Realizing Our Vision as The College-at-the-Core
COLS
College of Letters and Science
Symposium Showcases Collaborative Research
COLS students and faculty showcased their collaborative research at the twelfth annual College of Letters and Science Undergraduate Research Symposium on Friday, April 29. A record of more than 400 students, parents, faculty, retired faculty and community members attended. The symposium, featured more than 100 research posters and presentations from students representing 12 departments within the college, and was held on the first and second floors of the Science Building. “Our annual undergraduate research symposium represents our students and faculty at their very best, fulfilling the college’s goal of focusing on undergraduate education and research,” said Dean Chris Cirmo. “From radon to foreign revolutions and everything in between, students and faculty are at the top of their games in not only the classroom but also in the laboratory and in the field. We are proud to highlight the major reason we exist as a college; to cherish and cultivate the special relationship which develops between the student and faculty member through directed research.” The public is invited to attend the 2012 COLS Undergraduate Research Symposium which will be held on April 27th from 2pm-5pm in the Science Building. Enthusiastic students share their research with hundreds of fellow students and visitors.
December 2011
Collins Earns Prestigious Fulbright Scholarship By Shane Stricker
Assistant Professor of Political Science Jennifer Collins is on the homestretch of a project many years in the making. The project first started to take shape when Collins was living in Ecuador in the 1990s, a time of great political change. During this time, Collins explains, “the Ecuadorian indigenous movement burst onto the political scene and became arguably the most powerful indigenous movement in the Americas. The focus of my work beginning with my dissertation and now unfolding with this book project studies how indigenous people in Ecuador and Bolivia have transformed themselves into powerful political actors.” After completing her doctoral coursework at University of California, San Diego, Collins obtained a Fulbright award to carry out her fieldwork in Ecuador. With this scholarship, she is spending the next five months interviewing national Professor Jennifer politicians, updating her collection of bibliographical Collins in Ecuador materials, and carrying out two local-level case studies in the provinces of Chimborazo and Zamora Chinchipe. Her final goal is to collect all her years of research into a book which “will make an important contribution to the academic literature on the political processes that have been sweeping the region ...,” said Collins. Over the past decade and a half, Collins has seen a monumental shift in Latin American government. She says, “When I first went to Ecuador in the 1990s there were no indigenous people in government. Today, some fifteen years later there are indigenous people serving in the legislature as prefects and mayors in nearly all realms of government.” This shift, she explains, is similar to the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Although she is thousands of miles away, Collins has not forgotten about her role as a professor. “As only one of two professors in our department who is engaged in research outside of the United States, I play a central role in exposing our majors to global issues.” Collins goes on to say, “The Political Science Department is a relatively small, but strong department. In spite of a high teaching load, our department prides itself on the fact that our faculty is active in research and publishing.” Collins has several chapters of her book written and is set to finish it in the next two years. She says, “I am confident that my book will be of interest, not only to Latin Americanists, but to academics with comparative interests in social and indigenous movements, democratization and processes of political change in the developing world.”
University of Wisconsin
Stevens Point