Education Commons^™

Research In Contemporary Painting, Sutton Allen

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

With these works I am exploring the boundaries of contemporary image-making and oil painting, beginning with traditional paint application approaches such as grisailles, glazes, and scumbles, and ending with materials such as plaster, spray paint, and various chemicals. These images come from various mass media sources such as Google, The New York Times, and CNN. In making these paintings I have created and destroyed several times over the images that compose them in order to emulate the actual world of unknowing and falsehoods. Most importantly, I intend for these works to expand the overall vocabulary of painting and reestablish the …

Palinoia, Jill Bond

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

The idea of restrictive and regimented female beauty standards is certainly not a new concept, but rarely are the repetitive, destructive, and exploitive aspects analyzed in a cinematic setting. This realization sparked the idea for Palinoia: a three minute and thirty-four second film dedicated to the artistic exploration of this very topic. Starting with the title itself, “palinoia” is defined as the obsessive or compulsive repetition of an action until it is mastered or perfect – a rather accurate statement when looked at in the context of female actions in response to societal beauty standards and expectations. This definition ultimately …

Tears Of A Jester, Anjali Chacko

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

As I stared at my former doctor in her casket, I felt my throat tighten and the stomach acid climb up. Mary looked so different from the pictures her family had placed near her body. Her skin seemed thicker in death. She appeared much paler, almost sallow, and her body sagged in all the wrong ways. I joined the procession of mourners and thought about how poorly the makeup artist had done their job. I mean, it was bad—it looked as if someone had just slapped some lipstick all over her face and called it a day. I almost laughed …

To What Extent Does Transcendental Meditation (Tm) Relieve Symptoms In Patients With Ptsd?, Sanya Dhami

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that is currently increasing among the general public. Unfortunately, researchers have yet to find an effective treatment. Due to the lack of treatment, Transcendental Meditation has become a popular option and may potentially be an alternative treatment therapy. The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which Transcendental Meditation (TM) relieves symptoms in patients with PTSD by analyzing brain activity. A comparison was also made between traditionally used PTSD therapies and TM. Because the research regarding this topic is relatively new and was more heavily focused on patients with …

Golden Honey, Dom Fonce

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

In the pews, the whispers say

the Eucharist discs delight

the tongue with a dab of golden honey.

I smell a tart perfume not far away.

There is a nakedness being raked

up and caked against me. I have come

here drunk and contrary, losing myself

in these halls—a hum sways from the podium

dais. I want to meet my maker calmly.

I want to beat my faith off walls.

My father’s shadow murmured the Lord’s

Prayer whenever I looked above. My eyes

were young and seething. He died at fifty—

shriveled down and minced, powder-soft,

She Asks For Something Hopeful, Alexander Lane

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

I reach into my pocket

searching

not for the cold-jagged teeth of car keys

—I was going to see him,

the autodidact—

not for almost empty key lime chapstick

—on our one and only coffee

date I took the plastic wrap

of the cap and frayed the edges

small—at first—then

larger—like a flower slow splitting

itself—

—apart—

Walking With Helen, Carter Johnson

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Walk with me, Helen.

Come walk in the Garden of the Gods.

Sit with me under the red rocks

and look - the snowy peaks reach at the sky.

This is a worthy spot to talk,

Here among the green and grand.

Helen, my love,

Your face launched a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.

Your name will not die,

And your story will not cease.

But was it worth it?

Flawed And Formidable: Galadriel, Éowyn, And Tolkien’S Inadvertent Feminism, Rachel Maddox

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

inspiring an intense fan base and Peter Jackson’s multimillion-dollar film series. However, the trilogy’s acceptance in the literary canon has been tepid at best, with critics discrediting the work for relying too heavily on elements of fantasy, while those who accept the trilogy as worthy of literary consideration are forced to confront Tolkien’s sexist views and the manifestation of these beliefs in his work. In keeping with his well-documented misogyny, it appears that Tolkien intentionally excluded women from his narrative: the Entwives are all inexplicably absent, powerful women are excluded from major scenes and events, and there are “more named …

Bridging Aesthetic Theory: Comparing Scottish Enlightenment Theories To Modern Neuroscience Evidence, Calen Smith

