2026 UHP Discover Projects

Faculty: Dr. Sherae Daniel

Project Description: 

A person can create impressions of themself on multiple social media digital platforms. For instance, a person could have an online presence at LinkedIn, Facebook and Github. These self-impressions can be built by using photographs, text, pointers to education, and the use of features such as liking and following others as a few examples. Similarly, other people’s behavior toward the focal person can influence the impression that is created of them on a digital platform. For each person, there can be variability in terms of how many of these platforms they use, to what degree, and how similar the images of the person are across platforms. Finally, people can vary in terms of the degree to which the online profies are connected to each other, whether each online presence is meant to correspond to a single person and the degree to which a profile is an authentic representation of a single person. Indeed, people leverage cartoon graphics instead of photos or aliases frequently.

Our research seeks to understand the implications of digital platform use patterns for a software developer’s career. A software developer’s career can take many paths. We wish to better understand questions such as whether these patterns online influence career moves across firms more than within firms, as an example. An alternative question of interest is whether these patterns impact some technical career paths in different ways than more administrative paths.

To make sense of the relationship between digital behaviors and careers we will draw on psychology and management theories and the Information Systems literature. We intend to explore signaling theory and impression management as examples. Findings from this study will be useful to those who interact online and pursue careers. In addition, findings from this research could help those who own and design digital platforms.

This summer, the student will be completely involved in moving the research forward. This translates to attending weekly meetings with the research team and occasionally meetings in between where needed. The team will include multiple professors and a Ph.D. student. Most of the meetings will be on TEAMS. This is an ongoing project. The project team has already collected interview, survey and some preliminary archival data. The work of the student will include opportunities to collect additional archival data, analyze it and conduct literature review to write a manuscript. In terms of data analysis, the student will have opportunities to engage in using statistical analysis tools such as SSPS. Students with strong data analysis skills are desired. This could include skills related to the use of Excel or a statistical package. Strong written communication skills are also desired.

The student should have strong oral and written communication skills. The should be able to communicate whether they understand assignments and the results of their assignments. They should also be able to communicate critical thoughts about their work. The student should be independent. They should be able to document a list of tasks and complete them on their own during the course of a week. During that week the student should also be able to reflect on the outcomes of their work and propose next steps. The student should have strong critical thinking skills.The student should have strong technical and analytical skills. Statistics skills are a benefit

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Renkai Ma

Project Description:

Background: Currently, the US workforce integration of neurodivergent talent remains a societal challenge. This population, specifically individuals with autism spectrum conditions and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), often faces specific neurodevelopmental constraints related to executive function (EF) and self-regulation (SR). While highly capable intellectually, these individuals may experience deficits in working memory (holding multiple streams of information), set-shifting (adapting to sudden changes in tasks), and inhibitory control (managing impulses or emotional regulation). In a structured academic environment, these challenges are often scaffolded by support systems; however, the modern computing or technical workplace requires these EF and SR skills to be deployed autonomously and in real-time. This vulnerability peaks during the Services Cliff (ages 15–26), an interval spanning from federally mandated transition planning to the expiration of dependent health coverage, where the cessation of structural guidance leads to high postsecondary disconnection and lost training investment.

Research aim & methods: To address this unemployment crisis, this summer research project focuses on mapping specific workplace ambiguity and points of friction for neurodivergent and autistic individuals. We will conduct a multi-stakeholder qualitative interview study involving both neurodivergent employees or early computing professionals and their stakeholders (e.g., supervisors, colleagues) to (1) first identify where sociotechnical dynamics break down. This project is deeply rooted in the social sciences and education, applying qualitative methods to understand human behavior and workforce development needs. (2) Then, the student researcher will use a novel method called speculative design. Instead of standard interview questions, we will use Generative Artificial Intelligence tools during sessions to co-create/ideate future technology support with participants. This approach allows us to probe complex social dynamics and ideate strategies addressing those workplace ambiguity barriers. If time permits, following the qualitative analysis, we may also develop a brief questionnaire to validate these findings with a wider audience through statistical analysis. This work sits at the intersection of applied social science, disability studies, and technology, focusing on the human impact of future tools rather than on the engineering of those tools.

Impact of this student project:

(1) The student’s work will directly inform the creation of a new conceptual framework, "scaffoled ambiguity," and the development of additional AI technologies within a larger project aimed at reducing workforce ambiguity among neurodivergent talent.

(2) This project is aimed at producing a high-quality academic publication in Human-computer Interaction venues (e.g., ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW))

If you are interested:

Students with an interest in Human-Computer Interaction: understanding and assessing the bidirectional influence of technology on human quality of life and work are strongly encouraged to apply. No prior technical experience is necessary, as this project focuses on social impact and qualitative inquiry rather than engineering.

Project Hours: 35

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Ráchael Powers

Project Description:

Research has consistently demonstrated that individuals with disabilities, but particularly individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), are at greater risk of victimization than individuals without disabilities or other types of disabilities. Using official secondary data collected about law enforcement agencies across the United States, we have found that the majority of police agencies report that they have policies related to individuals with IDD (Maher et al., online first). However, in a content analysis of law enforcement websites, we found that if these agencies have policies, they are rarely posted online and if they are, they often are not specific to individuals with IDD (Maher et al., under review). This is important because as public-facing documents, crime victims with IDD may look to these websites for information about accommodations before deciding to report a victimization.

In short, there appears to be a disconnect between the information provided in official secondary data through the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey (LEMAS) and our primary data collection efforts. This project aims to examine the reliability of the LEMAS data by combining that information with our existing data and then contacting law enforcement agencies about their policies. Through triangulating these data, we will be able to examine the extent to which law enforcement agencies have policies related to IDD, the scope of those policies, and whether those policies are publicly available to the communities they serve. This project is part of our ongoing research agenda to improve access to justice for victims with IDD.

The mentee will be involved in many aspects of the research process. This project includes analysis of secondary data (LEMAS) and primary data collection. They will be a full member of the research team and regularly meet with their mentor and other members of that team, including current graduate students at UC. Further, this project is a collaboration between the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati as well as Arizona State University and Michigan State University. The student will be a part of a multi-institution research group and expand their professional network.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote 

Faculty: Dr. Albert W. Klein, Jr. 

Project Description:

This project will look at applicable federal and state laws to ascertain all that apply to the Ohio Cyber Range (OCR) during exercises. This will entail researching the current law as well as possibly preparing legislation to enhance the OCR. Coordination with the legal department at The Adjutant General's Office (Ohio) and the Ohio Cyber Reserve is critical. The possible inclusion of Regional Program Centers in the Ohio Cyber Range Institute ecosystem will be explored. Our end goal is to publish a Legal Advisor's book to cover the applicable cyber law for all future Legal Advisors engaged in these exercises and tabletop exercises.

Project Hours: 32

Anticipated Format: In-Person or Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Steven Ellis 

Project Description:

Our Classics Department here at UC runs two archaeological excavations in Italy: one at the famed city of Pompeii, the other at Tharros on the island of Sardinia.  The student researcher would work directly with the Director of these projects, Steven Ellis, on various projects in Cincinnati to support the excavations while they are ongoing.  This means that data and information will be sent from the live excavations each day to Cincinnati; the student researcher would work on this data and return it to the team to help support the excavations. This would include working on 3D images of the excavations (photogrammetry), organizing, and editing the photographs of the finds and of the trenches, and some work with the website and social media.  In all a great opportunity to work behind-the-scenes of an archaeological excavation.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Alexander Thurston

Project Description:

Starting in 2020, a series of military coups unfolded in the Sahelian countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad, as well as in nearby countries such as Guinea and Sudan. This research project investigates how the new military regimes rule, including in terms of how the regimes approach questions of democracy and dissent. This phase of the project aims to build a database of political arrests in the Sahel, tracking arrests of politicians, journalists, and civil society members. This phase will help identify patterns regarding who is targeted for arrest and why. Overall, the project aims to generate several academic papers and a book.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Ashley Currier

Project Description:

In this new research project, I want to understand how and why women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are taking up weightlifting in droves and what this new development in aging women’s “body projects” means for women’s agency and collective action. By “body projects,” I mean aging women’s intentional effort and commitment to transform and recompose their bodies through nutritional changes, fitness, and weightlifting. Designing and executing their body projects can be tricky for women, who must navigate contradictory cultural logics and expectations about women’s bodies. Increasingly, videos touting eating large quantities of “clean” protein, putting on muscle, and lifting “heavy” clog women’s social media feeds, while, in the last year, the uptick in skeletally thin women, some of whom rely on GLP-1s to lose weight, exhorts women to take up less space physically, culturally, and politically.

