AC
Alexander Carey
  • Theatre
  • Class of 2020
  • DeKalb, IL

Alexander Carey conducts undergraduate research at UW-Whitewater

2017 Mar 20

Alexander Carey from Roscoe, Ill., who is majoring in theatre, presented at the Undergraduate Research Day event at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

"It's a showcase of academic student engagement in its purest form-seeing students engage in scholarly activity through undergraduate research within their discipline and across disciplines," said Whitney Supianoski, director of the McNair Scholars Program.

The event was Thursday, March 16, in the James R. Connor University Center Hamilton Room.

Carey's project is called "Organization and Communication Needed in a Touring Theatre Production."

Projects ranged from social work and criminology to performing art pieces. Many of the students have been preparing their research and working alongside a faculty mentor for close to a year.

"Typically, they (undergraduate students) work for a year or more. By 'work' I mean the active scholarly work that they need to put in, including a literature review or some sort of experimentation. It includes thinking how to present the work and explain the work to people who may not be in their field of expertise," said Catherine Chan, director of the Undergraduate Research Program.

As a longstanding UW-Whitewater event, Undergraduate Research Day has grown not only in numbers, but in the quality of the research being presented.

"I've witnessed a growth in the variety of the projects and different trends in the projects being presented," said Chan. "There are more team-based projects now, more interdisciplinary projects being developed. It is certainly an opportunity for them to practice any opportunities down the line for interviews for grad school, professional schools and employment."