Honors Students and Alumni Highlighted For RLE Launch
In a week-long celebration of student research and independent creative works, The University of Maine highlighted multiple UMaine Honors students and their remarkable efforts in collaborative research. The Research Learning Experience (RLE), a new university-wide initiative supported by the Harold Alfond Foundation, invites incoming first-year students to engage in a variety of different hands-on learning opportunities.
One RLE course, Community Building and Engagement, was sponsored by the Honors College and made available by application to incoming Honors first-years. The students traveled to Hurricane Island to connect both with nature and each other, while determining their own definition of the word “community”. Learn more about the Fall 2021 course experience HERE.
Many current Honors students, as well as a few Honors Alumni, participated in panels, presentations, and performances during the University’s RLE Bridge Week. Bridge Week brought attention to both the research projects and creative works being curated and managed by undergraduate students across campus.
The following undergraduate Honors students and Honors alumni were selected to present their work to both incoming first-year RLE students and prospective students. We are proud to see so many of our students showcasing their talents, their research, and their opportunities for professional growth at UMaine!
View the feature videos below.
Featured Honors Students and Alumni
Lara Chern
Kelsey Davis
Alyson Haley
Abigail Muscat
Allison O’Neil
Elaine Thomas
Katie Tims
Basel White
Lara Chern
Lara Chern is a current UMaine Mechanical Engineering and Honors student minoring in Mathematics and Engineering Leadership & Management. She is involved both in research on copper nano-materials in Dr. Yingchao Yang’s lab, as well as research on the creation of a new additive concrete material in Dr. Richard Kimball’s lab.
__
Kelsey Davis
Kelsey Davis is a UMaine 2021 Honors graduate with a B.S. degree in Marine Science. She conducted an independent study surrounding sea turtle rehabilitation, advised by Dr. Sara Lindsay, for her Honors Thesis. The project aimed to determine similarities and differences in rehabilitation strategies and outcomes seen among various sea turtle rehabilitation programs up and down the east coast in order to promote increased efficiency and success in the conservation of these animals.
Alyson Haley
Alyson Haley is current UMaine Secondary Education and Honors student pursuing a concentration in English and a minor in Spanish. Alyson spent the summer preparing for her 100 hour semester placement (student teaching) and participating in an educator development program allowing her to be hands on in credit recovery with high school students.
Abigail Muscat
Abigail Muscat is a current UMaine Marine Science and Honors student minoring in International Affairs. Her research has focused on how invertebrate communities are affected by rock weed harvesting, as well as looking at invertebrate colonization in salt marshes. She was also involved in Honors 350, a class at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory that focused on functional genomics through the study of zebra fish.
Allison O'Neil
Allison (DellaMattera) O’Neil is a UMaine Honors Alum and is now in the second year of a Masters in Social Work. As an undergraduate Honors student, Allison worked with an interdisciplinary team to create an attachment theory workshop with the goal of assisting caregivers in Sierra Leone who are bringing children with past trauma into their homes. She was also able to travel with the Honors College to Sierra Leone to see this workshop in action.
Elaine Thomas
Elaine Thomas is a second-year UMaine Business Management and Honors student. Elaine is a student research assistant on a team researching attachment theory with the Honors College Servant Heart Research Collaborative. She has also worked with the attachment theory workshop model as an undergraduate student in order to apply it to communities in Haiti.
Katie Tims
Katie Tims is a UMaine 2021 Honors graduate with a B.S. degree in Biology with a Pre-Med concentration and a minor in Sustainable Food Systems. Katie interned with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) which allowed her to participate in environmental legislative activities, zero waste community developments, and community environmental outreach activities in a hands-on and up-close setting.
Basel White
Basel White is a UMaine Biomedical Engineering and Honors student pursuing a minor in Mathematics. He is a member of a lab that focuses on computational methodologies for solving a variety of problems. Basel’s research involves developing an automated algorithm that would segment the pectoral muscle from grayscale mammograms using binary mammogram images which create a spatial representation of a human breast.