In this project, I want to understand how and why women seek to “recompose” their bodies through weightlifting and nutritional changes as ways to halt aging, improve their health, and experiment with changing beauty standards and to explore the unexpected, unintended consequences of these body projects. When women embark on such body projects, what else in their lives changes? For instance, when women commit to weightlifting, their identities may shift in ways that they “outgrow” their lives, spurring them to make significant changes personally and professionally. Women may leave abusive or unfulfilling relationships, after initiating a body project rooted in weightlifting. Their sexual and social lives may also undergo radical transformation, as their bodies metamorphose. Their social networks in real life and online may shift additionally, as working out and internet sleuthing may put them in contact with other women and coaches who are similarly committed to health and weightlifting. Weightlifting may come with unanticipated expenses and consequences, including injury requiring surgery, convalescence, and rehabilitation and economic costs associated with purchasing gym memberships, training packages, equipment, certain foods and supplements, and bodybuilding competitions. This project relies on analyzing first-person accounts of women weightlifters and bodybuilders and interviews with aging women about their fitness journeys and weightlifting.

Because this project is in an early phase, I would like a student researcher to assist me with several tasks: 1) identify archives in the US that contain information about women and weightlifting/bodybuilding; 2) review and summarize existing and recent research about aging women’s body projects, especially those centered on weightlifting; 3) track and calculate possible expenses—material and nonmaterial—associated with weightlifting; and 4) review and summarize first-person accounts from women about their fitness and weightlifting experiences.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Nicholas Koenig

Project Description:

Record high temperatures, biodiversity collapse, polluted water ways, and so much more are wreaking havoc on our beautiful and complex environmental systems. Scientists and researchers have been sounding the alarms for decades, yet we still lack the necessary action to change social and economic structures harming terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. What this project works to enliven and create are pieces of art, textiles, music compositions, or anything the student researcher can dream up to take a climate, environment, and ecological dataset to liberate the numbers and values from their excel sheet cells to viewers eyes, ears, fingers, and hearts. What could this look like? A jazz combo piece based on global average heat data, a temperature scarf for a warming world in 2050, a pointillistic painting depicting the number of people exposed to unhealthy levels of lead in the Ohio River Valley: the options are endless. Let’s bring some data alive and embolden our communities to change the world!

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Alyssa Henry 

Project Description: 

This project is an opportunity for students interested in education or social science research focused on how children learn from text and how instruction supports comprehension and knowledge building. It is well suited for students interested in reading and content knowledge development and in applied research that connects theory to real classroom materials, particularly those considering graduate study or seeking hands-on research experience.

This project focuses on how informational text is taught in elementary classrooms and how widely used English Language Arts programs and curricula align with research on reading development and cognitive science. Informational, or expository, text places substantial demands on readers, including learning new vocabulary, integrating background knowledge, and making inferences across ideas. Despite these demands, many elementary ELA curricula provide limited or inconsistent guidance for supporting these processes. This project takes a research-to-practice approach by examining how findings from reading and learning research are reflected in instructional materials used in schools.

Over the summer, the undergraduate researcher will complete a defined sequence of research tasks that mirror how social science research is conducted. The first phase involves a guided literature review of empirical research on informational text comprehension and learning from text. The student will locate peer-reviewed studies, read and annotate research articles, and summarize findings in writing. Together with the faculty mentor, the student will organize the literature around instructional features such as text structure, vocabulary support, and how background knowledge is built across texts. The student will produce analytic summaries that synthesize findings across studies and connect research to instructional decisions.

In the second phase, the student will analyze instructional materials from commonly used elementary ELA curricula. This includes examining lesson plans, student texts, and teacher guides to document how informational text instruction is currently structured. Using a shared analytic framework grounded in the literature review, the student will identify areas where the curriculum aligns with research and where support is limited or missing. The student will then collaborate with the faculty mentor to adapt selected lessons to better reflect research-based principles. These adaptations may include revising lesson sequences, strengthening instructional language, or modifying student tasks, with all changes carefully documented.

A core expectation of the project is that the student develops a focused undergraduate research product based on this work. Each student will take ownership of a specific component of the project, such as a grade level, set of lessons, or instructional feature, and develop it into a polished product suitable for an undergraduate research conference or honors project.

The student will meet regularly with the faculty mentor throughout the summer. Meetings will focus on research decisions and professional development. Mentoring will also include direct guidance on applying to graduate programs, including how to describe research experience. This project is designed for students who want hands-on research experience and supports preparation for graduate study.

Project Hours: 35

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Teri Jacobs

Project Description:

This research project aims to develop environmental education programs, workshops, demonstration gardens, and resources for enhancing community awareness and promoting participatory stewardship and ecological designs on private lands. To achieve this aim, the research will (1) survey public botanical and civic gardens for existing environmental education on sustainable gardens and demonstration gardens, (2) conduct interviews with local sustainable landscaping companies about their approaches, (3) explore case studies on innovative and effective educational programs that advance sustainable landscapes and gardenscapes, and (3) review the literature to understand the scholarly guidelines for educational materials and signage, such as interactive panels, interpretative signs, and community outreach tools, on the importance of landscaping with native plants for wildlife, conserving natural resources, and building climate resilience. The project seeks to create a model for replication on how we design and maintain “living” landscapes. Private lands can play a pivotal role in restoring rich habitats, protecting at-risk species, such as the Monarch butterfly and other pollinators, and improving environmental conditions, such as water quality, soil health, and microclimates. Through environmental education and community outreach on sustainable landscapes and gardenscapes, we can cultivate change in attitudes about landscape aesthetics and motivate stewardship behaviors. The findings of this research will be used to create community toolkits, curricular materials, and a presentation to inform future environmental education and community outreach programs. As a next step, a collaboration with a community partner, such as the Civic Garden Center, can investigate the efficacy of these findings in a demonstration garden through development of success metrics (e.g., number of visitors, pre/post knowledge surveys, ecological impacts).

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Stefan Fiol

Project Description:

Since 2020, Dr. Rhonna Shatz (Neurology, CoM) and Dr. Stefan Fiol (Ethnomusicology, CCM) have offered a service-learning program called “Dementia and the Arts” that pairs music and medical students with persons with neurodegenerative disease in the community, as well as their care partners (see “A Model For Music And Health Science Collaboration” on UCPress website). The goal of this program is to increase social connection and experiences of awe through musical engagement. Awe is a complex emotion that stretches cognition by disrupting canonical pathways and forging new pathways of neural connectivity. From an evolutionary perspective, awe is an emotion that facilitates the accommodation of the unexpected, a reduction in self-reference, and openness to new learning.

With the support of a UHP student, we seek to conduct a pilot research study in Summer 2026 that will inform a deeper understanding of the connections between the experience of musical awe and functional connectivity in the brain. Using data from interviews, surveys, video content, and biomarkers linked to stress, inflammation and neurodegeneration, this research aims to understand the social and neurobiological mechanisms by which musical experiences of awe correlate with improvements in functional connectivity.

The research protocol involves individuals listening to a series of musical excerpts, some self-selected and others constant, that are predicted to evoke awe. Subjective reporting after each listening example will be analyzed alongside changes in objective data—gathered using Noldus FaceReader and BIOPAC technology—in relation to heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response, and facial expression.

This study has the following goals:

1. Measure and validate the ways that music generates experiences of awe through an analysis of subjective reports and objective verbal and non-verbal behavior during the listening protocol.

2. Assess cognitive performance and physiological changes during musical experiences of awe, controlling for cultural background, age and cognitive status.

3. Develop scalable and accessible intervention that is applicable to populations with dementia and beyond.

The process of analysis and interpretation will support conference presentations and the preparation of a peer-reviewed publication to the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia, or another such appropriate journal, on which the student researcher will be included as a joint author. Co-PIs Stefan Fiol (Ethnomusicology, CCM), and Rhonna Shatz (Behavioral Neurology, CoM), will oversee the research activities of the student. We are excited to mentor a student to develop their own research interests that would ideally relate to, and be supported by, at least some of the diverse research activities of this study.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Hybrid 

Faculty: Dr. Prince Ellis

Project Description:

This research project examines the cultural economy and community impact of large scale arts based festivals, using AfriFest Taste of Africa as a case study. AfriFest is a public cultural festival produced by APNET that brings together artists, performers, small businesses, community organizations, and residents to celebrate African arts and culture while activating public space and local economic activity. The project is grounded in non STEMM inquiry and draws from economics, business, humanities, and community engaged research.

