[JRC 학생기자] Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium

Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium
The Largest Student-run Undergraduate Research Conference in the Country

Grace SoYoung Park

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium(CAURS). This event was held on Saturday, April 5, 2014, at the Chicago Marriott (540 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL). According to registration, this year had the highest student and judge participation in the history of CAURS.
Amanda Rapacz, a senior at the Illinois Institute of Technology, is one of three co-directors of CAURS. Along with Jeffrey Heiferman, a junior at Northwestern University, and Nikhil Bommakanti, a senior at University of Illinois at Chicago, Rapacz had the honor of getting to work with a board of students representing six major schools in Chicago.
From a logistics standpoint, Rapacz mentions that she is very grateful for “very generous sponsors in addition to donations from six member schools that allowed this event to happen.” The actual event hosted over 200 students from 11 institutions.

The purpose for holding this symposium was to get people in research to engage in conversations, start collaborative projects with other researchers, seek mentorship and partnership, and learn about interdisciplinary work beyond academic settings.
Students are given the opportunity to receive critiques of their research from professors and experts in their fields. They are also given the opportunity to network with representatives from various career disciplines and hear from distinguished guests, including keynote speaker and President of IIT, John Anderson.
CAURS has done a great deal of work to diversify the fields represented in research. In past years, the Symposium mostly served students in biology, chemistry, engineering, environmental and geophysical sciences, physics, and mathematics. The Symposium has since significantly expanded participation of students in computer science, history, humanities, fine arts, international students,political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. These additional fields have opened opportunities for deeper and more collaborative engagement.
Many student participants from previous years had came to participate again this year. With so many great ideas and opportunities converging, CAURS serves as a perfect environment for research to grow and flourish.



Searching for real identity of being Asian American
Maasu spring conference in Ohio State University

Suyeon Yang

Maasu, Midwest Asian American Students Union, held a spring conference at Ohio State University on March 29, 30, and 31th, 2014. Maasu is an active group seeking political unity among Asian American college students in the Midwest by cultivating the leadership of each Asian American student, exploring the Asian American’s true identity, raising awareness of racism against Asian-Americans, and collaborating to seek ways to mitigate Asian American racial challenge specifically in the U.S., and assisting colleges located in Midwest to establish interconnectedness among different Asian American Associations in different colleges.
The Maasu conference's theme this year was “Re-imagination,” referring to imagining the possibilities of accomplishing dreams that each Asian American student has not dreamt of because of close-minded thinking or the environment that he or she has grown in, and also imagining more equity toward Asian American in U.S. This theme also conveys the idea of re-exploring oneself to discover what each really wants to do and re-organize oneself.
Maasu offers different kinds of workshops that participants can attend by signing up for three programs. These various workshops also encourage each student not to follow the mainstream stereotypes of Asian-Americans as being submissive, nerdy, and inferior to other racial groups.
One of the workshops I attended concluded that the reason these stereotypes develop is that some believed that minority groups are not truly American, that they are really just foreigners. They believe this mainly because people of color look different from the ‘standard appearance’ of Americans more toward ‘Caucasian-looking,’ and questioning their identities although these minority groups of people are born in the U.S. These workshops are led by Asian-Americans who are successful in their professions and who can tell young Asian American students about the racial issues in society and its possible solutions.
After attending three intensive workshops, each student can attend a banquet which is an enjoyable social gathering. This event offers students an opportunity to talk to and socialize with other students participating in different programs.


Impact of The Words In News Broadcast Program

Ji Eun ‘Jinny’ Kim

News broadcasting programs in the media are important because they explore and communicate important events shaping our world. While a news reader orally passes on the information, the mass receives information through hearing and visual perception of the reader, and reacts to the spoken report; sometimes the news rouses the masses, and other times the news relieves them. All of theses reactions are profoundly influenced by how the newsreader or so-called “anchor” chooses to deliver the same information. People are watching when information is silently processed.
On Monday March 25th, a broadcast entailed a bit of a twist on the actual words. A single anchor in one news broadcasting program called “News Headline” delivered the news and headlines appeared on the screen at the same time. He reported on one famous Korean talent who sued “netizens” for their hateful comments. He focused on consecutive events that happened to her. There was no problem with that. But when the news reached the most important moment, the broadcaster put too much emphasis on the fact that the talent got mad and decided to fight with the netizens, using the word “War.” He said she declared the war against netizens. There only stood his word. No malice existed. He continued on. His innocent smile told he was conveying the truth. On the same day in another news program, a worse scenario occurred. One reporter reported on the relationship between South Korea and North Korea. At the beginning he regarded North Korea as North Korea. But when the news hit the critical point, he suddenly indicated North Korea as the “enemy,” using this much more conflictual, even strident, word. Then the broadcaster continued describing developments between North Korea and South Korea. Throughout, his voice continued to convey gravity and tension.
There are 2 conjectures as to why these situations might have come about, as to how the news could include such personal, subjective, rather than purely “neutral” reporting.
First of all, the anchor is one of the “mass,” a human like anybody else, with emotions and personal experience and perspective, also subject to the experiences of everyday life. He or she might have personal feelings and personal views on the issue though he or she tries to remain objective. Reporters are people who judge, who think, and who have “senses” about things. As one of the people, the reporter might have personal feelings which might be rooted in him or her personality and outlook or temperament. He or she wouldn’t mean to utter the poisonous word; the problematic, “loaded” word would just come out inadvertently.
Considering that news is something that people watch and that news is something for the people, the anchor might try to reflect people’s thoughts. The words “enemy” and “war” could have been other people’s words rather than anchor’s words.
These charged, loaded words definitely played a role in shaping perceptions and responses. They moved me personally, despite my personal detachment from the news being reported; that the words had such an impact fascinated me. These expressions also influenced other Korean newspaper companies, which likewise started reporting the matters somewhat excessively charged ways, reacting to the initial reports quickly and writing about the incident the next day, conveying many aspects of the incident. Of course, the incidents themselves would have aroused the mass. But the charged words with which the events were reported ultimately shaped much of the impact and response of these events.