Three stu
dents who completed projects this past summer as part of Research Immersion: Pathways to STEM (RiPS) presented their research at the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) held in Washington DC on February 19-21, 2015.
All three students completed their summer research projects while attending Garden City Community College in Garden City, KS. The RiPS program is an 8-week summer program hosted by the Kansas Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (KS-LSAMP). One goal of this summer program is to increase participation of underrepresented students in STEM fields by introducing them to the process of science as well as the university-atmosphere.
Binh Hua (Garden City, KS) presented a poster titled “Data Analysis to Improve Physics Education”. Her K-State mentor was Dr. William Hsu, Department of Computing and Information Sciences.
Itzel Moreno-Rodriguez (Garden City, KS) presented a poster titled “Pancreatic War”. Her K-State mentor was Dr. Sherry Flemings, Department of Biology.
Andres Pacheco Olivas (Garden City, KS) presented a poster titled “Variation in Water Quality Between Urban and Rural Reaches of Wildcat Creek”. His K-State mentor was Dr. Matthew Kirk, Department of Geology.
Jasper Hobbs, KS-LSA
MP graduate research assistant, presented an oral presentation during the conference. His presentation titled “Petrologic Constraints of Cambrian Volcanism in the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen” won first place. Jasper is currently a graduate student in the Department of Geology. His major advisor is Dr. Matthew Brueseke.
All student presenters received travel awards from the ERN conference. The ERN conference is hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Education and Human Resources Programs (EHR) and the Nation Science Foundation Division of Human Resources Development (HRD). The conference is student-focused with an emphasis on college and university undergraduate and graduate students. One objective of the conference was to help students improve their communication skills. This was evident by the number of student presenters with about 750 undergraduate and graduate student abstracts for oral and poster presentations. The conference offered professional development workshops as well as several opportunities for students to attend the exhibitor fair. This fair included representatives from academic, government and non-profit sectors. 
Also attending the conference were Brenee King, KS-LSAMP project coordinator; Kimathi Choma, Interim assistant dean for diversity, recruitment and retention for the College of Arts and Sciences and Arthur Nonhof, Instructor of Biology at Garden City Community College.