The student researcher will explore three interconnected areas of impact. The economic focus examines vendor participation, small business visibility, and local spending associated with the festival. The cultural focus looks at how arts programming, performance, and storytelling contribute to cultural representation, identity, and cross cultural understanding. The social focus analyzes community engagement, audience participation, and the role of the festival in building social connections.

Research activities include survey design and administration, structured interviews with attendees, artists, vendors, and community partners, and analysis of attendance and participation data. The student will also review comparable cultural festivals to contextualize findings and identify best practices in sustainable arts based programming. Emphasis is placed on ethical, community centered research and clear communication of results.

This project offers an immersive, hands on research experience that connects theory to practice. Students will develop qualitative and quantitative research skills and learn how applied research can inform community programming and decision making. The work will conclude with an applied research report and a public facing brief for community stakeholders and arts organizations.

Project Hours: 35-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Hui Guo

Project Description: 

Research Question When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the stock market usually falls because borrowing becomes more expensive. However, sometimes the opposite happens: the Fed hikes rates, and the market rallies. Why?

The answer lies in the "Fed Information Effect." When the Fed acts, it is not just setting policy; it is signaling what it knows about the economy. A rate hike might signal, "We are confident the economy is strong enough to handle higher rates," and this "private signal" can boost investor confidence.

In a related study, I measure this signal by looking at the numbers—specifically, the difference between the Fed’s internal economic forecasts (Greenbook) and private sector forecasts (Blue Chip). However, numbers only tell half the story. The tone of the policymakers—their confidence, hesitation, or optimism—is equally important. This research project asks: Can we use Artificial Intelligence to quantify the "tone" of Federal Reserve documents, and does this textual sentiment predict market returns better than numerical forecasts alone?

Methodology: AI and Machine Learning as Research Tools This project offers a unique opportunity to apply Data Science and Machine Learning to economics and finance. The Federal Reserve releases millions of words of text, including officials’ public speeches, Meeting Minutes (summaries released shortly after meetings), Transcripts (verbatim records released with a 5-year lag), and Greenbooks (staff analysis).

Manually reading decades of these documents is impossible for a human researcher in a single summer. Instead, the student will employ Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. While industry giants like Bloomberg have developed proprietary sentiment measures, academic research is still in the early stages of integrating these advanced textual measures to specifically isolate the Fed Information Effect.

The student will use the following techniques:

• Sentiment Analysis: Using financial lexicons (like Loughran-McDonald) or modern Large Language Models (like BERT/FinBERT) to score documents on dimensions such as "Hawkishness" (focus on inflation) vs. "Dovishness" (focus on growth), as well as "Uncertainty" and "Optimism."

• Vectorization & Topic Modeling: Converting text into mathematical vectors to track how the Fed’s linguistic focus shifts specifically during market crises.

The student will construct a "Fed Sentiment Index" and use statistical regressions to test if this index predicts stock market movements (S&P 500) and bond yields more accurately than traditional variables.

Implications for Investments This research has direct, practical applications for asset management. As the Federal Reserve is the dominant force in global asset pricing, a deep, quantitative understanding of its communication is highly valuable. If this AI model can detect a "sentiment gap"—where the Fed’s private tone diverges from public expectation—it could form the basis of superior risk management and investment strategies.

Importance and Conclusion Understanding central bank communication is one of the most pressing challenges in modern finance. This project moves beyond traditional data and econometric models. By treating the Fed’s words as data, this research bridges the gap between qualitative history and quantitative finance. It provides the student with high-demand skills in AI and Python while exploring a fundamental question: When the Fed speaks, does the market actually understand what they are saying?

Project Hours: 35

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Palak Shah| Digital Futures Partnership  

Project Description:

This project investigates how an auditable certification framework for AI systems can be designed in the absence of widely adopted certification standards. As AI tools are now increasingly deployed in high-stakes contexts, principles such as explainability and privacy are frequently invoked but inconsistently operationalized. While ethical guidelines, institutional policies, and emerging regulatory approaches provide valuable direction, there remains a persistent gap between abstract principles and concrete, auditable criteria that can be used to evaluate these AI tools.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Susanna Tong

Project Description:

Watershed developments, including timber logging, mining, factory establishment, farming, and urbanization, not only can alter the natural landscape of a watershed and fragment its wildlife habitats, but also can affect its ecological and hydrological systems, in terms of decreasing biodiversity, disrupting ecosystem functions, deteriorating ecological services, increasing soil erosion, polluting air, water, and land, and changing the hydrological balances. In the face of continual development and climate change, comprehensive watershed management strategies involving the grey engineering infrastructure and/or green nature-based solutions are needed to alleviate and mitigate environmental degradation. It is therefore crucial to have a better understanding of the costs and benefits of these strategies at both regional and local scales.

This research aims to examine the efficacy of various types of watershed management options, such as the installations of detention ponds and swales and the restorations of riparian zones and wetlands, and their impacts on ecological services, environmental health, and environmental economics. Extensive literature research, and perhaps data analyses and hydrologic modelling will be involved in comparative explorations, synthesis studies, simulation exercises, and costs and benefits analyses. The goal is to determine the Best Watershed Management Practices under different hydroclimatic regions.

It is hoped that the results from this study will help further our understanding of the pros and cons of different watershed management options, providing useful insights for water managers and environmental planners as they devise feasible and effective management strategies to combat climatic, ecological, and hydrologic problems.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. George Richardson

Project Description:

Only a small fraction (<10%) of those who meet the alcohol use disorder (AUD) criteria receive specialty treatment (SAMHSA, 2020), and the vast majority report that they do not need it (e.g., 96.9% in SAMHSA, 2020). Low AUD awareness is a key factor implicated in this treatment gap (Morris et al., 2025; Raftery et al., 2020; Richardson & McGee, 2022). However, AUD awareness research is in its nascent stages, and few studies have attended to its individual and contextual determinants or sequelae. Our long-term goal is to interrupt the progression of AUDs by enhancing screening for, and brief intervention upon, low AUD awareness. The objective of this study is to delineate the correlates of awareness under the central hypothesis that it reflects individual factors as well as demographics and predicts service use. The rationale for this study is that it will elucidate how differences in awareness may develop in response to individual and higher-level factors and predict service use. This study has one primary aim: 1) Conduct a national survey of hazardous alcohol drinkers to examine the internal structure and nomological net of a measure of AUD awareness. This aim is significant because it will lay the groundwork for future larger-scale efforts to move AUD awareness research beyond its nascent stages by examining the clinical utility (e.g., diagnostic accuracy) of a comprehensive awareness measure across groups as well as its predictive validity during treatment. Ultimately, this continuum of research will positively impact health outcomes by enabling clinicians to effectively screen patients with AUD for low awareness, aiding efforts to enhance ASBIRT/P (alcohol screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment/prevention) and its implementation, and reducing the public health impact of AUD.

In this project, the student will design and build a Qualtrics survey with faculty mentor support, including items from validated scales, organizing question flow, incorporating attention checks and other quality control measures, and programming appropriate branching logic. The finalized survey will be prepared for distribution through both Prolific (using platform-specific requirements for screening, sample targeting, and compensation) and non‑paid recruitment outlets such as addiction and recovery listservs, social media, or community networks. In addition, the student will assist with data management tasks under the supervision of the faculty mentor, which may include monitoring incoming responses, cleaning and coding the dataset, merging data from multiple sources, and preparing files for analysis following established research protocols.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Christopher Platts

Project Description:

Dozens of small museums, special-collection libraries, universities, and other public institutions in Ohio and the Midwest contain significant medieval and early modern European artworks (ca. 1300-1700) that remain in storage, unpublished, and virtually unknown to both scholars and the public. Only a few of these little-known repositories of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts were inventoried by two art historians in the 1960s,

but the resulting publication included very little data about the artworks and not a single illustration. Consequently, scholars and curators have ignored this highly useful book and, in so doing, have neglected to consider the hundreds, if not

thousands, of medieval and early modern artworks currently all but invisible in local and regional institutions.

My project aims to discover, research, and share the most significant early European artworks held in little-known museums, libraries, colleges, and churches in Ohio and the Midwest. To do this, we will contact curators, librarians,

archivists, and church caretakers to request information and images about the art collections they oversee. With photographs and data to hand, we will study the artworks, including their style, quality, iconography, and other features,

determining which objects deserve further research and in-person examination.

