A wide range of topics—from rising real estate prices to microplastics in food—were among the more than 100 areas explored by faculty and students at 正规博彩十大网站’s 研究 Day April 30.

一年一度的盛会, held in the newly modernized William Knox Holt Memorial 图书馆 and Learning Center, included oral and poster presentations by undergraduate and graduate students and faculty members surrounded by curious observers.

The experience conducting original re搜索 provides students an unparalleled opportunity to pursue areas of interest guided by expert faculty.

“Most of my experience before this was doing papers and re搜索 for classes,音乐史专业的学生莫莉·韦斯特莱克说, ’22, 他在研究黑人歌剧.  “能够设计整个项目, plan it out and work on it for so long alongside my mentor was special. It was great to have that experience conducting a longer-length re搜索 project.”

“为学生, closing the loop on the re搜索 project by telling others what they did is so important,莉迪亚·福克斯说, 本科生研究主任. “他们对做这些演讲感到非常兴奋.” 

一些研究报告包括:

黑人歌剧的历史

As a recipient of Pacific’s Summer 本科 研究 Fellowship, Westlake ’22 took exploring the history of Black opera from Pacific’s archives to New York. 

The fellowship funding allowed her to watch a Black-composed opera, 《我骨子里的火熄了,” performed at the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time in its 141-year history.

韦斯特莱克说:“表演绝对令人惊叹. “音乐, the plot and the staging are all  important to re搜索 about the actual work and you can’t really know unless you’re able to see it.”
Black operas have historically been relegated to smaller opera companies and Black singers have either struggled to be included in casting or performed stereotyped roles.

“One of the biggest takeaways is how much music out there is composed by underrepresented or unknown composers,西湖说。. “我们有音乐和手稿, 但这并没有经过研究, 或者从未被表演过或录制过, 所以在这个领域还有很多工作要做.”

Microplastics in food and personal-care packaging products

The growing concern over the discovery of microplastics—tiny pieces of plastic in the environment, food and other products—sparked Mandy-Tanity Brinkmann’s interest. 

“总的来说, 关于微塑料研究的文献都是很新的,” said the first-year pharmaceutical and chemical sciences doctoral student, 他补充说，大部分研究都集中在鱼类身上, 盐和土壤. “我们想看看其他项目.”

Along with biochemistry major Huy Ngoc Nguyen and biology major Daniel Hui, Brinkmann used special techniques in one of Pacific’s labs to determine if they could find microplastics in yogurt and facial creams. 

尽管他们最初的方法没有定论, they did find another surprising substance in a sample of yogurt, 称为微晶纤维素.

“这是一个非常有趣的发现. 我研究过微晶纤维素, and it turns out that a lot of food production companies add it as a filler so there’s more product at the end, 但成分表中没有注明,布林克曼说. 

She identified other methods that may be more useful for testing future samples for microplastics.

“A lot of re搜索 groups use pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (a type of chemical analysis) to identify and also quantify microplastics, 这是我们下一步要做的事情,布林克曼说.

园艺疗法的有效性

作为 太平洋地区的#加州全民大学军团, a program that helps students pay for college by performing high-impact community service, psychology major Ana Anguiano’s re搜索 was inspired by her experience with Stockton-based nonprofit PUENTES.

“They work to combat food insecurity and food deserts by providing people with gardens free of charge,安圭亚诺解释道.

安圭亚诺调查了学生, military veterans and people diagnosed with anxiety and depression to determine if gardening could be beneficial in improving mental health.

“All of the participants reported it improved their mental health,” said Anguiano. “It’s gratifying to see that something as simple as gardening could improve people's mental health because psychotherapy and medications can be expensive and not feasible for every single person.”

STEM领域的科学认同与自我效能感

Eberhardt School of Business Professors Jeffrey Miles and Stefanie Naumann surveyed nearly 1,000 students to learn what can be done to encourage people who do not identify as male or heterosexual to enter STEM fields (Science, 技术, 工程与数学.)

In 2019, women only had 27% of STEM jobs despite making up nearly half the workforce, 根据美国.S. 人口普查. Though there is little re搜索, there appears to be a similar gap among gay men.

“We want to make sure that everyone feels interested and excited about going into STEM fields, 无论他们的性别认同或性取向如何,迈尔斯说. 

Their study determined women had lower levels of science self-efficacy and science identity than men.

“We found that we can improve people's self-perceptions that they’re able and efficient and effective to be a scientist so they will pursue STEM fields,迈尔斯说. 

迈尔斯说，他们计划扩大研究范围. “One of the challenges was to get data on people's identity and gender perceptions. Future re搜索 should look at all the gender ranges as well as sexual orientations.”

查看在今年的研究日上展示的研究.