Fall 2023 MSU Denver Research Symposium

Physics
Neutron stars are extremely dense stellar remnants. The gravitational force is balanced by pressure gradients in which the pressure is dominated by degeneracy pressure -a pressure due to quantum-mechanical processes combined with the Pauli exclusion principle. We compare models of a neutron star’s structure using different equations of state, including both special-relativistic and general-relativistic processes.

Social Work
This research will show how the Colorado Child Welfare Scholars and Indigenous students on the Auraria campus each define families. These definitions are used to lead talking groups that include Colorado Child Welfare Scholars and Indigenous students to begin conversations with the hopes of providing more culturally sensitive care in the Colorado child welfare system.

Art
I collaborate with Finnish ecologists on an art-science practice investigating peatland –a rare type of ecosystem where Sphagnum moss slowly decomposes and engineers an anaerobic, water-logged desert. I translate soil data into visuals and sound so we can experience differences between conserved and extracted peatland in a sensory way.

Biology
During this presentation I will discuss the basic biology of reef building corals, the value of reefs and the environmental challenges they face. Further, I will describe a possible molecular genetic approach to coral conservation and the research that students in my lab are conducting to ultimately test this approach.

Philosophy
As described in my recent book, Buddhist Ecological Protection of Space: A Guide for Sustainable Off-Earth Travel, Buddhists from the ethnographic field clarify the appropriateness of our actions involving the managing of space debris, the proper mining of our moon, the handling of potential off-Earth microbes, and the overhauling of climates of planets like Mars.

Academic Affairs
This study describes how ten, first-generation, Latine students use their Community Cultural Wealth to overcome barriers in transitioning from high school to the university. Social relationships with school personnel and family members provided the navigational and aspirational capital needed to complete the transition while resistant capital drove persistence toward graduation.

Chemistry and Biochemistry
Interviews with 12 MSU Denver students reveal positive and negative student experiences with course materials. Students also shared what they would like faculty to know about student experiences, which offers strategies we can use to further iterate and improve our courses.

Criminal Justice & Criminology
Are we really as divided a society as we are led to believe we are? An in-depth study about the spread of disinformation and its role in the violentization of the U.S. shows how and why narratives of disinformation are perpetuated and suggests some remedies.

Secondary Education
Mathematics and Computer Science
This proposal highlights the quantitative second year findings of a longitudinal study about secondary traumatic stress experienced by new teachers and what trauma-informed interventions might mitigate some secondary traumatic stress. It also looks into what might have changed for new teachers from year 1 to year 2.

School of Hospitality
This current research bridges the gap in interlinking gamified tasks with sustainability initiatives through an experimental design. By integrating utilitarian and social tasks using e-vouchers and leaderboards, event managers can motivate their attendees to practice sustainable initiatives and gain a competitive advantage to prefer green events over non-green ones.

Elementary Education and Literacy, School of Education
This current research bridges the gap in interlinking gamified tasks with sustainability initiatives through an experimental design. By integrating utilitarian and social tasks using e-vouchers and leaderboards, event managers can motivate their attendees to practice sustainable initiatives and gain a competitive advantage to prefer green events over non-green ones.

Elementary Education, School of Education
We investigated how science teacher beliefs about language and their language policy contexts related to their customizations to OER curricula for multilingual learners. Our analysis included descriptions of survey results and qualitative coding of teachers’ interviews. This work highlighted tensions between teachers’ beliefs about language and school-based expectations about customizations.

Theatre
Drafting patterns for costumes has not changed much since Shakespeare’s times and neither has the way we teach it. In this presentation I offer an alternative to the paper, pencil, and ruler method of pattern drafting with a case study that integrates a digital garment simulation and pattern drafting software called CLO3D into the classroom.

Education
This presentation explores data gathered in a literacy group with seven youth in recovery from addictions. I demonstrate how the youth authored their physical appearance in particular ways at particular times to meet their personal goals and argue that the youth’s self-authorship is an important form of critical literacy.

Health Professions
People with Schizophrenia and bipolar disorders can be hard to keep compliant with their treatment regimen. This study explores if behavioral health providers believe telehealth has helped this population of patients to maintain compliance, and if behavioral health providers feel as if adding telehealth aides their practice.

Nutrition
Increasing students’ use of existing University resources may advance student success and the University’s mission. We tested with some success and some failure a brief intervention aimed at increasing students’ use of University resources. We will share findings about what Nutrition students (mainly juniors) say they need and discuss ideas for increasing students’ use of resources.

Art
Join Professor, Teague McDaniel (they/them) to find out how they engage people in creative expression to increase resiliency of the transgender community. Transgender people in America are encountering increasing barriers to equitable access to healthcare. McDaniel’s research and practice provides creative intervention to increase public awareness and trans wellbeing.

Social Work
This presentation will share findings from a participatory, phenomenological study exploring how collective trauma impacts social work students’ educational experience. It will highlight how collective trauma shapes students’ expectations, emotional experiences, and sense of belonging. It will also report on pedagogical practices both appreciated and desired by students.

Computer Sciences
This poster presentation highlights the efforts of our faculty learning community (FLC) at MSU in using Generative AI for enhanced teaching and student engagement. We will review current educator uses, showcase our FLC’s proposed use cases, and discuss the benefits of using GenAI for the students of MSU.