I have already begun this project by contacting and visiting local institutions in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and other nearby cities, and based on the promising results so far, I am eager to expand the scope of the study to include institutions in Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and other states. I have

already found a handful of unpublished Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts that I have discussed in scholarly conference papers and that I plan to publish. I believe that by working with a dedicated research assistant from the Honors Discover Program, we will find

additional artworks that we can examine and share, not only with the staff at the institutions that own them, but also with their diverse audiences and with the scholarly community more broadly. In fact, after working closely with a research assistant from the Honors Discover Program last summer, I know this to

be the case: there are indeed more artistic treasures to find and study.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Laura Zanotti

Project Description:

Ecologies of Belonging and Displacement: Environmental Humanities, Community, and Sustainability is a UCI funded collaborative project between Dr. Laura Zanotti (Director, School of Environment and Sustainability) and Dr. Prerana Srimaal (Head, Dept of Liberal Arts). The project examines how ecological instability and human mobility transform concepts of belonging, responsibility, and moral imagination. Using literature reviews, participatory field research and reflective methods, it seeks to articulate a shared vocabulary of place consciousness across South Asia and the American Midwest. The honors student will have the exciting opportunity to support two project goals during the summer internship.

Goal #1 Public Humanities Syllabus + Collaborative Glossary – a Lexicon for Place and Displacement: To co-create a public facing syllabus and collaborative glossary on works across the humanities and social sciences on ecologies of belonging and displacement

Goal #2 Ecologies of Place and Displacement Workshops: To assist in reviewing best practices for global classrooms and assist with co-developing pedagogical modules for an immersive hybrid workshop experience that would support training in “Environmental Humanities, Migration, and Sustainability,” to be co-taught across UC and partner universities.

In order to meet goal one, research will involve (1) scoping literature reviews across the humanities and social sciences related to place, displacement, and change, (2) conversations with key scholars on seminal works in the field, (3) review best practices for creating a public humanities syllabus, and (4) the development of a collaborative glossary, similar to the Lexicon for the Anthropocene. We are excited to work with the student researcher on co-authored publications as an outcome of this work.

Research for goal number 2 will require similar activities, including a (1) scoping review of how topical or methodological workshops/institutes are organized effectively, (2) recommendations on what kinds of modules would be relevant to teach, and (3) best practices associated with transnational classroom spaces.

As this project includes engaging mixed methods from literature reviews to focused interviews to public humanities and digital humanities engagement, we are looking for a student who is excited about creative scholarship and who also is passionate about exploring environmental change and our relationships to place/displacement. Also, since the student researcher will be responsible for keeping track of a number of different tasks, the work requires someone who is able to handle data management, time management, and systematic documentation of research findings. Finally, we are looking for a student researcher who is able to commit to regular team meetings with mentors.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Muhammad Rahman

Project Description:

This project builds on a previously funded UHP Discover research initiative that completed the first phase of investigating alleys as pedestrian-oriented connections in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine (OTR) neighborhood. Through archival research, GIS mapping, and on-site fieldwork, the earlier phase documented alley accessibility, physical conditions, lighting, materiality, and safety. While the 2002 Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan envisions alleys and mews as walkable infrastructure, the research revealed that OTR currently contains the highest concentration of gated alleys in the city—reflecting ongoing gentrification and the privatization of public space.

This project invites students to explore how underused and often overlooked alleys might be transformed into safer, more welcoming pedestrian spaces. Moving beyond documentation, students will analyze selected alley sites, identify spatial patterns, and develop clear visual maps and wayfinding concepts that communicate their potential. Through lightweight community engagement—such as short surveys or prompt-based interactions—students will translate local perspectives into focused design proposals. Rooted in the urban public spaces of Over-the-Rhine (OTR), the project positions design as an active civic tool—making hidden networks visible and reimagining everyday infrastructure as shared community space.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. David Reeping

Project Description:

Over the years, more and more tools using generative AI to enable personalized learning have hit the market: ChatGPT’s study mode, Gemini’s guided learning, and Claude’s learning mode are a few leading examples. But what educational principles underlie these systems? And which kinds of students are most likely to benefit from them? In this project, students will explore modern educational theories and how they can be implemented in different types of generative AI–powered tools.

The primary goal of this project is to synthesize knowledge about the principles and practices that should guide AI educational tool design. To accomplish this, the project involves a scoping review of the literature. A scoping review is particularly well suited to this work because it allows us to map the breadth and depth of research evidence in the field and characterize the key features of existing studies, including both explicit and implicit design practices. In addition, interviews with authors of key literature identified in the review will be conducted to gain deeper insights into their design and development processes.

As part of the review process, the undergraduate researcher will engage in several key activities while working as part of a team of other undergraduate research assistants and PhD students. These activities include formulating research questions, defining inclusion and exclusion criteria for the literature, archiving and organizing source materials, critically evaluating the quality and relevance of each study, synthesizing findings into coherent insights, and addressing potential issues of bias, validity, and reliability. This experience will expose the student to the full lifecycle of a rigorous literature review, including systematic methods for ensuring research quality.

Through this project, the undergraduate researcher will contribute to the development of a robust set of design principles that can guide future AI educational tool development. These principles will not only support ongoing research on AI-enabled learning systems but also provide a foundation for practical applications in educational technology design.

Project Hours: 35

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Ming Tang | Digital Futures Partnership  

Project Description:

The Extended Reality (XR) Lab at Digital Futures invites students to take part in a UHP Discover program that explores how immersive technologies can support mental-health–related training, in collaboration with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center (CCHMC). This project focuses on using XR to rethink how healthcare professionals are trained, especially in high-stress and safety-critical situations. By blending real hospital environments with virtual ones, the team is building immersive training experiences that feel realistic, engaging, and directly connected to real-world practice.

During the summer phase, students will help develop an advanced virtual hospital environment populated with digital patients. These digital twins include both the hospital spaces and patient avatars, allowing the team to simulate a range of Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) scenarios. The goal is to create training modules that let participants practice responding to challenging situations in a safe, controlled environment. Along the way, the project will also explore how to capture user performance data and evaluate whether VR-based training can meaningfully improve employee safety, decision-making, and crisis response skills.

Students in the program will work on hands-on research projects that bring together virtual scenarios, storytelling, and embodied experience. Using VR headsets and game engines, they’ll explore how XR can function as a serious training platform—not just something for games or demos. Participants will also contribute to ongoing XR-Lab research, experimenting with generative AI for content creation, LLM-driven talking avatars, data collection methods, and UI/UX design.

The program emphasizes learning by doing. Students may conduct small case studies, build prototypes, test ideas, and iterate based on feedback. The lab environment encourages collaboration across disciplines and supports students as they develop technical skills while also thinking critically about ethics, realism, and human impact. No matter their background, students play an active role in shaping how immersive technologies can be used thoughtfully to support healthcare training and real people in real situations.

This program is open to students from a wide range of majors, including medicine, engineering, psychology, social sciences, business, education, music, arts, design, and other non-STEM fields. A key goal of the program is interdisciplinary collaboration—bringing different perspectives together to better understand how people interact with emerging technologies and how XR and AI might reshape future training and education.

The program is fully in-person. Students will work in the XR Lab at Digital Futures, gaining hands-on experience with cutting-edge hardware and software in a collaborative studio setting. Along the way, participants will also think critically about the broader impact of these technologies, including issues of ethics, accessibility, and cultural context.

We welcome students who are curious about the intersection of technology, design, and the humanities. No matter what your background, your ideas and contributions will help shape how XR technologies can support more effective, inclusive, and human-centered digital experiences.

The lab supports students by giving them space to experiment, ask questions, and learn through hands-on making and iteration. As work unfolds at the intersection of technology, mental health, and human experience, the XR-Lab encourages curiosity, empathy, and responsibility alongside technical skill building. Through guidance, feedback, and open exploration, the XR-Lab helps students build confidence, develop their own voices, and understand how immersive technologies can be used thoughtfully to support people and communities.

Project Hours: 35-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid 

Faculty: Dr. Nancy Jennings

Project Description:

Cultivating moral reasoning and social development, the Cincinnati Ethics Center (CEC), in partnership with the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Libraries, offers a core program for youth aged 11-18 years called Ethics and Dragons. This program combines the traditional tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, with discussion of ethical dilemmas in the context of a game. In collaboration with the CEC, this research involves a co-designed study of the impact of the program, involving observation of game play and interviews of youth involved in the program. We will explore moral foundations theory and the model of intuitive morality and exemplars, particularly as youth develop and engage in game play scenarios that involve moral judgements.  In addition, we will explore social development in youth, the relationship between social and moral development, and the practice of engaging in social situations while making moral decisions through game play.

