ABSTRACT 2021 Celebrating research, creative endeavor, and service learning go.wisc.edu/ugsympo As we near the end of an academic year made difficult by the ongoing COVID pandemic, the 24th Annual Undergraduate Symposium highlights the resilience of our campus community and reminds us of our enduring commitment to "that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." In the midst of myriad challenges, our amazing students have carried on our long tradition of undergraduate scholarly and creative endeavors, guided and supported by dedicated mentors. Thank you for joining us in acknowledging their diligent work and celebrating their achievements. John Zumbrunnen, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning University of Wisconsin–Madison We would like to thank our major sponsors and partners: Brittingham Trust Chancellor’s and Powers-Knapp Scholarship Programs General Library System McNair Scholars Program Morgridge Center for Public Service Office of the Provost Undergraduate Academic Awards Office Undergraduate Research Scholars Program University Marketing Wisconsin Institute for Science Education and Community Engagement Wisconsin Union The Writing Center 2021 Undergraduate Symposium Organizing Committee: Hannah Bailey, Liza Chang, Doug DeRosa, Sarah Hagedon (coordinator), Audra Hernandez, Phoua Holt, Marina Kelly, Laura Livingston, Mandy Morrow, Samantha Samreth, Amber Smith, Julie Stubbs, John Zumbrunnen Cover photo by the Office of University Commications. ii CONGRATULATIONS 2020 - 2021 MENTORING AWARD WINNERS DAVID ABBOTT Professor David Abbott joined the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the UW Primate Center in 1992. During his time as a mentor, Abbott has published co-authored work with 17 undergraduates. He has a consistent and impressive record of mentoring undergraduates throughout his nearly 30 years on campus. Abbott meets weekly with each of his mentees, supporting them on an individual basis, in part by challenging them to continue to deepen their understanding and practice of science. He convenes a weekly Journal Club, exploring the most recent literature with his students in a welcoming atmosphere with lively discussions. One of his mentees describes Abbott as “a compassionate mentor who loves teaching and encourages his students to pursue their research interests and to never sttop asking questions.” CLAUDIA CALDERON is an Associate Faculty Associate in the Department of Horticulture. Calderon’s colleagues and students praise both the mentoring relationships she develops with students in the various classroom courses she teaches and the continuation and deepening of many of those relationships in study abroad programs she has developed. One student recalls frequently hearing Calderon emphasize in her Tropical Horticulture course that “a teacher can engage with and learn from a student in the same way that students learn from instructors.” The same student went on to participate in Calderon’s two-week field experience in Costa Rica, describing it as “an inspiring experience and a pivotal moment in my educational career.” Through such experiences, which include diverse groups of students, Caledron helps her students and mentees explore new fields of knowledge, develop skills as researchers and as citizens of the world, and grow in confidence. LIZA CHANG received her Ph.D. in Psychology from UW-Madison in 2019 and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in WISCIENCE. In her current role in WISCIENCE, Chang coordinates and implements a variety of programs, both helping undergraduates explore and engage in STEM research (she is currently working on co-authored papers with 9 of them) and training other students and colleagues to be better mentors themselves. Chang’s students praise her clear communication, her compassionate support and her ability to challenge them to pursue continual growth and development. One mentee writes that she has “an amazing ability to connect with student no matter their background by sharing her knowledge, passion and love for helping and making everyone feel safe but most importantly, accepted.” S.E. (FRANKIE) FRANK is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology. Frank leads her own research group (“Menstruation Nation”), which is notable for the diversity of its members, including students from diverse ethnic and racial background, LGBTQ+ students, and students from programs as different as social work, pre-med and pre-law. Her current and former mentees say that she makes students feel seen, heard and included (for example, by learning how to pronounce the name of every student – whether in the research group or in a 100 person class). After graduation, she helps them find jobs, guides them in pursuing graduate student, and supports them on an ongoing basis. One of Frank’s mentees writes that “her endless trust and respect helped me grow immensely as an academic and as a person.” Not surprisingly, Rank serves as a role model for other mentors and teachers in her department and serves on the department’s committee on teaching professional development. SASHA SOMMERFELDT is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology and a Principal Investigator in the Center for Healthy Minds. Each semester, she works 15-20 undergraduates working on the Stress-physiology Coherence, Interoception, and Mindfulness study. Her students laud her ability to balance guidance and independence, “fostering a welcoming and supportive community” while “implementing rigorous standards and high-quality education.” When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted worklife, Sommerfeldt adapted to virtual meetings and renewed her focus on students’ development, creating Individual Development Plans for each of her mentees. In response to the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice, she created an anti-racism study group among her mentees, which read and discussed work on the influence of racism on health and well-being. iii RESEARCH ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF COLLEGE STUDENTS OF MIDDLE EASTERN DESCENT IN AMERICA: DEVELOPING A SCOPING REVIEW Mukadas Abdullah, Alberta Gloria (Mentor) The literature lacks focus on immigrants of Middle Eastern (M.E.) descent in the U.S., in particular there is a lack of atten- tion on children of these immigrants who are navigating higher education despite conceptual and practical evidence that they experience substantive educational challenges. To assist the understanding of these students' experiences in higher education, a scoping review was conducted focusing on M.E. individuals to gain a broad scale understanding of their discourse in the psychological and educational literature. The scoping review included categories of M.E. immigrants/ refugees of different generational background as well as. M.E. students in (higher) educational settings both in the U.S. and the Middle East. Limitations and practical implications of the study are provided. ASSESSING BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITY STRUCTURE IN OREGON STREAMS IN CONTEXT OF THE RIVER CONTINUUM CONCEPT Luis Manuel Abreu-Socorro, Daniel Preston (Mentor) The River Continuum Concept (RCC) predicts how biotic communities change along a stream gradient in relation to changes in several abiotic factors, such as stream order and riparian vegetation. One important biotic factor that is predicted to vary with stream order is the abundance and composition of aquatic macroinvertebrates, including the relative amounts of organisms within functional feeding groups. To determine whether the aquatic macroinvertebrate community structure aligns with what is theorized in the RCC, we collected dip net samples from 130 sites along a gradient of first-to-eighth order streams in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon. Preliminary results show that changes in the composition of func- tional feeding groups coincide with the RCC predictions, including the higher richness of predatory species in lower-order streams. APPLICATION OF MACHINE LEARNING METHODS TO PREDICT THE AIR QUALITY IMPACT OF WILDFIRES IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Gautam Agarwal, Eliot Kim, Shreyans Saraogi (Mentor) Modern anthropogenic climate change and global warming have led to continuous growth in wildfire intensity and fre- quency, consequently resulting in increased emission of air pollutants. Timely and accurate predictions of air quality in the aftermath of wildfires is necessary to curtail growth of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. This study aims to compare deep learning techniques in predicting air quality in Northern California from 2010 through 2019. Four categories of input features were selected: wildfire, air quality, meteorological, and land cover. Machine learning and deep learning models were trained to predict air quality for the next day across a spatiotemporal domain. Although the accuracy of the models was insufficient for real-world applications, results from deep learning models indicated potential for providing predictions at high spatiotemporal resolution. TOBACCO USE AND NICOTINE ADDICTION IN PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGY PRACTICES Asiya Ahmed, John S. Hokanson (Mentor) The objective of this project is to gather information on the number of pediatric cardiology providers who offer nicotine treatments to patients and their household members. The amount of preventable deaths related to tobacco is staggeringly high, and this project will show how ill-prepared most providers are to address this. We sent out surveys to organizations like Pediheart and the American Academy of Pediatrics and initial findings seem to support our hypothesis.