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Artistic disciplines burgeoned in Scotland during the eighteenth century. As fields such as sculpture, painting, literature, and music thrived, so did philosophy. Responding to the advancements of the fine arts, philosophers such as Hume, Reid, and Hutcheson began to write about the philosophy of art—aesthetics. Though they addressed a variety of themes in their writings, aesthetic theory can generally be characterized by three main questions: does beauty originate internally (person) or externally (object), are there universal traits that create beauty, and lastly, what is the role of the critique (expert) in recognizing and interpreting beauty? Three hundred years later, academic …

Health Is Wealth: Behavioral Economic "Nudges" Applied To Health Care, Cameron Watts

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

“Health is wealth,” is a common catchphrase adopted by non-profits and clinics to describe the inherent value of investing in one’s physical and mental wellbeing. However, most people do not recognize the truth behind the phrase – the financial return on health investments. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2010, that over 2.3 trillion dollars were spent to treat chronic and mental health diseases, many of which were preventable (Gerteis et al., 2016); Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office expects 966 billion dollars to be spent on Medicare and Medicaid alone in 2018 (Projections for Major Health …

Free To Hate: Can We Justify Curbing Hateful Speech?, Logan Drake

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Hate speech and free speech, and the relationship between the two, have been prominent in the news lately, especially regarding speech on college campuses. It seems to me, however, that the debate usually lacks nuance. One side is portrayed as being free speech absolutists, while the other is seen as creating rules and restrictions that send us down a road towards totalitarianism and tyranny. In reality, however, very few people actually desire either of these extremes. No one wants tyrannical totalitarianism, and nearly everyone will admit that there needs to be, at the very least, restrictions on who can speak …

Consanguinity On The Canvas: Studying Inbreeding In The Habsburg Dynasty Through Portraits, Megan Dillion

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

During the height of their rule in Spain and Austria, the Habsburgs intermarried in order to preserve a strong, purely royal bloodline and to ensure that a Habsburg remained on the throne. For the Habsburg kings in Spain from 1516 to 1700, limpieza de sangre, literally “purity of blood,” was a central principle among Iberian peoples by the fifteenth century that focused initially on keeping Jewish and Moorish blood out of prominent Catholic families. This standard had been crucial since the Reconquista -the gradual expulsion of the Moors which lasted from the 1100s to the 1400s -and took on a …

Utopia And Contemporary Human Society: A Model For Sustainable Continuance, David Blake Corman

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Sir Thomas More’s Utopia outlines a bustling, blissful society in which all individuals live equitably, happily, and comfortably. Utopia, which literally means “no-place,” simply does not exist. However, More provides Utopia as a progressive template through which analogous contemporary social and economic structure may be assessed. Juxtaposing contemporary society with Utopia, a relatively superior or perfect state, illuminates some factors inhibiting modern society from otherwise ascending to the state and functionality of a Utopia.

Behind The Gavel And Under The Robe: Gender Performance In The Courthouse, Sonia Bosch

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Gender” (1987) as a theoretical framework, I aim to understand how men and women in judicial occupations navigate gender roles and power dynamics in a professional setting. Both men and women judges present themselves similarly in their attire and their completion of making rulings on cases. However, men and women show distinct differences in displays of emotion, professional behavior, and responses to challenges or conflicts in the courtroom. Female judges tend to operate in a poised, highly accountable, and emotionally restrained scope, while men tend to show more variation in their emotional displays and have a wider range of behaviors …

Another Apocalypse, Jared Kohn

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

For a brief infinity, all was silent darkness, all were shadows layered lifelessly on top of one another, and the formless figures rattled only to breathe in the impossible abyss. There were no distinctions between woman and blanket, blanket and couch, couch and floor; light failed to reach the isolation of the living room. In fact, this living room seemed to exist before and after the passing of time, a perfect solitude that existed outside of the bells and whistles of the known gloom. The heat was heavy and the body hidden beneath layers of shadow and blanket lurched through …

Who Was Che Guevara?, Kaleb Harkins

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Explanation of Format

◼ To answer this question, I have chosen several musical selections that I feel represent different stages/aspects of Che’s life. For this presentation, I have provided links to these selections along with lyrics, and then a description of my reasoning for each piece.

