Answering Their Own Questions Continued 1

Collaborate To Innovate

Competitive awards granted by individual schools, as well as the University Honors Program, support student research that delves into subjects as diverse as the “green chemistry” of fuel-cell reactions and e-commerce in Madrid. Students submit applications that outline their research, goals and budgets. Stipends range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.
“Funding is intended to encourage students to explore and expand their creative and research skills beyond the classroom,” says Associate Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Paul Hofeditz, Meadows School of the Arts. The school’s Meadows Exploration Awards granted a total of $23,400 to 35 undergraduates in 2008-09.
Meadows students Rob Thomson, Brandon Sterrett and Jason Ballman describe their interdisciplinary collaborative film project, Lightbulb, as a series of “lightbulb moments.“
They each received an Exploration Award for a total of $2,250.
The movie, which mixes computer-generated imagery and live-action footage, is based on an original graphic novel by Thomson’s cousin. Now in postproduction, the project pushed them to try things they hadn’t before. For Ballman, a senior music composition major with a concentration in piano and a minor in history, learning new software needed to score the film was the toughest challenge. For senior theatre major Sterrett, the movie tested his ability to act in front of a camera. And for Thomson, a junior cinema-TV major, “the experience was about learning how to make a movie – from start to finish – and how not to make a movie. Sometimes you learn more from the mistakes.”
SMU’s Big iDeas program, launched in spring 2008 by the Office of the Provost, encourages collaboration among undergraduates to find possible solutions to issues that affect the wider community. Big iDeas supports 10 undergraduate interdisciplinary teams annually with up to $5,000 each in funding.
Elizabeth Corey, a junior environmental engineering and pre-law major, teamed up with Andrés Ruzo ’09, now an SMU geophysics graduate student, for the “SMU Geothermal Project” funded by Big iDeas in 2009.
“I was a little apprehensive about geothermal energy at first,” she confesses. “However, as I researched it more, I was surprised that it’s not more commonly used.”
Corey and Ruzo investigated geothermal resources located under the campus. The plan is to harness the power of subterranean heat to produce energy. They presented results at the Geothermal Resource Council’s international meeting this fall in Nevada. If all goes as planned, “the fruits of this project could make SMU the world’s first geothermal-powered university,” their report states.
And it could “move the industry from talking about a paradigm shift into the actuality of mass production,” according to Maria Richards, SMU Geothermal Lab coordinator and an adviser on the project.
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