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Yingying Sun

Project Description:

This project investigates the feasibility of using iPhone-based walking data to infer meaningful road elevation semantics by benchmarking smartphone-collected data against an existing, high-quality ground-truth dataset. The ground truth consists of approximately 2,000 elevation points derived from manually connected point-cloud data combined with airborne LiDAR for a set of pre-selected routes. These routes are fixed and already validated, and a customized data collecting prototypes are also developed to enable this systematic comparison.

Rather than assuming that smartphones can directly measure centimeter-level elevation accurately, this project adopts a feasibility-oriented approach. The goal is to understand what types of elevation-related information can be inferred, under what conditions, and how algorithmic processing and normalization can mitigate known sensing limitations such as offset, drift, and noise. The emphasis is on relative elevation patterns, transitions, and segment-level semantics, rather than absolute elevation reconstruction. Those insight would help to infer and prepare future crowd-sensing research to support accessibility studies.

Students will collect repeated walking traces using a customized browser-based data collection tool on iPhones, generating multi-sensor datasets that include location, motion, and orientation signals. These data will be processed, aligned to the known routes, and compared against the ground-truth elevation profiles. Through this process, students will examine how smartphone-derived signals relate to real elevation changes, where mismatches occur, and how those mismatches vary across conditions such as route type, walking behavior, and sensor availability.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Mehdi Norouzi

Project Description:

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools—such as systems that create text, images, and other content—are increasingly used in education, the arts, public health, sports, and many other non-engineering fields. However, many students without technical backgrounds feel uncertain about how to use these tools effectively, creatively, and responsibly.

In this research project, the student will learn how to use modern generative AI tools through hands-on practice and apply them to real-world tasks relevant to non-STEM disciplines. Rather than focusing on programming or algorithm development, the project emphasizes practical usage, prompt design, critical evaluation of AI outputs, and ethical considerations.

The student will explore a selection of widely used generative AI tools for text and image generation and use them to complete concrete deliverables such as written content, visual materials, educational resources, or analytical summaries. The specific tools and application areas will be selected based on the student’s interests (e.g., education, arts, public health, or sports).

Throughout the project, the student will document their learning process, including:

• How they learned to use each tool

• Effective and ineffective prompting strategies

• Challenges, limitations, and ethical concerns

• How AI tools can support (but not replace) human creativity and judgment

The final outcome of the project will be:

1. A portfolio of AI-assisted deliverables created by the student, and

2. A reflection-based guide or learning summary that documents the student’s pathway for learning and using generative AI tools as a non-STEM learner.

The student will work in a supportive research lab environment with regular mentorship, training sessions, and feedback. Technical guidance will be provided as needed, but the focus of the project is on human-centered use of AI tools, not software development.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Peter Yi

Project Description:

Zoning is the hidden blueprint that drives the design of our cities. In recent years, outdated zoning policies have been criticized for contributing to our culture of sprawl, the climate crisis, and the lack of attainable and diverse housing. Now, a groundswell of zoning reform points to change ahead. Minneapolis has eliminated single-family zoning. California allows residents to split single lots and build multiple units. Austin has removed parking minimums easing housing construction. Cincinnati became the first city in Ohio to legalize accessory dwelling units, and passed a sweeping zoning reform package called Connected Communities. Amidst this growing movement, it is critical to study the potential impact these reforms will have on the way we design our cities, build housing, maintain environments, and support public amenities and transit. The student researcher on this project will work closely with the faculty mentor to collect information, data, maps, and interviews on zoning reforms across the country. We will speculate on how these reforms can lead to creative housing design, with a focus on resident-led initiatives such as cohousing, intentional communities, and community development corporations. We will conduct case studies of historic and recent precedents of housing designs that make innovative use of zoning. Depending on skills and interest, the student researcher may be introduced to architectural drawing and modeling techniques to further the design aspects of the project.

Project Hours: 32

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Kristina Shin

Project Description:

Oversize garments have become a defining feature of contemporary fashion across streetwear, luxury, and mass-market apparel. Despite their widespread adoption, oversize design remains under-theorized in both patternmaking textbooks and academic research. Existing systems rely on proportional grading from standard body blocks and provide little guidance on how design ease should be redistributed to achieve an intentional oversize silhouette without compromising balance, wearability, or aesthetic coherence.

Designing oversize garments is not a matter of simply increasing body measurements. Key areas such as the neckline, shoulder slope, armhole depth, and sleeve volume require non-proportional adjustments, and these decisions are often resolved intuitively by designers rather than through evidence-based methods. This funded undergraduate research project addresses this gap by systematically quantifying design ease in oversize garments and translating the findings into practical, reproducible patternmaking guidelines.

The student researcher will work closely with faculty on a design-led, practice-based research project that integrates theory, market analysis, experimental pattern development, garment construction, and fit evaluation. The project will result in both an instructional oversize patternmaking reference booklet and a draft research paper suitable for submission to an academic fashion or textile journal.

The student researcher will:

• Conduct a structured literature review on garment ease, fit theory, and patternmaking, with attention to gaps related to oversize design

• Analyze oversize garments from contemporary brands and price points to identify recurring proportional and construction strategies

• Develop experimental garment patterns with systematic variations in design ease across key garment areas

• Construct and evaluate fit samples, assessing balance, mobility, silhouette, and wearability

• Document iterative pattern refinements to establish quantifiable oversize patternmaking guidelines

• Contribute to the development of an instructional reference booklet and a scholarly research paper

This opportunity is particularly suited to students considering graduate study, technical design careers, or research-oriented practice in fashion and textile disciplines.

• Strong interest in patternmaking, garment construction, and fit analysis

• Prior coursework or experience in apparel design or technical design

• Willingness to engage in iterative testing and documentation

• Availability for full-time research participation during the funding period

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Michael Riley | Digital Futures Partnership  

Project Description:

Adolescent dancers have high rates of injury. They often practice for long hours with inadequate recovery, performing repetitive movements that cumulatively strain musculoskeletal tissues and narrow the range of neuromotor control strategies. We are researching the factors that predispose dancers to injury, including physiological recovery, hormonal fluctuation, and movement biomechanics. Our lab uses motion capture and force platforms to analyze movement patterns to identify high-risk movements, tying those to factors such as recovery status, workload, and menstrual cycle phase. The student will have the chance to participate in data collection and learn about motion capture technology and motion data processing and analysis.

Project Hours: 35

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Christina Carnahan 

Project Description: Approximately 30% of individuals with ASD experience significant communication challenges and are considered minimally verbal into adulthood, despite receiving early intensive behavioral interventions throughout their school years (DiStefano et al., 2016; Finke et al., 2017; Tager-Flusberg & Kasari, 2013; Sievers et al., 2018). These communication challenges significantly impact the quality of life of adults with ASD, limiting their ability to develop social relationships, share thoughts and feelings, or even express basic wants and needs.

One approach for addressing the ongoing communication needs of these individuals is augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) (Logan et al., 2017). AAC includes various tools to supplement or augment a person’s speech and other communication skills. For example, manual signs, graphic symbols displayed on communication boards or books, or speech-generating devices (SGDs) are all examples of AAC (Ganz, 2015). Together, the emerging research supporting the value and effectiveness of social media for increasing connectedness for individuals with IDD, the use of AAC within social media contexts, and the effectiveness of AAC for individuals with ASD, including older adolescents and adults, suggests that interventions explicitly targeting functional communication using AAC can be highly impactful.

Our team has developed a comprehensive intervention package using social media to increase access to meaningful relationships for young adults with autism while also building critical functional language skills (Doyle et al., 2020). In the past year, we expanded this project to evaluate the feasibility of implementing the intervention in small group settings implemented by direct support professionals in community settings. This project builds on our previous research to continue evaluating the impact of this intervention package, which uses an iPad as a speech-generating device, visual supports, and task-analytic instruction to teach additional social media skills such as commenting and other exchanges.

In addition to this social media and AAC intervention, the current project will include a second intervention that combines Story Champs, an evidence-based narrative intervention, with AAC supports. This intervention is designed to explicitly teach personal and fictional narrative skills using consistent visual icons, repeated modeling, and structured practice, while simultaneously supporting expressive language through AAC. By integrating Story Champs with AAC, this intervention targets higher-level language skills such as narrative organization, sequencing, and elaboration, providing participants with additional opportunities to share experiences, tell stories, and engage socially across contexts.

Collectively, these interventions are highly innovative in their focus on adults with autism and complex communication needs, a population that remains significantly underrepresented in intervention research. By embedding AAC within both socially meaningful digital contexts and structured narrative instruction, the project moves beyond basic functional communication to target authentic participation, self-expression, and relationship building. This dual intervention approach addresses a critical gap in the literature by extending evidence based practices typically studied in children to adult learners with persistent communication challenges.

