THE DAILY ILLINI
THURSDAY March 28, 2019
The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
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Vol. 148 Issue 52
UI professor examines dining hall food waste BY LUIS VELAZQUEZ STAFF WRITER
A University professor conducted a study to examine whether or not a piece of paper is capable of changing a diner’s action, as the structure of dining halls often causes students to waste food. Brenna Ellison, professor of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, initiated her own research about the impact of educational campaigns on reducing food waste by studying diners’ choices and the amount of food they put on their plate. Ellison designed and developed the content for the campaign, helped with collecting data in the dining halls and completed the data analysis. The research started in 2016 and took place in two dining halls on campus: Ikenberry Dining Hall and Pennsylvania Avenue Dining Hall. Ellison categorized the Ikenberry as the treatment site, the place that was observed, and PAR dining hall as the comparison site. The educational campaign method used for this research was posters placed on tables at Ikenberry explaining the problem of food waste in the United States. Information was also written on napkin dispensers to distribute the
message. About 2,000 students dined at the treatment site while around 500 dined at the comparison site. “The weighing and sorting procedures were the same in both the treatment and comparison site. In each, we placed tables in front of the dish drop-off area and collected students’ plates. From there, we sorted leftover food into bins for meat proteins, fruits/ vegetables, and others,” Ellison said in an email. Students who dined at either dining hall were not tracked, meaning they did not know they were part of a research, which gave Ellison’s team reliable results regarding eating behaviors of students. After finishing the research, Ellison came to the conclusion that using educational campaigns to try to reduce food waste at an all-you-can-eat buffet style dining hall did not produce an outstanding result regarding the amount of food thrown away. However, the campaign itself did affect student attitudes toward food waste. Before the distribution of the campaign, an average student would waste 88 grams of food at the Ikenberry, or the SEE FOOD WASTE | 3A
PHOTO COURTESY OF BRENNA ELLISON
Bins are used to divide different food types after students disposed food in the dinning halls. University researchers conducted their food waste study at Ikenberry and Pennsylvania Avenue dining halls.
Study awarded top paper of past 50 years bug,” the concept computers will perform any kind of interpretations on an inputted code. “Computers do not try to interpret what we tell them to do. The main difference between a human and a computer is that a human tries to interpret the intentions of your words,” Herman said. “If I use an idiom or an analogy or a metaphor, then people try to understand what that means, and we use colorful language, while computers don’t.” Another concept the study found students struggled to grasp is understanding a computer’s memory. A computer can interpret the type of memory and the memory itself; for example, a computer can have a memory of a sports score and have the actual memory of the score itself. Alex Mackowiak, junior in Engineering, found he and the students he taught in CS 126: Software Design Studio had trouble understanding the memory systems in Java and C++ computer programs. Mackowiak stated an early source of confusion for him was the parameter system in Java. If you were to relate code to a math function, a parameter would be the x in a function F(x). In Java, because the memory system can be misunderstood by students, problems can occur. “[Students] think that
BY DANIEL RENTERIA STAFF WRITER
PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL JEFFORDS AND SUSAN POST
Monarch butterflies can be found all around Illinois. Participants of I-Pollinate are expected to examine and observe their gardens for monarch eggs or caterpillars for at least three weeks during the summer.
I-Pollinate research initiative seeks citizen aid BY TIARA COSBY STAFF WRITER
Citizens surrounding the University are able to selfreport data right in their backyards by collecting state wide pollinator data for the new I-Pollinate Research Initiative. Pollination ecologist Alexandra Harmon-Threatt said in an email I-Pollinate is a joint research initiative between researchers at the University. “I have been running a smaller citizen science project locally and was quite excited to extend it throughout the state,” Harmon-Threatt said. H a r m o n -T h r e a t t ’ s contribution to I-Pollinate focuses on how plants with a one-year life cycle, or annual plants, should be considered for conservation, specifically ornamental annuals. “Orna menta l pla nt species are those cultivated
specifically to grow well in gardens and tend to have some visually attractive qualities,” Harmon-Threatt said. A ssisting HarmonThreatt, plant ecologist David Zaya studies monarch butterf lies and their attraction to certain nectar plants, such as milkweeds, and how it influences egg laying. “My major goal is to understand where monarch butterflies lay their eggs, where milkweeds plantings would be most helpful and how gardens can help monarch reproduction,” Zaya said. While searching for data in Illinois, Harmon-Threatt said there is a lot of coverage over different eco-regions, ecosystems defined by its geography, across the state. “Illinois is a great state to work in. Because it is so long, it covers a lot of eco-regions,
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and we have some really engaged citizens who are eager to help out,” HarmonThreatt said. Zaya also thinks Illinois is a great state to work in. “I did a study last summer that will continue this summer. I put milkweeds in citizens yards, and I found monarchs on about half. They are all over the place,” Zaya said. Zaya said he thinks the project may last for two or more years, which he is hopeful for. However, without engagement from local citizens, the research project may end up failing. “This project can’t work without engaged citizens,” Harmon-Threatt said. “Citizens really can make a difference by participating in science, and they certainly outnumber scientists so we need them.” There are a few requirements eager citizens
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need to meet before jumping into the project. Participants are required to register a 4-by-6 foot plant bed filled with milkweeds and a variety of six out of 12 annual species. Additionally, citizens must gather data at least three weeks throughout the summer between the months of June and August. Citizens will be asked to complete a variety of pollinator visitation surveys, including examining the annual plants for monarch eggs or caterpillars. “This project hopes to provide some interesting information on backyards to help give people more options for planting at their homes,” Harmon-Threatt said. “We hope people throughout the state will want to be involved because data collection is easy and fun.”
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University computer science professor Geoffrey Herman’s co-written study was awarded top paper of the past 50 years. “Identifying student misconceptions of programming” was presented the award by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education at their Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. The conference gathered educators to discuss the problems faced in computer science education. At the suggestion of his doctorate advisors, Herman joined a project to develop a research assessment tool to find what teaching methods result in the best education for computer science students. “The first steps we wanted to do was to figure out what do students learn about computing after their first course and what do they struggle to learn after that,” Herman said. “The focus (of this paper) was to document and understand and describe why students struggle to learn computing programming.” Herman researched alongside two professors from the University of California, San Diego and one from Northern Iowa University. The major misconception students usually face after their introductory computer science classes is referred to as the “super-
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