UWG News Archive

Students present research at NCHC

October 28, 2004

CARROLLTON, GA - The University of West Georgia continues to garner national attention for its work in undergraduate research.

The National Collegiate Honors Society is the preeminent organization in the country for undergraduate research. Each year, students from across the country compete for a chance to present a research paper to the NCHC national conference.

For the fifth time in seven years, there were more UWG Honors College students accepted to present research proposals than any other institution in the U.S., said Dr. Donald Wagner, dean of the UWG Honors College. Ten UWG students will present papers at the annual NCHC Conference in New Orleans Nov. 10-14.

“This is an enormous achievement for our students, the professors who help them and our University for supporting this activity for our students,” said Wagner.

Wagner said that UWG is becoming more and more successful in academic competition with larger institutions.

“We have been told in previous years that about 10 percent of proposals submitted are accepted by the faculty committee for presentation,” Wagner said. “Since many of the member institutions of NCHC are large research universities — universities that are much larger than West Georgia with far greater resources than we have — this is quite an honor. The students and professors are to be congratulated for their efforts.”

Students presenting research at the NCHC include Clara Gonzalez of Carrollton, “The Use of Silver Ions in Matrix Assisted Laser Description Ionization Mass Spectometry”; Logan Leslie of Carrollton, “Unfrying an Egg”; Rachel Mack of Jonesboro, “The Effects of Reunification on the German Economy”; Jesse McAtee of Marietta, “Progress Toward Developing Synthetic Methodology to Access the Pyrimidodiazepine System”; Toma Omonuwa of Douglasville, “Novel Nitration of Naphthalenes”; Dmitriy V. Plaks of Powder Springs, “Simulating the Three-body Problem”; Daniel Serrano, an international student from Spain living in Carrollton, “Density Functional Theory Calculations of Sulfur Dioxide Interaction with Carbon Clusters”; Sunitha Shenoi of Carrollton, “Identifying and Extracting Lexical Semantic Relations from a Machine Readable Dictionary”; Stephanie Stennett of Lawrenceville, “Literature as Protest in the Harlem Renaissance”; and Cathy Tran of Stockbridge, “The Development of the Bohemian Revolution in Eighteenth Century France.”

Dr. Beheruz Sethna, president of UWG, said the University’s commitment to student academic achievement will continue to be a top priority.

“I am very proud that UWG honors students can go up against the best honors students in the country in this annual research competition and beat them year after year,” Sethna said. “If we can consistently do better than major research universities in America, sometimes flagship institutions of a state, that speaks very highly of the caliber of our students, faculty and programs.

“More significantly, it speaks very highly of the commitment that this institution and this faculty has to student success, and provides clear evidence of our shared commitment to our theme of Educational Excellence in a Personal Environment,” Sethna said.

West Georgia began its honors program in 1975, making it the second oldest in the state. Only the University of Georgia has an older program. UWG’s program was converted to an Honors College by the Board of Regents in 1999, and is one of only 70 honors colleges in the country.

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