Ritney presenting weekly updates of human trafficking research to the team during teh Summer Research Intensive.
Ritney Coleman is a rising senior pursuing a B.S. in Economics with Financial Applications. A military veteran, he initially aimed to major in accounting and become a CPA, but decided on a different career path where he felt he could make more of a societal impact. Ritney found the Non-Profit Organization and Concept Primer course (offered through the Economics department) to be “one of the most impactful courses and added to my understanding of non-profits and how they are managed.” This course provided the theoretical concepts needed to thrive in the non-profit sector, while Ritney’s internships and volunteering brought classroom concepts to life.
Ritney credits SMU’s vast resources with helping him focus on his passion for research and non-profit leadership. During his junior year, Dr. Wendelin Donahue, SMU Director of Community Engagement, helped Ritney gain practical experience by collaborating with local non-profits through community events. Ritney’s goal is to develop a non-profit that serves disadvantaged youth by providing various opportunities through field trips, seminars, sports programs, and college access support.
Ritney emphasizes the importance of networking and engaged actively with professors to uncover learning opportunities. This summer, he is a research assistant for Dr. Elizabeth Wheaton-Páramo, Research Associate Professor in Economics through the Office of Engaged Learning’s Summer Research Intensive. In his work with Dr. Wheaton-Páramo, Ritney is using the SMU human trafficking data warehouse to gather data on organized crime groups transition between smuggling and human trafficking. Sometimes it’s difficult to relate the theoretical course work to practical experiences, but Ritney noted that the knowledge obtained in his Introductory Econometrics class has helped him “feel confident analyzing data” in his summer research project.
When asked about his advice for incoming first-year students, Ritney said, “the opportunities are available, but students need to be active, not passive, in their networking pursuits. I was able to get an internship by simply asking my professor.” Ritney recommends first and second year undergraduate students schedule an appointment with the Hegi Family Career Development Center early for resume prep and to build their LinkedIn profile. He also credits his peers in the Economics department for providing him with useful resources.
For students interested in data analysis and practical skills development, Ritney suggests exploring the Bloomberg Terminals in the Business Library, where he is currently pursuing the Bloomberg Market Concepts Certificate.
Summer undergraduate research is off and running with the Office of Engaged Learning!
37 SMU students will be participating in the fourth annual Summer Research Intensive, working alongside 25 faculty members in the Cox School of Business, Dedman College, Dedman School of Law, Lyle School of Engineering, and Simmons School of Education and Human Development. In the SRI, students will work on faculty research projects and attend professional development workshops throughout the summer. The program also creates a community and cohort experience for student researchers to interact and collaborate.
As part of the Summer Research Intensive, OEL sponsors theSummer Research Symposium, a weekly speaker series highlighting research and innovation by SMU faculty and invited guests. The symposium series will take place Wednesdays from 12-1pm in the Hughes-Trigg Chamber with lunch provided. These events are open to the public!
2024 Summer Research Symposium Speakers
6/12: Dr. Beth Wheaton-Páramo, Economics
6/19: Dr. Peng Tao, Chemistry
6/26: Dr. Alexander Chase, Earth Sciences
7/10: Faculty Panel: How do I get a Grant?
7/17: Dr. Jeanna Wieselmann, Teaching & Learning
7/24: Faculty panel: Resilience in Research
Starting June 3, OEL and the Department of Statistics and Data Science will host the third annual Data Science for Social Good Research Experience for Undergraduates. 12 undergraduate students from across the country will attend the 8-week program to learn how to use data science tools to find solutions to economic and environmental problems affecting the Dallas community. The students will work in teams under the guidance of SMU faculty mentors Dr. Cullum Clark (Bush Institute/Economics), Dr. Anthony Petrosino (Teaching & Learning), Dr. Beth Wheaton-Páramo (Economics), and Dr. Mary Spector (Law). Stay tuned for more about the participants and their projects.
Congrats to (L-R in group picture) Anish Senthilkumar, Karen Lin, Elisabeth Hood, Anna Su, Sadikshya Sitaula, Kevin Nguyen, Jonathan Thomas, Vivian Thai on presenting at NCUR 2024!
These eight SMU students had the incredible opportunity to present their research and creative work at theNational Conference for Undergraduate Research 2024. They traveled to California State University, where they were able to interact with students and faculty from universities across the country for an exciting conference.