Expectations: The student researcher will work 40 hours per week in the IMPACT Innovation and/or CEES programs in the IDD Education Center. During the first week, the student researcher will complete the necessary processes and training required of all staff members. It is important to note that the student researcher will need to complete a background check (paid for through program funds), first aid, and an eight-hour online training.

Upon completion of the necessary prerequisite steps, the student researcher will spend three days shadowing and observing associat

Project Hours: 35-40

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Alex Hinck

Project Description: 

Social support is a central communication process through which people seek and receive various resources in times of stress or uncertainty. Support is not defined solely by the availability of help, but by how support is communicated, interpreted, and embedded within relationships. Offline sources of social support (e.g., family, friends, romantic partners, clinicians) offer interactions that are typically characterized by shared history, embodied presence, and relational accountability, which can foster emotional validation, empathy, and long-term support, but may also carry risks related to stigma, judgment, or social consequences. Comparatively, online or mediated sources of social support (e.g., social media, online forums, online support groups, AI chatbots, social robots) can offer greater accessibility and anonymity, allowing people to seek support beyond their immediate social networks.

Existing research offers limited theoretical integration of affordances, source identity, and stigma, leaving open questions about how features of support shape both access to and evaluations of social support. Thus, this project seeks to discover which affordances function as protective, particularly in high-risk contexts, by reducing concerns about judgment and surveillance. This has important theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it advances communication scholarship by integrating research on affordances with research on social support, stigma, and human–machine communication. Practically, the findings can inform the design of supportive technologies and interventions by highlighting how certain features shape both willingness to seek support and perceptions of its usefulness, particularly for folx with stigmatized identities. More broadly, this work underscores the need to design support systems that balance accessibility, safety, and relational meaning over time.

The student who will work on this project will work closely and collaboratively with Dr. Hinck throughout each step of the research process. This student will have a variety of responsibilities including: assisting with idea formulation, IRB submission, research study design, recruiting participants, analyzing data, compiling literature, creating annotated bibliographies, and writing literature reviews. Overall, the student will practice their critical thinking and research skills, which are transferable regardless of their career goals.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Gary Painter

Project Description:

Investing in Flourishing is advancing a unique model to attract sustainable commercial financing for youth and family flourishing. We believe a comprehensive wraparound and family-based intervention program designed to produce flourishing will produce as a byproduct, multi-sector, multi-organizational return on investment. This return on investment will be paid based on shared savings contracts in health care systems, child welfare systems, and criminal justice systems, to name a few.

Cincinnati has been selected as one of four pilot sites to launch this project nationwide. The UHP scholar will be part of a team that helps to conduct community-based research, literature reviews, and perform data analysis to support the launch of this project in the fall.

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Isabel Potworowski

Project Description:

This project involves compiling a database of Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, documenting their history and architectural features. The research will primarily use online and physical archival resources, and may include travelling to visit and document churches in person.

This research project is part of an ongoing study about the relation between place, place-making, and the sacred in architecture. The study examines the tension between two tendencies: on the one hand is place-boundedness, where the siting of the building is significant for how it orients towards the divine: places of pilgrimage, sites of sacred history, visually framing surrounding nature to reveal the divine in creation, and architectural expressions of local cultures. On the other end of the spectrum is place-lessness, where the architecture orients less towards its site and more towards heavenly realities: churches that have a strong separation from the surroundings, that are set apart, and that orient through imagery and iconography of heaven. This tension has long been present in Christian theology as one between the “already but not yet,” between immanence and transcendence. The architectural response to this tension has oscillated historically, influenced by the Reformation, Vatican II, environmentalism, and architectural movements, especially modernism and contemporary approaches to form, atmosphere, and place-making. The question remains today: what is the role of place for the orienting function of church architecture?

The current research project will locate and describe Catholic churches and chapels in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (comprising 19 counties) as a pilot study. The summer research task will be to create a database of churches, including information such as location, architectural drawings, interior and exterior photos, short descriptions of the history of the building (its founding, construction, renovations, and the clients and builders involved), the architectural style, iconography, the worshipping community (e.g. if the church serves a particular ethnic group), and existing literature about the church. The database will be made in Microsoft Excel, requiring only basic knowledge of the program. The research will involve primarily consulting online databases and physical archives such as the Archdiocese of Cincinnati Archives, Open Street Maps, the Association of Religion Data Archives, and other sources, then compiling information in tables and folders. If time and resources permit, the student may also travel to document churches when sufficient documentation is otherwise unavailable. I will be in Cincinnati for most of the summer and will meet with the student once or twice a week to discuss research strategies, review findings, and plan next steps.

Previous knowledge in architecture or architectural history is an asset, but not required. The only requirements are a basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel, an attention to detail, and interest in the research topic.

The student will first of all learn about the history and architecture of churches in Ohio. They will also gain research skills, especially using various databases, familiarity with library resources and archives, and about the decision-making involved in research design.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Heidi Kloos

Project Description:

When summer comes, many children struggle to retain what they have learned during the school year. This so-called summer-learning loss is particularly pronounced for children from economically disadvantaged communities. We seek to address the summer-learning loss by interfacing with a summer program that is organized for homeless children. Our specific focus is on elementary-school math (arithmetic, pre-algebra). This is a particularly challenging academic subject, with children often being several years behind their grade level. Children also struggle with learning motivation and persistence. They might even suffer from math anxiety. The proposed research will explore ways in which children can overcome these barriers and learn math in a positive environment. The research involves designing, carrying out, and testing the effect of a math-enrichment program that will be rolled out during the summer.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Camila Paez Bernal

Project Description:

Since the 1990s, Latin America has experienced a gender-liberal shift marked by the expansion of legal and policy frameworks supporting women’s and gender rights. These developments emerged from sustained mobilization by feminist and women’s movements and reshaped public debates around bodily autonomy, violence, family, and citizenship. At the same time, this inclusionary turn has generated political contestation. Conservative and antifeminist actors have become increasingly active across multiple arenas—public streets, courts, legislatures, and digital platforms—seeking to challenge, reinterpret, or limit gender-progressive reforms.

This article forms part of an ongoing comparative research project that will generate original empirical material through 2026. It examines the narratives, rhetorical strategies, and modes of mobilization employed by antifeminist actors in response to gender policy reforms. Building on existing scholarship on feminist and liberal mobilization, the study focuses on five antifeminist movements—three based in Colombia, one in Mexico, and one in Spain with an organizational presence in Colombia—to analyze how anti-gender discourses are constructed, circulated, and institutionalized across national and transnational contexts.

The research draws on qualitative content analysis, virtual ethnography, and visual documentation. Primary sources include organizational manifestos, websites, social media content, and digital campaigns. This multi-modal approach allows for an examination of how political actors frame gender equality debates, articulate claims about democracy, family, and morality, and establish discursive and symbolic connections across borders.

By analyzing antifeminist mobilization as a structured and strategic political process, this article contributes to broader discussions on political contestation, social movements, and gender policy reform. It also offers insights into the evolving landscape within which feminist movements operate, highlighting how meanings of gender, democracy, and rights are negotiated and contested in contemporary political contexts.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Anima Adjepong

Project Description:

This 10-week project will support the research and development of political education (PE) programming about gender, sexuality, and transnational solidarity organizing for Silent Majority, Ghana. Silent Majority, Ghana is a queer African feminist network that provides popular political education for movement building among Ghanaians in the diaspora and allied groups. A key outcome of this project will be a research-based structured PE curriculum rooted in African feminism and queer politics.

The ideal student researcher will:

1. know how to conduct library research, have excellent reading comprehension skills, and write clearly.

2. be creative and able to translate theoretical ideas into practical activities for educational purposes.

3. be self-directed, able to receive and implement feedback, and ask clarifying questions to support their fulfillment of work expectations.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Angela Potochnik 

Project Description:

This UHP Discover project is to work with the UC Center for Public Engagement with Science (PEWS) on interdisciplinary research and outreach initiatives. The primary role will be to develop PEWS web resources, including website, YouTube Channel, and social media. The student researcher will also have the opportunity to write for our weekly newsletter, participate in our ongoing outreach programming, and support publicity and editorial work for a book series, Elements in Public Engagement with Science (Cambridge University Press).

The UHP Discover student will join a robust, interdisciplinary team working on these and other initiatives, including multiple faculty, a postdoc, and several graduate student interns. This will thus be an innovative experience in collaborative humanities-led research aligned with public engagement. Given the interdisciplinary nature of PEWS, this position is appropriate for students with a wide variety of majors who are interested in public engagement. We are especially interested in students with expertise or interest in cultivating expertise in graphic design, video production, web design, and social media, as these skills would support all research projects the UHP Discover student would be involved in with us.

