With the help of the Richard Frank Grant, three Loyola students are exploring a range of independent research topics this semester.

The Student Government Academic Affairs Committee announced the recipients of the Richard Frank Grant on October 7.

The committee awarded a total of $10,000 to three Loyola students for various academic projects. SGA established the Richard Frank Grant in 2005 to encourage students to engage in independent research projects and to learn about grant writing.

“This was one of the most competitive years ever,” said political science and history junior Casey Trahan, Academic Affairs Committee chair. “Loyola students are doing really amazing things, and not many people know about it.”

LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING

Eliot Sanchez – political science, economics and philosophy honors junior – ranked first among the three recipients of the Richard Frank Grant. Sanchez’s project, which he hopes to complete by the end of the spring semester, concerns the state of the public school system in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“I grew up in the Louisiana public school system,” Sanchez said. “My experiences made me ask, ‘Do public schools work?'”

After Katrina the majority of New Orleans public schools became charter schools, meaning that they now function independently of the school district and the city. This switch means that the city, in some cases, no longer assigns students to schools according to district; students are free to attend whichever charter school they wish until it fills to capacity.

This may have been a good start to equalizing schools in New Orleans, Sanchez said, but it also resulted in a lot of confusion at the beginning of the fall semester.

“Bussing was a major issue on the first day of school. There was no system for getting kids to the charter schools because everyone was going to different places,” Sanchez said.

Surveys and interviews, for which Sanchez received $230.94 from SGA, will constitute the bulk of his research. He plans to work with parents and students from three charter schools near Loyola’s campus.

“I want to assess how comfortable both parents and students are with the changes to their schools,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez became interested in urban education after taking classes with Peter Burns, an associate professor of political science who acted as his advisor for the grant application and who also specializes in urban education reform.

Sanchez worked as an intern at the state capitol this summer and is also the SGA president of the College of Humanities and Natural Sciences, a member of the University Programming Board and the editor of the Loyola Student Journal of Economics.

END OF THE ROAD

Robert Hartsock has traveled a long road to the Richard Frank Grant; he applied for the grant twice in the past, but only this year did he rank high enough to receive money for his research.

Hartsock, an honors chemistry senior, ranked second and received $8,979 for his project, a cavity ring down spectrometer.

“I just thought, ‘Yes! Thank you!’ when I got it. It’s about time. I really needed this money to do what I’m doing,” Hartsock said.

Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction of light with matter, and cavity ring down spectroscopy involves the absorption of light. The spectrometer measures the rate of light absorption when lasers bounce between mirrors and can be used for a variety of tasks, including non-invasive tests for bacterial infections and analyzing conditions in the earth’s atmosphere. The device must be extremely sensitive, which is what Hartsock hopes to perfect through his research.

“It’s simply a tool that can be used to analyze data. We’re building it because it needs to be done,” Hartsock said.

Improving the spectrometer requires repetitive tests and observation, which can be time consuming for a student still trying to complete his undergraduate degree.

“For undergraduate scientific research you have to work really hard,” Hartsock said. “I’m in the lab whenever I have free time.”

Hartsock plans to graduate in the spring and hopes to go on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which features an acclaimed laser program. He is also a founding brother and an officer of Alpha Chi Sigma, a national chemistry fraternity.

FISHY RESEARCH

Rachel Nuwer’s undergraduate research took her all the way to Southeast Asia.

Nuwer, a biology senior, participated in a project attempting to domesticate three species of fish indigenous to southern Laos this past summer. Nuwer worked mainly with species from the Mekong River, which has been over fished by people in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand due to a lack of regulation.

“These people don’t realize the ecology involved in over-fishing. They’re just trying to get by, but it’s decimating the native species,” Nuwer said.

Nuwer, who received $790.06 from SGA, was initially studying in Vietnam for the summer, but after meeting biologists working on the fish project in Laos, she decided to stay and assist the researchers.

“I worked with a really diverse group of people,” Nuwer said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Nuwer’s work included collecting live fish from local fisherman and identifying depleted species. To boost fish population in the river, the team injected some female fish with hormones to encourage spawning. They also collected fish ovaries and sperm to fertilize eggs. Nuwer’s workdays often spanned 18 hours or more.

“It was intense but I got an incredible amount of work done in two months,” Nuwer said.

Nuwer believes that her position with the research team allowed her a special view of life in Laos.

“I think that the fact that I was working near fishermen gave me an experience that most tourists don’t have,” Nuwer said.

Nuwer, who says that as a child she “wanted to be an Amazon rainforest explorer,” will graduate in the spring and wants to continue doing field-based research. She is also a member of the cross country team and Beta Beta Beta, a national biological honor society.

PROCESS ‘OBJECTIVE’

In order to apply for the grant, students must complete the two part process laid out by SGA bylaws.

The first part is qualitative; applicants must answer questions concerning the nature and merits of their respective projects. The second portion requires a detailed list of all expenses necessary to the student’s research. Each applicant must also submit a recommendation from the professor supervising his or her project.

Students are encouraged to attend a “justification meeting” prior to voting, at which applicants can make presentations to clarify their aims. This year more than half of the applicants presented their ideas. After justification, a committee of seven SGA members reviews the applications before making a decision.

The committee then ranks the applicants, and whoever is ranked first is entitled to as much of the $10,000 grant as his or her project requires. The second-ranked applicant then receives whatever amount he or she requested, and so on, until all the money has been allocated.

“We try to put personal feelings about the projects aside and objectively look at the applications,” said Trahan.

Though committee members said proceedings ran smoothly this year, there was some dissent as to whether the committee is varied enough to assess applications from all majors.

Hartsock said that the lack of science majors on the committee made applying more difficult. “I don’t know that SGA is capable of making those decisions without someone present who is extremely knowledgeable about science,” Hartsock said. “More complicated projects have to really be simplified, but it’s their money.”

Trahan cited post-Katrina recovery and a limited congress as reasons for possible shortcomings.

“After Katrina there were so many holes in congress that things were kind of disorganized for a while,” Trahan said. “With the amount of people on the committee we can’t represent every single kind of project, but we can learn and make a decision.”

The second installment of the Richard Frank Grant will be issued in the spring semester.

Maggie Calmes can be reached at [email protected].

Richard Frank Grant recipient Robert Hartsock sets up his cavity ring down spectrometer in a Monroe chemistry lab. (Anne Fisher)