Scholars are awarded a scholarship of $3,000 for the year. This award is dispersed in four equal installments during the year if the student maintains good standing in the program requirements. Selected students work on their research project approximately eight hours per week during the academic year.

Students and faculty mentors are expected to meet regularly (at least weekly) as a group and are encouraged to meet with subgroups of students as well. Team members will also be expected to present their work at the Show Me Research Week Spring Forum (April). Presentations may be individual or with small groups.

What is the purpose/goal of your ASH Team?

The main goal of this innovative and interdisciplinary research project is to normalize conversations about death and dying through analysis of public structures and memorials through the lens of artistic production. Our strategies for achieving this overall goal include generating creative projects that explore death and dying utilizing new media tools such as VR, projection mapping, AR, and video art.

Can you explain some of the work that your students perform?

Students will research other artists and filmmakers whose works are conceptually driven by death and dying, create response projects to their own experiences with death and dying, and create response projects to learned material and other outside studies.  These students will learn new skills sets in digital media tools to produce a group installation exhibition as well as assist with the art creation for the VR project.  Students will also research sites of memory, loss, and remembrance that could be used physically or remotely for the project. These students will be involved mainly with gathering data from the site to support the art installation. They will learn how to create digital models from a real site and how to enable it for VR capabilities. .

What are some of the benefits a student can receive from being a part of your ASH team?

• Explore some of the myriad traditions, beliefs, and narratives related to death and dying, including emotional, cognitive, behavioral, physical, and social contexts.
• Examine diverse bereavement/mourning customs and beliefs about dying.
• Explore other manifestations of death, including humor, stories about near-death experiences, and concepts of the afterlife.
• Engage in discussion and dialogue about different beliefs and cultural customs.
• Increase skills in new media technologies such as VR, AR, and projection mapping.
• Produce creative projects and safe spaces that enable others from the campus and wider community to explore these issues and facilitate discussion about death/dying.
• Work as a team to create and exhibit new media exhibitions. 

Please outline some of the expectations of the students in your ASH team. (Hours per week worked, meeting attendance, presentations, time reporting, one-on-ones with Team Leads or Peer Leads.)

Students will be expected to meet as a group for a minimum of one hour per week with faculty and one hour per week as a student group.  Addition meetings will be required as projects develop.  Attendance is required for all meetings.  Students will have the opportunity to present their work at some of the following venues:

• MU’s Research and Creative Achievements Forum (April 2024)
• MU’s Undergraduate Visual Art and Design Showcase (April 2024)
• Society for Photographic Education Conference (March 2024 in St. Louis)
• Digital Graffiti Festival (May 2024)
• Exhibition at local site or gallery

What is the purpose/goal of your ASH Team?

To pursue knowledge related to the science of close relationships. We approach the study of relationships from a lifespan perspective, with a primary focus on childhood and adolescence. Our research studies include friends and family members. We are interested in how youths’ interactions with close relationship partners shape their development and emotional adjustment.

Can you explain some of the work that your students perform?

Students engage in many aspects of our research. Students help us collect data with youth in our research laboratory. In addition to collecting questionnaire data, we also conduct observational research in which we record youths’ interactions with friends and family members. Students help to transcribe and code these interactions. We teach students to better understand scientific articles and the basics of data analyses. Students also get the chance to showcase their work through poster presentations on campus and potentially at regional and national conferences.

What are some of the benefits a student can receive from being a part of your ASH team?

Working as part of the Close Relationships ASH team offers professional and personal benefits. Through their participation, students gain experience with reading research articles, data analyses, scientific writing, and communicating research findings to others. These skills are valuable in many professional settings. In addition, students gain a deeper understanding of relationship dynamics and interactions that can be applied to their own lives.

Please outline some of the expectations of the students in your ASH team. (Hours per week worked, meeting attendance, presentations, time reporting, one-on-ones with Team Leads or Peer Leads.)

Students participating in our ASH team engage in individual, small group, and full team activities. Although we are all working on the same larger projects, small groups of 2-3 students often because specialists in some aspect of the project (e.g., coding a particular type of activity). They learn together, conduct their work independently, and then meet to discuss how the work went and whether there are ways we can improve our processes. At least one team lead participates in these meetings and discussions. In addition, the full team meets weekly with at least one of the team leads present.

What is the purpose/goal of your ASH Team?

The purpose of the CORAL team is to contribute to research in African Linguistics at the University of Missouri. The CORAL team is led by Profs. Rebecca Grollemund and Michael Marlo and currently has two main strands of research in the study of African languages that are connected to one current grant and one prior grant from the National Science Foundation. 

One major set of project activities is related to Grollemund’s 2022-2025 NSF grant Continuity and divergence in Cameroonian languages: New perspectives on the Bantu genesis. The aim of this project is to study Bantu and Bantoid languages spoken in Cameroon to better understand how Bantu languages emerged 5,000 years ago from the Proto-Bantu nucleus located in southern Cameroon. Several studies of the “Historical Linguistics” team involve topics in the evolution of languages, typically by comparing vocabulary and grammatical properties of modern-day languages to reconstruct prior states of the languages.

Other project activities are an outgrowth of Marlo’s 2014-2020 NSF grant Structure and Tone in Luyia. The primary goals of this project are to contribute to the documentation and description of three Luyia language varieties of western Kenya – Bukusu, Tiriki, and Wanga – by developing talking dictionaries, collections of oral literature, and written descriptions of the grammars of each language. Other secondary goals of the “Luyia” team include assessing the vitality of Luyia languages in their communities.