The student researcher will need to be available for in-person meetings once or twice per week and occasional in-person events and activities, but much of the work time can take place off site and on their own schedule. We are happy to work around limited other commitments, including vacations and travel plans.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Matt Huml

Project Description:

Working in college athletics has many benefits: an opportunity to complete your career in the sport industry, prestige related to connections to well-known brands, and the excitement from daily work responsibilities. It also has considerable downsides, some of which are not readily known by employees before they enter the industry. An overwork climate is common within the sport industry, with high levels of stress, burnout, turnover, and challenges with managing work and family responsibilities coupled with low pay in many entry- and mid-level career positions (e.g., Dixon & Bruening, 2007; Hawzen et al., 2018; Taylor et al., 2019; Weight et al., in press). These components can create a negative culture within the industry. A couple of the quotes below explore some of the benefits and challenges related to working in sports:

Quote 1: Overall I feel the industry is dying. A lot is expected of the support units but little is given to support the support units. I and my assistant are tasked with running over 150 events annually. We are asked to staff these events with 5-25 workers when no one wants to work in athletics. If the slots aren't filled I am reprimanded. When asking for any assistance; pay raises, apparel, gifts etc for the workers those requests are re-buffed. We are supposed to be the subject matter experts on all systems, when one fails the fingers are pointed.

Quote 2: In my limited experience, college athletics is filled with passionate and hard-working people who are committed to their jobs of enhancing the experience of student-athletes. I love coming into work every day!

These two quotes are pulled directly from the study, at-hand. It shows the passion from employees on making their industry a great place for everyone’s career, which lead to many great details from their responses. It also provides a great opportunity for people that like puzzles, as we need to review all their responses and build a coherent picture of what’s happening from an employee perspective. The purpose of this study is to examine how athletic department employees perceive the culture within the college sport industry. The industry is very demanding, has drawbacks, but also many strengths. This project seeks to write a manuscript that will build a narrative to the biggest concerns and benefits related to working in the industry from a work culture perspective.

Data collection was completed in 2022 and 2023. Participants completed a survey with a variety of scales (i.e., workaholism, burnout, etc.), but it also included an open-ended text box where participants could discuss their perception of workplace culture in college sport based on their experiences. Over 1,100 participants provided qualitative (written out) responses on their work culture experiences. Therefore, all data collection has been completed. The coding (categorizing the responses by topics) will be completed by the end of Fall 2025. Therefore, the next step is reviewing these codes and building a “story” that connects these codes together that can narrate the macro-perspective of workplace culture in sport.

This project is looking for analysis and writing support in Summer 2026. The student needs to have at least some familiarity with sport (doesn’t need to be sport industry experience, just understand the basic principles that employees are required to help provide a lot of behind-the-scenes work to allow the on-field product to flourish) and strong writing ability. I’ll be happy to provide guidance as editorial support throughout the process. We would do bi-weekly meeting check-ins on progress for writing and manuscript design.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Seth Powless

Project Description:

Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming the way businesses operate—from automating marketing content to optimizing supply chains and enhancing customer experiences. However, as organizations rush to adopt these technologies, they face significant challenges related to data privacy, ethical concerns, integration costs, and workforce readiness. This research project invites undergraduate business students to explore these issues through a quantitative lens, providing real-world insights into how different industries perceive and manage GenAI adoption risks.

The primary goal of this study is to measure and compare the concerns and challenges of GenAI adoption across multiple business sectors, including finance, retail, manufacturing, technology, and healthcare. Students will design and distribute a survey to business professionals, using Likert-scale items to quantify perceptions of risk, readiness, and impact. Data will be collected from at least 200 respondents across diverse industries. Statistical analysis may include:

• Descriptive statistics to rank challenges by severity.

• ANOVA tests to compare concerns across industries.

• Regression analysis to identify predictors of adoption success.

This project offers hands-on experience in data-driven decision making, a critical skill for future business leaders. You’ll learn how to design surveys, analyze quantitative data, and interpret findings to inform strategic recommendations. The results will not only deepen students' understanding of emerging technologies like Gen AI, but also prepare students to lead conversations about responsible AI adoption for future career considerations.

Project Hours: 30-35 

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Sarah Schroeder

Project Description:

The below will outline a proposed school-community partnership between the University of Cincinnati (UC) School of Education (SoE) and Hughes High School (HHS), a secondary education institution that is part of Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). The goal of this project is to support CPS priorities, such as chronic absenteeism, college readiness and graduation rates, among HHS students through mentoring, leadership development, academic skill building and civic action. Students and faculty in the UC SoE, HHS along with Healthy Visions, the lead agency for Hughes High School, will work to develop a semester-long mentoring program where UC SoE students will partner with HHS students to complete a youth participatory action research project (YPAR) focused on positive change in the Clifton Community. This YPAR project will be grounded in the Positive Youth Development (PYD) framework, emphasizing the strengths of the students involved and increasing agency and voice to bring about meaningful engagement between UC and HHS students and community impact. PYD and YPAR hold potential for underserved teens academic and social emotional development and have shown that “adolescents’ potential can be cultivated through supportive interactions in which adolescents are active agents” (Rovis et al., 2025). In addition, YPAR holds promise for improving students’ “academic engagement, motivation and achievement (e.g. increased test scores, graduation rates and school engagement” (Griffin, 2021).

Project Hours: 30 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Daniel Murphy

Project Description:

The aim of this project is to understand how social and economic inequality are intertwined, and how this relationship varies across diverse pastoral communities in Mongolia. In order to do this, we explored the economic effects of social networks and network structure across individuals, households, and communities in two rural, pastoral communities in Mongolia. The relationship of social networks to economic inequality are well supported in small-scale, qualitative analyses of communities around the world, but quantitative analysis is lacking. In pastoral communities, which have long been noted for their paradoxically strong but flexible networks, there have been few quantitative or mixed method studies of social networks. Yet, the diversity of network structures makes pastoral communities a unique context in which to explore these dynamics. This research aims to utilize longitudinal mixed method research to investigate whether network structure impacts economic outcomes, measured here as household wealth.

The research data collected as part of this project comes from two different field sites in eastern and western Mongolia. These regions are marked by very different social, economic, and environmental dynamics. In each site (bag or district) data has been collected from every registered household. The data collected include demographic data, household wealth data, and social network data. In addition, the researchers have also collected qualitative data from households in each field. The qualitative data include discussions of the cultural dynamics of social bonds and relationships within networks. Data was collected in the western field site in 2018 and 2023, and in the eastern field site in 2019 and 2024.

Project Hours: 30-40 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. So Yoon Yoon

Project Description:

As a social science and educational research, this project aims to understand how students develop spatial skills and use them for learning. Spatial ability is recognized as a crucial dimension of multifaceted intelligence, essential for successful performance in science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, and medicine (STEAMM) education and professional fields.  Numerous studies have used spatial training to enhance K-2, undergraduate, and professional program students’ spatial ability, potentially improving their STEAMM performance. Despite its significance, there has been a lack of effort to review and evaluate the training effects from the literature. Therefore, this project seeks to (a) systematically review various spatial training methods in STEAMM education, (b) evaluate the effects of the training on student performance, and (c) develop an efficient spatial task to accurately assess students’ spatial ability.

The undergraduate research assistant (URA) will begin the project by conducting a thorough search for experimental research articles focusing on spatial training methods in STEAMM fields. The URA will systematically document characteristics of spatial training methods in the identified articles, with a specific emphasis on types of spatial tasks, such as gaming, animation in surgical training, virtual, augmented, and mixed (VAE) reality technology, digital twins, and apps for engineering design graphics, etc. The tasks will include documenting various aspects of spatial training methods in the identified research articles, such as (a) target population, (b) STEAMM content areas, (c) types of spatial tasks, (d) spatial assessment tools, and (d) changes in student performance resulting from spatial training.

By reviewing spatial training methods, the URA will contribute to the development of a new spatial task or training for enhancing students’ spatial ability and performance. Additionally, there will be opportunities for the URA for collaboration in preparing a conference paper as a co-author. This position will offer valuable exposure to interdisciplinary research and collaboration with graduate students working on diverse projects within Dr. Yoon’s research group.

