USOAR program begins third year

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USOAR program begins third year

by Mark McGowan

College is indeed a place to spread one's wings.

Who better, then, to represent that transformation than the 44 recipients of Northern Illinois University's unique USOAR grants?
USOAR—Undergraduate Special Opportunities in Artistry and Research—is a grant program funded by the university's deal with Pepsi that allows undergraduate students to apply for dollars that fund research, often involving trips to other states or other countries overseas. This year's crop of recipients are completing projects everywhere from DeKalb to far-away places such as China and Peru.

Click here for the USOAR Web site

The 44 students were recognized Wednesday, March 27, at a luncheon attended by NIU President John Peters.

"NIU is blessed with thousands of bright and hard-working students interested in improving themselves and taking advantage of the extraordinary opportunities we offer for learning," Interim Vice Provost Robert Wheeler said. "Those we celebrate today are some of the best and brightest."

USOAR, now in its third year, makes grants of up to $2,500 available to students who propose projects to their individual colleges and find faculty members to serve as supervisors. Administrators and faculty in each of the six degree-granting colleges then rank and forward the projects to the university for consideration.

Projects funded span a great distance, academically and geographically. Some include:

One student will present a paper at an international conference on E-business in Beijing, China.
Students in engineering are working on an unmanned aerial vehicle, a bi-pedal walking machine and an automated golf pull cart.
An anthropology major is examining literary heroines and solving the self-esteem problems of adolescent girls. A classmate will conduct archeological research in the Pativilca Valley on the central coast of Peru.
A business student is conducting a cross-cultural comparison of fellow business students to gauge their perception of job market success in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
A sociology major will study lifestyles of a single mom at NIU.
A student in clinical laboratory sciences will research the frequency of Type II diabetes in Alzheimer's patients.

"They're so different. They represent a tremendous cross-section of the university," Wheeler said of this year's recipients. "What I find most interesting are the projects that appear to be transformational, where after completing the project, the student's life is probably not going to be the same."

Wheeler said he hopes more students submit proposals next year.

He plans to conduct workshops on USOAR to better explain the opportunities and the process, primarily to distinguish it from the Study Abroad program, which allows students to take classes overseas. USOAR, by definition, requires independent work.

"That's a distinction we hope to make more clear," he said. "We really would like a lot of students to go overseas, but they must introduce independent research or artistry."