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Show 4 message from steve roens Steve Roens UROP Director spring 2012 Greetings and welcome to the 2012 Undergraduate Research Abstracts. I want to congratulate all of the students who have published their cutting edge research in this twelfth edition. Once again in 2012, participation in undergraduate research has grown at the University of Utah. Again this year we see an increase in the number of abstracts we publish describing the research and creative projects accomplished under faculty supervision by our most talented undergraduates. This issue of the Abstracts contains contributions by many students who received assistantships from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). UROP provides undergraduates with opportunities to work one-on-one with faculty sponsors on research and creative projects. UROP, along with the Undergraduate Research Abstracts, the Undergraduate Research Symposium and the other research opportunities for undergraduates with which we are involved, have become part of our new Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR). To find out more about UROP and other op-portunities for undergraduate researchers, please visit our new website at http://our.utah.edu/. I would like to recognize the students in the Honors College, the Health Sciences LEAP Program and the Undergraduate Student Experts on Teaching program (USET) whose abstracts appear in this journal as well as students who participated in the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), hosted by Weber State University in March, and all other students across the campus who have worked on research/creative projects with faculty sponsors, and whose abstracts are included here. In order for undergraduate research/creative projects to take place, faculty sponsors are indispens-able. I want to acknowledge these accomplished professionals who, with full teaching loads and extensive commitments to their own research, generously give of their time to mentor students in research and creative projects. I would like to thank Charlotte Hansen, Administrative Program Coordinator, for recruiting Honors students' abstracts for the journal. I would also like to acknowledge the 30 students who participated in this year's "Research Posters on the Hill" event at the Utah State Capitol, whose abstracts are pub-lished in a special section of the journal, as well as Associate Vice President for Research Cynthia Furse whose office sponsors the event and Jason Perry, Vice President of the University's Office of Govern-ment Relations who provided ample support for the event. I am most grateful to former Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Pershing, Vice President for Research Thomas Parks, and former Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, Dean of the School of Medicine and CEO of University Health Systems Lorris Betz for their generous support of UROP. Without their help we would not have been able to provide students with the rich experiences in research and creative work that they received this year. Finally, I am especially grateful to UROP Administrative Assistant Andrea Haag for her excellent work organizing both Research Posters on the Hill and the Undergraduate Research Symposium and to As-sociate Director Jill Baeder, who is unquestionably the face and spirit of UROP and the organizational and editorial force behind the Undergraduate Research Abstracts, to Cindy Greaves who provides invaluable technical and advising help and finally to Senior Associate Vice President for Academic Af-fairs Martha Bradley for her support, encouragement, and forward looking ideas. Steve Roens |
