The 2015 Symposium of Undergraduate Research and Public Service (SURPS), held on the Thursday afternoon of Reunion Homecoming weekend, showcased a diverse array of student research, senior capstone and public service projects. The event took place at Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center and was frequented by numerous curious alumni.

Accepted through an online application process, around 100 students presented at the symposium, according to Associate Dean of Undergraduate Research Opportunities Brian Thomas. He added that the number of presentations is only a fraction of the roughly 1,000 students who engage in mentored research through Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) funding programs.

“We are really excited about that confluence of intellectual work and community-oriented work that some of those projects exhibit,” Thomas said. “It’s really nice to see a significant share of these students having done a public service project.”

Visitors of the event largely consisted of alumni as well as students and faculty members. Thomas said that it was “thrilling” to see the return of alumni who have presented at SURPS in the last 14 years since the symposium’s conception.

“We’ve found that the alumni are really fascinated by what students now are up to,” he said. “It’s really neat to see students come full circle and come back as alumni and recognize the amount of work that students are putting into their projects.”

Other alumni who had never participated in research, like Ken Carlson ’55, were impressed by the innovative and rigorous projects that students presented at the event.

“[Students’ research] is much more sophisticated, much more far-advanced [today],” Carlson said. “Some of the engineering things they’re teaching today weren’t even discovered when I was here.”

Jacqui Bowles ’75 added that the opportunities for research have improved since the pre-microchip “olden days” of typing in a “dead silent” laboratory.

“When I was going to school, research wasn’t even something I would have considered,” Bowles said. “Later, I did learn that it was much more than just being at the lab. I understand the importance, the breadth of research now and how research can drive policy.”

Bowles also said she spent a couple hours roaming the exhibits, engaging in “fascinating” conversations with the students.

“It’s so exciting because the projects are very diverse; there are so many areas that I wish I could have done that are so interesting,” Bowles said. “I think it’s very inspirational and there’s hope for the future.”

Students’ perspectives

Meaghan Carley ’16 presented the beginnings of her humanities thesis in Classics on the ancient Roman poet Catullus’ manipulations of traditional understandings of gender. Pointing to a line from Catullus 7 tattooed on her arm, Carley said her zeal for classics and gender politics motivated her to engage in this “sustained intellectual project.”

“It’s great to be at this event, especially as a humanities person, because I’m standing here next to people who are in bioengineering and social sciences, and it’s cool that we get to come together at this event and have different kinds of projects all together,” Carley said.

She added that presenting to alumni gave her the unique opportunity to focus her ideas so they can be easily explained to a general audience.

“It’s people who were at Stanford, but they might not have had any experience in classics or in literature, or it might have been 50 years since they did, and so it certainly helped me hone and focus in on exactly what I’m trying to do,” Carley said.

In addition to senior theses, the symposium featured interdisciplinary projects such as that of James Sherwood ’17, a theater and performance studies (TAPS) and economics double major, and Matt Lathrop ’16, a computer science major and TAPS minor. Sherwood and Lathrop helped build a low-cost, 25-foot-tall LED wall for theatrical productions that can be rebuilt and repurposed due to its modular design.

“It was a big reward — knowing that we were able to build something that works,” Lathrop said. “We found the money for it, made the plans, built it, built the software to run it and then came back and said, let’s use it again.”

Thomas said that SURPS can be a valuable experience for students to communicate their projects to the broader Stanford community and generate meaningful conversations about future work.

“A good project turns into a lot of questions at the end, and the conversations they have at an event like this can propel them into what they want to do next,” Thomas said.

 

Contact Deepti Kannan at dkannan ‘at’ stanford.edu.