Biology
Psychology
This study examined students’ perception of their motivation and self-regulation in an Introductory Biology class. Based on the survey results, there was no significant relationship between the students’ motivation and self-regulation and their eventual grades. It may be that students lack a general understanding of study techniques, or they lack metacognition.

Elementary Education, School of Education
In this presentation, we will share our experience as facilitator-participants in a Faculty Learning Community focused on identifying ways to support linguistically and culturally minoritized students at MSU Denver through learning about and beginning to implement translanguaging pedagogies. Using qualitative data, we will present preliminary takeaways and personal reflections.

Chemistry and Biochemistry
This project aspires to inform culturally responsive instruction and civic engagement in a chemistry course via a writing assignment that targets multiple learning outcomes and builds bridges of relevance between home, community, and classroom experiences. It also gives students the space and freedom to produce an evidence-based deliverable that uniquely represents their connections to their communities.

Earth and Atmospheric Science
Center for Individualized Learning
How do you teach students about a serious subject without leaving them feeling overwhelmed and hopeless? In this class, we focused nearly the entire class on solutions to climate change, rather than the consequences. This approach resulted in a positive learning experience for our students and an enjoyable teaching experience for us.

Elementary Education and Literacy
Early Childhood Education
Special Education
Health Professions
Accounting
This poster presentation will provide an overview of our Faculty Learning Community, which focuses on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through self-study and multimodal pedagogies. We seek to improve our practice, collaborate though self-study research, and disseminate our results.

Social Work
The main consumers of our courses are students, and yet we rarely include them in the course design process beyond student evaluations. Our poster shares initial results from research exploring student perspectives of course design collaborations and creative ways to incorporate student voice into your design processes.

Computer Sciences
Inquiry-based learning is a crucial skill for any discipline that requires identifying assumptions, using critical and logical thinking, problem-solving, and considering alternative explanations. This study uses generative AI -enhanced inquiry-based learning, aligned with SoTL attributes like critical inquiry process, engagement in action, and shared publicity, in CS undergraduate classes.

Communication Studies
Dance
Social Work
Sociology
Earth and Atmospheric Science
Summarizing findings from the Community-Engaged, Service Learning (CESL) Faculty Learning Community during the 2022-23 academic year, this poster will cover foundational concepts central to CESL work, taken from evidenced-based research and the experience of MSU Denver professors engaged in CESL work.

Secondary Education
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Design
Chicana/Chicano Studies
Mathematics and Statistics
Elementary Education
This cross-disciplinary FLC is exploring a variety of equity-based alternative assessment methods with the intent of outlining the benefits and challenges of using these methods with MSU Denver students. This poster presentation will share our explorations and discussions to date and gather feedback from additional MSU faculty.

Nutrition
This project aims to provide support/training to underrepresented dietetics students to develop leaders, mentors, and role models who will be successful dietitians. Nutrition and Social work faculty are developing a DEI Scholars program for dietetics students using storytelling as the vehicle to increase cultural humility, civic-engagement, and leadership/mentoring skills.

Center for Teaching, Learning, and Design
Accessibility is working to facilitate life experiences for people of all disabilities and abilities. This poster will explore how accessibility work in higher education can apply principles such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to build accessible courses that minimize the need for remediation or accommodation exceptions.

Music
This presentation focuses on creating digital musical instruments. Learn the basics of how computers process sound and how we can program devices and sensors to create instruments with powerful technical and expressive capabilities.

Modern Languages
Marketing
This presentation focuses on creating digital musical instruments. Learn the basics of how computers process sound and how we can program devices and sensors to create instruments with powerful technical and expressive capabilities.

Computer Sciences
The Sustainability Hub project seeks to consolidate sustainability and well-being data throughout Colorado into a single platform with an intuitive conversational interface. By fostering collaboration and evidence-based decision-making, it serves as a vital tool for enhancing well-being, economic prosperity, and inclusive environmental sustainability.

Chemistry & Biochemistry
Persistence gaps stemming from institutional and social barriers result in fewer women and underrepresented minorities in the STEM workforce. However, educational support that builds STEM identity and self-efficacy help to close that gap. We are implementing and measuring the effects of these support structures in a new research course.

Marketing
So-called nudging techniques leveraging reactive responses have gained popularity as tools for promoting ethical behavior. We argue, however, that heavy reliance on reactive behavioral interventions can undermine longer-term development of ethical competence. We explain why ethical boosting presents a more edifying and durable social and organizational policy alternative.

Engineering and Engineering Technology
MSU Denver’s IEEE Robotics Club aims to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of cooperative information gathering strategies via swarm robotic demonstrations. Through the use of three homogenous rovers equipped with ground penetrating radar and utilizing a novel autonomous information gathering protocol (TELLUS), given areas can be mapped while simultaneously locating potential resources within that newly mapped region.

World Languages
Dive into the unexplored realm of video essays and their fusion with comprehensive bibliographical and audio-visual guides dedicated to Latin American environmental art, literature, and cinema. This pioneering project shows how video essays revolutionize research compilation, offering transformative ways to synthesize arguments across disciplines while fostering resonance and profound impact.

School of Hospitality
Technology is changing basic principles of service delivery. Some significant changes include the lack of/reduction in direct interaction with customers and the inability to effectively enhance the guests’ emotions due to the use of technology for customer service. These changes have negative impacts on creating a delightful service experience.

Engineering and Engineering Technology
The treatment of two model antibiotic-resistant bacteria using newly developed ZnO nanoparticle-encapsulated alginate beads along with inactivation mechanisms of nanohybrids.