Ashley Gillem and Joshua Cook, both of Kokomo, and Marley Griffin of Galveston made presentations on research completed at IU Kokomo in the past year. Their projects were:

Gillem: "Sex-Related Differences in Stored Energy Reserves in Spring-Breeding Hylid Frogs," with Michael Finkler, associate professor of biology, as mentor.

Cook: "The Social Context of Feste and Malvolio: Shakespeare's Use of Dichotomy in 'Twelfth Night,' " with Terri Bourus, assistant professor of English, as mentor.

Griffin: "Detection of E. Coli O157:H7 in Local Watersheds in Indiana," with Christian Chauret, associate professor of biology, as mentor.

"The conference gives them an opportunity to make their work available to a larger audience, receive helpful comments from other scholars and scientists, and receive a greater degree of recognition," said Robert Strikwerda, director of the Honors Program, who coordinated the trip to IUPUI. The conference was open to students in all academic disciplines at the eight IU campuses.

Ron Withers of Peru participated in a new feature of the conference, a roundtable for those in earlier stages of their work. "He is focusing on the history of Peru," said Strikwerda, who serves as Withers' research mentor, along with Jon Kofas, professor of history. "(Withers) was able to hear how other students were developing their projects and received some helpful suggestions for how to structure his research."

Strikwerda called the four students "talented people whom their mentors expect to achieve much more after IU Kokomo."

"The conference was a great chance for them to get experience communicating what they have done. Sometimes, IU Kokomo students do not realize how good they are. Presenting off campus helps them realize their own accomplishments."

Finkler and Chauret received Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) grants in 2004 to support their initial mentoring work with Gillem and Griffin, respectively. Impressed by Gillem's work on their URSI effort, titled "Total Bacterial Content in the Eggs of Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) and Midland Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta marginata)," Finkler invited Gillem to conduct an alternative study under a spring grant-in-aid he received from IU Kokomo.

The student and teacher have developed and made several public presentations of their findings. Finkler delivered a paper jointly authored with Gillem to the Indiana Academy of Science meeting in October, and both presented additional research results at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in San Diego in January. A biological and physical sciences major with an interest in genetics, Gillem has been "open to exploring ecology, environmental physiology" and other disciplines in the research work, Finkler said.

Gillem will graduate through IU Kokomo in May, and her research work has helped her "career-wise," Finkler said. "She has been accepted into the master of environmental science degree program at Taylor University. The plan is to have her conduct her thesis research on campus, so she will still be around IU Kokomo for the next couple of years."

Gillem will also assist Finkler on a 2005 URSI project on turtle egg microbiology.