Can you explain some of the work that your students perform?

Students on the team perform diverse tasks, depending on their experience, their interests, and the needs of the team. One common activity among students working on projects in historical linguistics is extracting linguistic data from existing sources, such as vocabulary from dictionaries, and entering it into our database for comparison with other languages. Another common type of task involves working with software to align transcriptions and translations with audio from an interview or an oral narrative. This work may include meeting with a speaker of a language like Bukusu, Tiriki, or Wanga, usually over Zoom, but a few students on our team have also collected data in research trips to Kenya and Uganda.

What are some of the benefits a student can receive from being a part of your ASH team?

Students on the CORAL team will gain hands-on experience conducting professional research in linguistics, working closely with dedicated faculty mentors. They have an opportunity to participate in original, cutting-edge interdisciplinary work that uses linguistic data to address historical questions. They can contribute to research that address questions about the classification and evolution of languages, reconstructing the past from modern-day linguistic data. They can participate in the development of fundamental linguistic materials documenting understudied languages. Through their research efforts, they will gain professional experience in technical writing and presenting their findings to specialists and non-specialists, learning about the communication of scientific findings.

Please outline some of the expectations of the students in your ASH team. (Hours per week worked, meeting attendance, presentations, time reporting, one-on-ones with Team Leads or Peer Leads.)

Students will work 8-10 hours per week on the team. Most of the students’ weekly work hours will be completed on their laptops at times and places that are convenient for the student. There will be at least one meeting with the whole team or a sub-team per week, and each week, students will communicate their progress from the past week and their plans for the upcoming week to the team supervisors. Additional meetings for training or collaborative analysis will be set up as needed. Students will present on their research during the Show Me Research Week in the spring semester. 

Prior to accepting a position on the ASH team, students are expected to share with the team leads their course schedules and any significant time commitments that the students plan to have while also serving on the team. Students must be able to commit to 8-10 hours to the team each week. We recommend to students on the team that they are concurrently enrolled in at least one Linguistics course per semester because this provides additional support for their research activities on our team.

Students participating in our team have many different interests, experiences, and skills and come from different backgrounds. Most students entering our team have a love of languages and a desire to learn more about other languages and cultures. Some students have interests in folklore, oral literature, or digital storytelling. Some students entering the team have some prior exposure to linguistics, though many do not. Students with technical experience in coding, statistics, and/or typesetting can put those skills to use on the team, and students with background in music may also be able to apply their musical ear to tasks on our team. There is no expectation that you have any of these specific backgrounds, but we advise you to let us know about any relevant background in your application materials.

What is the purpose/goal of your ASH Team?

The Minority Focused news team investigates the manners in which news websites and streaming platforms that serve under-represented and marginalized populations provide a prosocial benefit to society.  Historically we have analyzed the content present on these sites and presented at local, regional, and national conferences.  We have recently branched out to include examine the cognitive benefits these sites provide marginalized and under-represented groups and other forms of social identity content (e.g., streaming platforms).  Through these efforts we seek to understand how identity focused content serve as a safe space for groups.

Can you explain some of the work that your students perform?

As a student lead laboratory, students perform a variety of roles in this research.  Many new students take part in the analysis of the content contained on these identity focused sites using electronic recording software.  Others help design experimental tests of this content on cognition.  Others perform statistical analyses of both the content and surveys/experiments we conduct.  Students also interview content creators and providers.  We have a wide range of roles and students often move from one role to another as they gain more training and seniority.

What are some of the benefits a student can receive from being a part of your ASH team?

Students get experience working within a team setting performing cutting edge social scientific research.  They will acquire numerous skills valued by employers, graduate, and professional schools.  They get one on one mentorship from senior student leaders and faculty mentors.  Beyond this, students gain experience in project presentation and possible authorship on peer reviewed publications.

Please outline some of the expectations of the students in your ASH team. (Hours per week worked, meeting attendance, presentations, time reporting, one-on-ones with Team Leads or Peer Leads.)

Students are expected to meet weekly face to face in the Minority News Lab.  They are expected to meet deadlines as appropriate.  They will often have supplemental meetings with faculty or peer mentors to brainstorm for upcoming tasks.  While weekly workload can be variable, it averages 8hrs per week over the academic year.

What is the purpose/goal of your ASH Team?

Our objective is to excavate historical data and narrative concerning the Santa Fe trail. The second objective is to communicate the importance of the trail to public audiences.

Can you explain some of the work that your students perform?

Students will research primary materials to unearth data about the Santa Fe Trail. For example, they will use nineteenth century newspapers and ledgers to come up with an accounting of the goods exchanged. They will research others aspects of the trail, such as the mule trade – the forgotten engine of the nineteenth century Missouri economy. Students will use graphic skills, data sets, visual aids, and writing to communicate these findings.

What are some of the benefits a student can receive from being a part of your ASH team?

This project will foster critical thinking, creative problem solving, communication (verbal and written). Most of all, members of this project will be part of a team.

Please outline some of the expectations of the students in your ASH team. (Hours per week worked, meeting attendance, presentations, time reporting, one-on-ones with Team Leads or Peer Leads.)

Students will meet once per week for around 2 hours. Much of the work will take place in these sessions, but some will be done outside of these core sessions.