News Releases

Thinking Matters Symposium

April 15, 2008

Learning how a nonprofit agency reaches its audience while establishing your place on a team.

Tracking urban development and finding evidence that personally disturbs you.

Conducting field research and discovering there’s a whole industry built on just this sort of work.

Matching your love of soccer and politics, only to deepen your understanding of an ugly truth that ties them together.

These are just four of the areas studied and a few of the truths discovered by University of Southern Maine and Southern Maine Community College students presenting research findings at the 2008 Thinking Matters symposium.

Covering 230 topics, the symposium includes a student-led panel discussion, oral sessions, poster sessions, a keynote event, and roundtable discussions.

Through these projects, “students learn how to pursue their own research agenda,” says USM political science professor and student advisor Ron Schmidt. “They create their own interesting questions and pursue the answers.”

They also learn a great deal about how they operate as scholars, coworkers, and professionals.

Among the student projects presented:

Tracking urban sprawl with satellite images. Geography major Giles Kingsley uses a NASA grant to use remote sensing software–programs used to manipulate satellite imagery, such as photos, thermal imagery–to track urban development in the greater Portland region over the past 20 years.

“Urban sprawl is a huge issue in places like Washington and Baltimore,” Kingsley says. “Portland is a small frame of reference. The data could eventually be used for better land use. That’s my goal, for the data to be used to figure how we want to use our land and water.”

Satellite image on home page: A “false color composite” of the Portland peninsula and surroundings used to examine the issue of urban sprawl. Vegetation appears red, while urban areas appear in shades of blue and green.

Telling an agency’s story through film. Media studies students Drew Wyman, Stephen Turcotte, and Courtney True are working together to write, direct, shoot, and produce a film on behalf of Portland Trails’ Schoolground Greening Coalition. The film is intended to supplement the group’s efforts to foster support for making school playgrounds places to learn as well as play.

“Each of us knows that we can work effectively together as part of a creative team,” says Wyman. “That’s what media production is about, being creative in a small group. If you can’t work in a group, you don’t belong in media production.”

Children in trees image on home page: Fourth-graders at Fred P. Hall Elementary School study in the trees on the Portland Trails path behind their Portland school. The children were filmed as part of a media studies student film project for Portland Trails.

Using iPod to fight the “Freshman 15.” Senior exercise physiology students Alicia Croteau and Tyler Ravlo are studying how useful iPod’s PumpOne program is in motivating students age 18-25 to fight weight gain through exercise. The interactive program leads users through hour-long workouts that can be conducted at home or at a gym, providing guidance and encouragement while avoiding the expense and attention of a personal trainer.

“There are companies out there that are hired to do what we’re doing,” Ravlo says. “They have a product or service, and they need people to conduct research to test their claims about them. We’re testing our theory about the PumpOne program.”

USM students in field house image on home page: Alicia Croteau and Tyler Ravlo study iPod program effectiveness as a motivational tool.

Soccer as a force in politics and nationalism. Political science student and soccer player David Brown examines how political groups in Europe exploit the passions of soccer fans to advance their agendas. As examples, Brown cites the role hooligans played in ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the use of racial epithets in lower-level professional leagues in Germany.

Brown says that while the research has been enlightening, perhaps the real value of the exercise has been in his growth as a more confident and more efficient student.

“I’m working with three faculty members, and I’m getting a lot of feedback,” he says. “I know better how to approach professors, and how to use their time more effectively.”

“We’re getting graduate school experience right now,” says Ravlo, the exercise physiology student. “Graduate school is in the future, and by doing this now, we’re getting a sense for what it’s like and we’ll be ready for it.”

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