Student research highlighted at annual UWEC CERCA event

EAU CLAIRE — Throughout the week at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, student research stands in the spotlight.

“The whole week is our showcase of undergraduate student research and creative activity,” said Erica Benson, executive director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. “CERCA stands for Celebration of Excellence in Research and Creative Activity, and our focus is really on the undergraduate research and the work they are doing.”

As students at the University engage with their research over the academic year and summer, a number of scheduled presentations, discussions and showcases throughout the week highlight the work of 516 students.

The research incorporates topics from many disciplines and majors, from music and theater to physics, where students typically work in collaboration with a faculty member, organization or local businesses.

On Wednesday, students presented research findings as part of an open posters exhibition. A second open poster session will take place on campus on Thursday, Apr. 25 from 2-4 p.m.

“To present the work that they’ve done to others is a part of the research cycle, but it is also a really great opportunity for everyone else on campus to see what our students are working on,” said Benson.

At one presentation, a group of second-year graduate students, while collaborating with assistant professor in kinesiology Rachel Kleis, studied the association between mental health and bone health.

“We wanted to see with our athletes here what their bone density was looking like while comparing it to their mental health statuses,” said Olivia Cammers, lead presenter.

Cammers said that they gathered data on bone density of the athletes through a DEXA scan while having the same athletes fill out two mental health surveys which look for common symptoms associated with mental health.

“From that, we compared the two and we actually got significance between the bone density and mental health symptoms with depression and anxiety — not so much stress, which we thought was interesting,” she said. “This shows that these athletes still need coping factors to help with mental health, and looking forward: will these have long term effects on them?”

As for why they chose to research this topic, groupmates Madee Kleinschmidt and Abby Robrecht said they were interested in the overall health of their athletes as athletic training students. Furthermore, developing their own skills and knowledge in a rather unknown field was a benefit to them, and the students wanted to look at mental health as it was a personal interest to them.

This is the case for a lot of students, as personal interest is one of the most important driving forces that leads these students to research their topic.

Elaina Plonis, a sophomore at UW-Eau Claire, said her interests and research towards building models of white dwarf stars with MESA, Modules for Experimentation in Stellar Astrophysics, began when she was a freshman. She worked with her faculty mentor William Wolf, assistant professor in physics and astronomy.

As observing the timeline of a star is impossible to do as humans, models are important in order to help understand more about our galaxy. Plonis said that computer models of white dwarfs, which are the remnants of average-sized stars like the sun, already exist but need improvement.

“Our goal is to create these models of white dwarf stars a lot quicker than if we used the traditional method,” she said. “Our end goal is to have a huge suite of different white dwarf test cases, of different initial masses, temperatures and compositions, that we can easily analyze and study.”

Plonis said she was very proud and happy to be able to showcase the work she has done. While her research is not necessarily about getting results from analysis, she said chipping away at problems and showing where we are today with technology is also important.

And what is important to note for a lot of these research projects, like Gabriel Smerillo and Wesley Hart’s study on COVID and pollution in collaboration with Assistant Professor in Economics Divya Sadana, is that there is also real-world application.

“As we all know, there was a significant decrease in pollution as COVID came around just because things were starting to get shut down — you had less people driving, some entire industries had to shut down…” said Smerillo, pointing to CDC data. “But what we wanted to determine is: what proportion of this decrease in air pollution is caused by stay-at-home orders?”

By analyzing 2020 data, comparing two groups before and after treatment and looking for groups with similar trends, Smerillo said the time of the pandemic provided the world with a unique set of circumstances which people can now learn from.

“Long story short, what we found was that counties that used stay-at-home orders saw an average 10 percent decrease in air pollution levels than counties that did not,” he said. “Personally, I think the more important thing is what we are going to do in the future with these findings. What we hope to do next is take our findings and try to determine if there are any positive health benefits, primarily with respiratory diseases, because of the decrease in air pollution.”

With what could result from the research, Smerillo said it can point organizations and legislation towards setting safe air pollutant levels based on reliable research.

Although their professor started the project, Smerillo said it was an interesting opportunity to look into some of that data and find the answers to this question themselves. As opportunities to continue the research in the future exist, Hart said that this contribution is just one piece of the puzzle.

With many more students presenting different studies, Benson said that a week of celebrating research and creative activity really shows that work is being done all around campus. It is both a culmination of student effort and faculty advisor’s belief in the students which culminate to the success of the research.

When it comes to the significance of this event, Benson said that being able to communicate their findings with a wider audience and learn from one another is an important skill to take away.

“This is an important part of the research process: dissemination of the work,” said Benson. “You can’t just do work and that’s it — you’ve got to talk about it with other people and let them know. This is an opportunity for students to present their findings.”