Summer Symposium highlights student research projects

By Caitlin Fillmore

More than 100 students presented their months-long research projects at this year’s 12th annual Summer Symposium at Cal State Monterey Bay on Friday, Aug. 15. Covering everything from assessing landslide risk after the Carmel Fire to analyzing fruit-harvesting robots, projects reflected the region’s strong agriculture, technology and environmental science opportunities, with a few surprising research topics mixed in.

Hanna Smith, a junior cinematic arts and technology major, was one of only two representatives from her program. Her poster presentation examined how videographers can achieve a nostalgic, VHS tape-like look for their footage using a digital processing technique. Smith took photos of gardens around CSUMB using MiniDV tape encoding and tape bypass AV output recording and determined that digital technology could achieve an effect similar to filmmaking methods from the past.

“I was really curious and previously experimenting [with this idea],” said Smith, an outdoor and wildlife filmmaker. “But I built my own formal research project this summer.”

This year’s symposium featured 115 student projects, divided into oral and poster presentations. Some, like Smith's, were built from the ground up by the students. Other student-researchers participated in ongoing work, including opportunities with 14 grant-funded programs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institutes of Health. 

Student-researchers from CSUMB represented the college’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center (UROC) and Monterey Regional Ocean Science Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. The symposium also featured students from neighboring colleges, such as Monterey Peninsula College and Gavilan College.

“We host the Summer Symposium each year to provide a venue for undergrads to showcase research and scholarly work they have conducted during the summer,” said John Banks, director of UROC. “(As) the first centralized research center in the CSU system, our overarching goal is to contribute to building a community of practice around undergraduate research in the Monterey Bay region.”

This commitment to research was recognized by the Carnegie Foundation, which named CSUMB as both a Research College & University and Opportunity College earlier this year—one of only 33 institutions in the U.S. to receive both of these designations.

While not anticipating a formal research project as part of her artistic major, Smith said the discipline of structured research was beneficial.

“This is a resume builder,” she said. “It shows my deeper technical knowledge and project management skills.”

Carlos Garcia, a senior psychology major, also did not anticipate collaborating on formal research during his undergraduate career. However, after taking a Course-based Research Experience, or CURE, class, he changed his mind.

“I became enamored with my subject and how bilingualism affects cognition in ways not previously thought,” said Garcia. His poster presentation, “The Impact of Bilingualism on False Memory and Confidence Ratings,” is part of an ongoing study with the hypothesis that while bilingual people demonstrated the same ability to recall words, they felt higher confidence about their skills. 

Garcia said he believes his symposium experience will benefit his career aspirations to be a marriage and family therapist. Understanding how to conduct an experiment and understand scientific literature helps him “know the realm and language” of his chosen field, he said.

“Research can be intimidating,” Garcia said. “But UROC guides you through it.”