Here is more from a few of the students about their thoughts on the experience:
Preparing for the Conference:
Ellie Hood ’24: The best way I found to prepare for the conference was to attend the Undergraduate Poster Session! Being able to practice poster presentations on a smaller scale gave me confidence in myself and my research going into a much bigger poster session like NCUR!
Kevin Nguyen ’24: I prepared for the conference by making my poster. I made it early because I had the American Chemical Society conference a few weeks before. Thus, I had enough practice presenting my poster after that initial conference.
Vivian Thai ’25: I have been working on my project for almost 2 years prior to the conference, but to prepare specifically for NCUR, I scheduled a meeting with my PI and went over the data that I wanted to present. After that, I submitted an abstract and continued collecting leftover data until I was ready to make my poster. I had several meetings with my professor to draft my poster and I also presented at SMU’s Research & Innovation Week to prepare.
The NCUR Experience:
Ellie: To put it simply, NCUR was an intellectual feast. Not only was it fun and encouraging to share my own research, I also had the best time hearing about everyone else’s research! Every single poster and presentation that I came across was so interesting, and it’s so inspiring to me that so many undergraduates are dedicated to academia.
Kevin: My experience with the conference was incredibly rewarding. I only presented on one day, but for the other days, I went to see other SMU students’ presentations. Even then, I visited fellow chemistry undergraduates and saw their work. When I had time, I enjoyed the beach, hung out with friends, and relaxed in the hotel.
Vivian: My experience at the conference was amazing! I had the opportunity to do a poster presentation, but attendees were also able to watch other poster presentations and oral presentations. One of my favorite things about NCUR is that it’s a huge conference, so there is a large variety of topics. I listened to presentations with focuses ranging from Formula One to programming robots in agriculture. In addition, there was plenty of free time to explore the city. NCUR 2024 was hosted in Long Beach, CA and it was so much fun exploring the area and going to the beach.
Advice for Future NCUR Presenters:
Ellie: For future NCUR presenters, I say have fun with it! Don’t get in your head about whether or not your research is good enough to be at NCUR. If you’re at NCUR, you have something great to offer! Take time to see as many posters and presentations as you can, spend time with the other SMU presenters, and really soak it all in. Also, there are lots of grad schools tabling at NCUR. If you’re unsure about your post-grad plans but know that you want to pursue graduate education, definitely take the time to talk to the schools!
Kevin: For future presenters of NCUR, I recommend “selling” your presentations well. For poster presentations specifically, eye-catching titles and enthusiastic demeanors help to grab people’s attention and allow you to network with them. Also, please take some time to see other people’s work, as they could enlighten you on where you might go next in your research!
Vivian: Try to start your presentation in advance in case anything comes up. If you’re doing a poster, practice your spiel in the days leading up so you feel confident on the day of your presentation. Also, NCUR is a great opportunity for students who have never presented their research before. The environment is very welcoming and everyone is eager to hear about your research, so don’t stress too much about it!
Research & Innovation Week is two weeks away and we’re looking for students to present at the Undergraduate Poster Session. The deadline for students to register is Monday, March 18.
Please encourage your students to participate! This is a great opportunity for undergraduates to share their research with the SMU community, and to compete for cash prizes.
The Undergraduate Poster Session will be held Tuesday, April 2 from 2-5pm in the Moody Hall Atrium. For more information about the poster session and other events, visit smu.edu/riw.
The Office of Engaged Learning looks forward to a productive summer of research! Summer Research Intensive provides funding to chosen faculty to hire Undergraduate Research Assistants and provides these students with specialized training in research methods, oral and written presentation techniques, and other professional development skills.
This summer 30 undergraduate students will support the research of 19 faculty members in Dedman College, Dedman School of Law, Lyle School of Engineering, and Simmons School of Education and Human Development. Students are expected to research alongside faculty, participate in workshops and a present their work in a 3-Minute Thesis competition.
SRI workshop
Throughout the summer students have an opportunity to interact with faculty across disciplines through the Summer Symposium, a speaker series on research and innovation.
Symposium speakers include Candace Walkington (Associate Professor, Teaching & Learning), Mary Spector (Professor, Dedman School of Law), Anindita Das (Assistant Professor, Chemistry), Ernest Jouriles (Professor, Psychology), and Eli Olinick (Associate Professor, Operations Research & Engineering Management).
Previous students who’ve participated in SRI said, “This project has reaffirmed my desires to pursue an MD/PhD. . . [and] has helped me to become more confident in my love for research.”