Painting The Negative Space: How Faulkner Silhouettes The Living Ghost Of Flem Snopes, Jessica Fanczi

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Like porch lights, mosquito bites, and last-minute glasses of sweet tea, ghost stories are an experience innate to the South after dark. Whether or not a person believes them, these tales have the ability to characterize houses, streets, even entire cities. For the citizens of Frenchman’s Bend in William Faulkner’s The Hamlet, convoluted stories of Antebellum and Civil War ghosts permeate the area. Distracted by the buried men of the past, the people of Frenchman’s Bend fail to realize that they themselves are living in one of the most sprawling, epic ghost stories ever to unfold in Mississippi: the story …

Lyrics For Magnolia, Too, Sreyash Sarkar

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

As the beats of summer

Went down

Went down in Sorbonne

We were together

We were together

In the shades

Of perplexity

And magnolia too.

Talking of death

What would

What would indeed

Happen after that

Application Of The Modified Finite Difference Method To The 1-D Schrödinger Equation, Trevor A. Robertson, Jay Wang

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

The time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) is a fundamental law in understanding the states of many microscopic systems. Such systems occur in nearly all branches of physics and engineering, including high-energy physics, solid-state physics, and semiconductor engineering, just to name a few. A robust and efficient algorithm to solve this equation would be highly sought-after in these respective fields. This study utilizes the well-known method for solving the TDSE, the finite difference method (FDM), but with an important modification to conserve flux and analyze the 1-D case given well-known potentials. Numerical results that agree with theoretical predictions are reported. [3] It …

Burger Reward, Spencer Patterson

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Family pictures deserve a reward. I’m not trying to pull off facial yoga for an hour and not get something out of it. My fifteen-year-old self can only handle my five younger brothers for so long. So, what exactly is the reward? A trip to Five Guys, featuring greasy burgers and big wedgy fries.

“Order number fifty-one, fifty-one!”

Dad holds both Nehemiah, eight months old, and the door to Five Guys for my mom, myself, Samuel, Elijah, Caleb, and Luke. I breathe in the smell of burgers that weigh in at three-and-a-half inches and 800 Calories. A fat man who’s …

1 In 4, Audrey Miklitsch

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

The statistic that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted has been repeated over and over again. I wanted to create a piece that allowed women to react to their experience with sexual assault. Through the Red Tape Project at the University of Denver, as well as my own friends and family, I found a variety of women to participate in the piece. Some participants chose to do it together, while others made their creation in private. Each participant was given six cardboard squares. They were simply told to react to their experience using the squares. They could do anything …

A Comparison Of Corrosion Potential, Installation, Maintenance, And Anti-Microbial Efficacy: Copper Combined With A Polymer Matrix Or Stainless Steel For Use In A Hospital Setting, Barika Mirza

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

According to Boev and Kiss in their article, “Hospital-Acquired Infections,” hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), also known as nosocomial infections, are currently the leading cause of deaths and disability in hospitalized patients (2017, p. 51), so they cost both patients and hospitals a lot of money. As of right now, QualityNet reports on their “Scoring Methodology” page that Obamacare’s Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program requires for hospitals with high cases of HACs to be subject to a reduction of Medicare payments (n.d.). The World Health Organization explains in Prevention of hospital-acquired infections: A practical guide, 2nd edition that HAIs can be acquired …

Conservative Colonization: An Ethical Analysis Of Galactic Expansion, Parker Vesely

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Space: the final frontier. Humanity has long held a fond appreciation for this vast unknown, and it has been featured in both art and academia since the dawn of time. Scientific knowledge of both the Earth and the solar system have greatly advanced in the last seventy years since humanity launched its first object, a German V-2 rocket, into the atmosphere. This obsessive curiosity did not cease with the Lunar Landing, but instead increased ten-fold with dreams of extraterrestrial life and extraterrestrial living. As the day humans will set foot on Mars steadily approaches, humankind faces a daunting dilemma: how …

Closet Land: Combining Theatre And Film For A Psychological Thrill, Ashley Snead, Janet Hayatshahi

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

This paper reflects an intense study of the benefits of how film can be integrated into theatrical live performance. Traditionally, live theatrical performance has used three-dimensional bodies in space to help in its storytelling. This research seeks to find ways in which live performance can be complimented through the use of multimedia components. Based on an analysis of the script Closet Land, by Radha Bharadwaj, this research highlights moments from the text by showing how the use of video and still images displayed through projectors in the live performance enhances the storytelling and gives broader depth to the characters’ subconscious …