at this year’s ROCH in the Utah State Capitol rotunda on Jan.18, 2024.
According to the Office of Research, the event is an opportunity for students “to hone their research communication skills and prepare … to engage on a meaningful level with their audience as they showcase the quality of USU’s research and its dedication to the land-grant mission.”
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Hometown: Rigby, ID
Major(s): Sociology with minors in hunger and food security studies, chemistry, and biology
Project title: Weight Discrimination and Food Insecurity
Faculty mentor: Gabriele Ciciurkaite
“In 2020, the professor I work under distributed a survey in the Intermountain West region and asked a series of questions about their demographic. Then we took that dataset, and we inserted it into a code program to understand how it related to each other. … We found that any level of being food insecure or lacking consistent access to food increased your chance significantly of experiencing weight discrimination when you compare them to a person with full food security.”
“It helps me apply what I learn in classes in the real world and also it changes the way I think about different problems I face. For example, I've always cared about people who don't have access to food, but now I know more about this demographic.”
Department of English
Hometown: West Jordan, UT
Major(s): English, creative writing emphasis with a minor in linguistics
Project title: Queering the Herbarium: Plants, Poetry, and Multimodal Expression
Faculty mentor: Christine Cooper-Rompato
“The first time I interacted with … poetry like this was in Dr. Ben Gunsberg's class. We were learning about multimodal poetry and that's when I first got acquainted with poetry that can be fun and interesting and more immersive.”
“I went to USU's herbarium and I went to the University of Utah’s … and Weber State University's herbarium[s]. I looked through plant specimens to see how they were put on the page, how they visually looked, what they were adhesed with, and how long they've lasted with the ways they were preserved. The original goal of my project was to look at 19th-century herbarium specifically, but I got more interested in the weird specimens.”
Department of History and Department of Political Science
Hometown: Amalga, UT
Major(s): History and Political Science
Project title: Mormonism and the Utah Sugar Economy
Faculty mentor: Susan Cogan
“The main thing … that was super interesting to me was how sugar was pushed … not just by the Sugar Beat industry … but because of the incentives that were provided in the social, economic, governmental, and religious sectors.”
“I have gotten the opportunity to talk to some really cool people today — a couple of different legislators, senators, and representatives who were interested in the idea, so I am just so grateful that I was able to have this experience.”
15 undergraduate English students from Logan, Vernal, and Ephraim campuses presented at the 100th Sigma Tau Delta International English Honors Society Convention and won awards in three categories.
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