This summer SMU will also host students from other universities as part of the National Science Foundation program “Research Experiences for Undergraduates” with programs in Data Science, Chemistry, and Mathematics.
I asked our students for their thoughts on the experience:
The NCUR experience
Shriya Siddhartha with her poster
Shriya Siddhartha ’26: Attending NCUR was a wonderful opportunity and the experience of a lifetime. It was such a pleasure to present the results of my research to a wider audience. I enjoyed connecting with student researchers from around the world and learning about the incredible work being conducted at their respective institutes.
Vivian Thai with her poster
Vivian Thai ’25: NCUR was an incredible opportunity to network with undergraduates and professors and I’m so glad I attended NCUR for my first poster presentation. My favorite aspect was connecting with other passionate students and observing the most talented presentations I have ever seen.
Regina Nguyen ’24: When my abstract was accepted to NCUR 2023, I knew I had been given the opportunity to present the project that made me passionate about research. Indeed, I was able to share my work in a low-pressure, supportive environment.
Jonathan Thomas with his poster
Jonathan Thomas ’25: NCUR was such an enriching experience for me as an undergraduate researcher. Not only did I get the chance to meet with exceptional researchers from a variety of disciplines from different parts of the globe, but I also got a glimpse into the future of my own field (Civil Engineering) through the groundbreaking work being presented.
Alexandra Savu introducing her film
Alexandra Savu ’23: What I loved the most about NCUR is the environment I got immersed in: being surrounded by ambitious people of my age in whose you can see a burning passion for the topics they are presenting and have researched on brought me more joy and thirst for life.
Making connections
Regina Nguyen and Odran Fitzgerald after their presentation
Odran Fitzgerald ’24: My favorite part about going out to NCUR was meeting different people from around the country that had similar interests as my specific research but approached similar problems from different angles. It was really nice also to see environmental research, and people who were passionate about environmental research in other areas than environmental science and environmental engineering such as social science and biology.
Sandhya Srinivasa with her poster
Sandhya Srinivasa ’23: One of my favorite aspects of NCUR is learning about other individuals’ unique research areas and being able to share mine with them. In particular, in the poster sessions, you can create that 1-to-1 connection with the presenter and learn not only about their topic but about them as well. NCUR is a great first conference to go to because it fosters a community where everyone listens out of curiosity and genuinely wants to uplift each other!
Alexandra: I loved meeting people who care about the details of their work, and who also cared about other people’s projects. I felt heard and important during my presentation as I felt that everyone in the room had a good reason to be there: to fully engage in the movie in front of them. And I am sure all other presenters felt the same.
Mace Cowart presenting an excerpt of his play LINO
Jonathan: One of my favorite projects was from a researcher from the American University in Cairo, who was looking into pavements that could generate electricity through the kinetic energy of people walking on it. Talking with her over how she got into research and her research methodology gave me insight into how other engineers performed research and gave me a chance to “nerd out” with someone who was also deeply interested in novel construction methods.
Regina: I didn’t expect that I would make so many fast friendships formed from mutual excitement for each other’s work regardless of discipline and how rich those would make my experience in Eau Claire. Undeniably. my NCUR connections have made me more excited for a research career and I couldn’t recommend it more.
Any advice for future NCUR presenters?
Vivian: For other undergraduates attending their first conference, I would give the advice to work hard and prepare accordingly, but don’t stress out too much about it. Everyone at the conference is there to learn more about your work and you’re going to have so much fun.
Alexandra: Some advice I would give to new presenters is to have a clear schedule of what presentations they want to attend and to let themselves speak freely during their big moment, without too much “mirror readings”.
Jonathan: My biggest piece of advice to researchers who are planning to go to a large conference like NCUR is that they should try and connect with as many people as possible. It’s such a rare occurrence to be in a room with so many of the brightest undergrads in the world, and it would be a shame to leave without really getting to know anyone. Your network is your net worth as they say, and that’s no different in research.
Previously we had the chance to ask the winners of this year’s poster session some questions about their participation, here is what they had to say:
1. Can you give us a layman’s terms explanation of your project?
Saifiyah:
Saifiyah Zaki ’24 (1st place)
“In this project, I investigated the relationship between chronic (trait) loneliness and momentary (state) loneliness in conjunction with other related variables such as social anxiety and depression. Findings support the “differential reactivity hypothesis” of loneliness, which states that chronically lonely individuals respond differently to the social information in their environment than non-lonely individuals. These findings have important implications for the how we conceptualize, study, and treat loneliness in the future.”
Tyler:
Tyler McCall ’23 (2nd place)
“Constrained choices, or justices for whom some political or non-legal factor limited the size of the selection pool they were drawn from, vote differently than “first picks.” I found that when presidents are constrained in their selection pool when nominating justices, those justices do indeed vote more moderately than when the choice is unconstrained.”
Joshua:
Joshua Ange ’25 (3rd place)
“Light from 14 billion years ago (called the “Cosmic Microwave Background”) gives us clues into what the early universe was like, but often, because of the massive objects in space (like galaxies and galaxy clusters), it becomes warped and distorted on its way to us. We used a “delensing” procedure to reverse the distortion on simulated data to see if we could make more precise inferences about the universe (especially for extensions of our current model of the universe). We found that we could improve the precision of inferences up to the range of 20%-30%, which will be key in deriving as much information as possible from future measurements!”
2. How long have you worked on this project?
Saifiyah:
“I have been working on this project for the entire school year.”
Tyler:
“I have been working on this project for about 9 months now. Last May, I received a research fellowship from the Tower Center to pursue this project. I spent first six or seven months reading through all the cases I used in my study to collect the raw data, and I am now in the “polishing and presenting” stage.”
Joshua:
“I’ve been working on this project since the beginning of the Fall semester through the Hamilton Scholarship.”
3. How did you prepare, design, and print your poster?
Saifiyah:
“Under the guidance of my faculty advisor and graduate student mentor, I developed a draft of short-form, easily digestible text, which I then tried to creatively fit into a “landscape” style design for the poster. I was able to print the poster through the psychology department here on campus.”
Tyler:
“I designed my poster using Canva. Being a business major as well as political science, I have had cause to design many slide decks and flyers throughout my time at SMU, and the many templates and design features available in Canva make creating a professional and visually aesthetic poster very easy. I had it printed through SMU’s copy central; they are absolutely amazing, and had my poster ready in only one day!”
Joshua:
“I worked on my poster mostly during the week before and the week of Spring Break. The design, itself, didn’t take too long (the information and graphs weren’t difficult to add), but I spent a long time figuring out the best way to explain my material. I know these aren’t everyday concepts people interact with, so it took some time to know what information to omit, how to simplify the information I do include, and how to make a clear throughline evident while still preserving the meaning of the research. It was absolutely a challenge, but I’m really happy with where it ended up!”
4. What was your favorite part about presenting your poster?
Saifiyah:
“Presenting my poster was a thrilling experience, and my favorite part was the opportunity to share my research and ideas with fellow researchers and scholars. As an undergraduate student, it was a unique chance to showcase my work to an audience and engage in stimulating discussions about my research with peers who have diverse perspectives and expertise. I was also incredibly grateful to receive recognition for my hard work and dedication, particularly as I stood among my highly talented peers from different disciplines being recognized for their incredible work as well.”
Tyler:
“The most rewarding part of presenting my poster was getting to share my excitement with other academics that were interested in my topic. I am incredibly passionate about political science, especially Supreme Court studies, and it’s not every day that I get to just share my knowledge with others who share a similar interest.”
Joshua:
“I really loved presenting to people in STEM fields other than physics. It meant they had no (or limited) background with the concepts I was dealing with, but still dealt with technical and analytical tools in their own work. It meant I had to explain concepts in a way that was both precise and accessible, and it meant they had incredibly insightful questions! It was really a joy to present to all the chemists, mathematicians, etc. that came by.”
5. Any tips for future presenters?
Saifiyah:
“To future presenters, my advice would be to start early and give yourself enough time to prepare your poster and practice your presentation. It is essential to communicate your research in a clear and concise manner, so it helps to practice explaining your work to others outside of your discipline. I would also recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to engage with peers both in and outside of the field of your research, as their feedback can help you improve your delivery and anticipate potential questions.”
Tyler:
“Get started early and attend the workshops! I had never designed a research poster before this experience, and I felt incredibly lost when I began working on my poster. The workshops that Dr. Neal offered gave me very strong guidance and helped me focus my ideas into the final product. Once I learned that creativity counted with these sorts of posters and not just raw data, my process was completely different than it would have been had I not sought help.”
Joshua:
“I think practicing your presentation is the most important part. Even if you understand your research, it’s a completely different game to try and explain what you’re doing to people who are in completely different fields. Try figuring out how to explain your work at different levels, so you’re ready for anyone who comes by!”