Project Hours: 40 

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Katherine Sorrels

Project Description:

In January 2025, the Stowe Garden Project launched at the University of Cincinnati as a sustained effort to restore the landscape surrounding the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati’s historic Walnut Hills neighborhood. It’s a special site—on the national register of historic places both for its time as the Beecher family home in the mid nineteenth century and, one hundred years later, as the Edgemont Inn, an African American tavern and boarding house in the Green Book. The house recently underwent a major restoration, but the grounds remained a neglected dumping site overgrown with invasive species. The Stowe Garden Project is coalition of UC faculty, staff, and students working with community partners to restore and reimagine the landscape as a vibrant community greenspace, historical and ecological research site, creative hub, and hands-on outdoor classroom.

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Ivan Ivanov

Project Description:

Over the past two decades, policy debates and academic scholarship have grappled with how states conceptualize and pursue cybersecurity. Early approaches emphasized either deterrence or norms-based strategies, borrowing heavily from concepts developed for the physical domain. More recent empirical research has demonstrated the limitations of these security frameworks in cyberspace, leading to the emergence of Cyber Persistent Engagement (CPE) as a third strategic option. CPE emphasizes continuous competition below the threshold of armed conflict, proactive engagement with adversaries, and the exploitation of vulnerabilities to constrain opponents’ freedom of action. A central theoretical and policy question guiding this research project therefore concerns the extent to which states have adopted this strategic logic—CPE.

The first phase of the project involved building an original dataset that enabled the systematic analysis of national cybersecurity strategies (NCS) through automated text analysis. The earlier version of the dataset (1.0 and 1.2) focused on European and North American allies. The more advanced version included a global dataset of national cybersecurity strategies. The second phase significantly expands the scope and analytical leverage of this dataset. Rather than focusing exclusively on whole-of-government NCS, the project seeks to identify and analyze cyber defense strategies and international cyber engagement strategies. These documents are typically produced by ministries of defense and ministries of foreign affairs and tend to be more operational in nature. As such, they provide a distinct perspective on how states conceptualize and respond to cyber threats, while opening new dimensions for understanding strategic adoption. In particular, the project examines whether operational-level documents adopt CPE more rapidly or more extensively than whole-of-government strategies.

The core objective of the project is to determine whether cyber defense and international cyber engagement strategies exhibit distinct patterns of strategic thinking compared to national cybersecurity strategies. Specifically, the research explores whether operational and sectoral documents are more closely aligned with CPE than declaratory, whole-of-government policy documents.

Methodologically, the project follows the same approach as in earlier stages, relying on automated text analysis using WordStat software. The student researcher will assist in collecting relevant documents, translating non-English texts into English using AI-based translation tools (DeepL), and integrating them into the existing dataset. All documents will be coded using an established vocabulary of words and phrases associated with deterrence, norms-based approaches, and CPE, enabling systematic comparison across document types and over time.

By extending the dataset beyond national cybersecurity strategies, this project advances scholarly debates on cyber strategy, alliance cohesion, and the relationship between declaratory policy and operational thinking. It also produces a global reusable and expandable dataset that can support future academic research as well as policy-relevant analysis of international cyber strategy.

Project Hours: 30-40 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Kierstin Giunco

Project Description:

This summer research opportunity includes two interrelated studies that examine how teachers and teacher candidates make sense of, adapt, and design curriculum in ways that support equitable and meaningful learning. Across the disciplines of literacy and social studies, curriculum is treated not as a fixed object to be implemented, but as a site of professional judgment, learning, and agency. The opportunity may be especially appealing to students interested in education research, qualitative methods, and questions about how teachers learn and exercise professional judgment through curriculum work, while also developing skills and perspectives applicable to their own classroom practice.

Project Hours: 35 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Flavia Bastos

Project Description:

The American Mirror investigates how U.S. high school students use digital storytelling to explore identity, belonging, and nationhood. Drawing on more than 100 youth-produced videos from the long-term project Who Is American Today?, the monograph examines how teenagers’ lived experiences shape their understandings of civic identity and how media-making itself becomes a civic practice. Through qualitative analysis of imagery, themes, and narrative strategies, the project shows how youth both affirm and contest dominant narratives of Americanness. By positioning youth-made media as cultural texts, the book bridges art education, media studies, and the humanities, offering new insights into how belonging and citizenship are imagined in a divided and diverse society.

Project Hours: 35

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Diego Cuadros | Digital Futures Partnership  

Project Description:

Some U.S. communities experience far more overdose deaths than others. At the same time, many places with high need have limited access to mental health and substance-use treatment services. In this project, you will help us understand where overdose deaths are most concentrated (“hotspots”) and whether those hotspots tend to occur in places where mental health need is high and local support is harder to access.

You will work with publicly available county-level data and learn, step-by-step, how to organize datasets, summarize patterns, and create clear maps and figures that tell a story. Your responsibilities will include: (1) preparing and checking data (with guidance), (2) making simple comparisons across places and time, (3) building maps that highlight hotspots and service gaps, and (4) helping produce a short final report and presentation that explains what we found in plain language.

No prior experience with GIS, coding, or public health is required, training and weekly support are provided. By the end of the project, you will have a small portfolio of professional maps/figures and a stronger understanding of how data can guide real-world solutions to the overdose and mental health crises.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: In-Person

Faculty: Dr. Michael Loadenthal

Project Description:

This research supports the Prosecution Project (tPP), a long-term, open-source intelligence and public policy research program focused on understanding how political violence—terrorism, extremism, hate crimes, and illegal political action—is prosecuted in US courts. Researchers would work to locate current and past (1990-present) cases of felony political violence occurring in the US, test that case for inclusion utilizing a decision tree, assemble requisite evidentiary documents, and code that case for 50 variables. Researchers are provided with training modules and an extensive team manual as well as regular check-ins with me, and later, a coding partner (i.e., another student researcher). 

Every case included in the tPP dataset is validated through a decision tree, coded for 50+ variables, associated with a set of primary source documents, and triangulated via secondary sources by an independent coding team. After the first round of dual coding, the case is checked by a senior member of the project team, and finally, validated by one of the tPP Auditors. The data generated is suitable for a patterned statistical analysis and the development of complex models to understand patterns, trends, and outliers. 

Through identification, analysis, and assessment of thousands of cases, tPP seeks to identify correlations between who a defendant is, how they are charged and prosecuted, and other related factors, such as political ideology, religion, and the crime’s motive, means, target, and impact. The project explores defendant demographics, prosecutorial strategy and outcome, juridical rhetoric, and relevant laws dealing with hate crimes, civil rights violations, designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and material support, as well as assigned terrorism enhancements and the use of specialized motive-centric statutes.

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. David Niven

Project Description:

Building on hundreds of thousands of reports made to a national voter helpline, Dr. Niven is building the first of its kind nationwide snapshot of the voting experience. Dr. Niven’s analysis shows where voters waited on four hour lines to vote, where registration issues were most prevalent, where accessibility issues arose, even where voters were most likely to be photographed by drone cameras as they entered the polling place. To complement the data he is analyzing, the student research assistant will compile information on polling places, voter turnout, and news and social media coverage of voting.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Virtual/Remote

Faculty: Dr. Rebecca Wingo

Project Description:

The Wyandot were the last tribe removed from the State of Ohio in 1843. In less than ten days, the Wyandot said goodbye to their homes, their buried ancestors, and the lives they built in the Sandusky River Valley. The Wyandots walked over 150 miles from Upper Sandusky to Cincinnati, where they boarded steamboats bound for lands unknown in Kansas Territory.

For the past five years, students and faculty at UC have been working in partnership with the Cultural Division of Wyandotte Nation to develop the Wyandot Removal Trail (WRT). As generations of Ohioans have told and retold the story of their statehood, they wrote the Wyandot out of collective memory. The WRT is both physical and virtual, and seeks to rectify Ohio’s historical amnesia. Thirteen historical markers will reinscribe Ohio’s landscape with Wyandot history (the first was installed in 2025), and a companion website provides an overview of the trail and Wyandot history more broadly.

We envision the WRT companion site as an open educational resource for K-12 educators in Ohio and beyond. The student researcher on this project will work with Dr. Rebecca Wingo (History) and citizens of the Wyandotte Nation to move the WRT companion site into its next phase of development. The student will manage the companion site, reviewing it for errors and consistency, checking that all links are active, and ensuring that educators and learners have access to appropriate and relevant primary sources.

Beyond the maintenance and review of the WRT companion site, there are two main components for this project, which should keep the work varied and lively.

Part A: The researcher will complete a survey of publicly available K-12 curriculum pertaining to Wyandot history and the history of Native American removal from the Midwest. The evaluation of existing curriculum will be used in a grant proposing a workshop that brings together educators and Wyandotte citizens to co-create lesson plans. After receiving approval from the Wyandotte Nation, these lessons will be made available on our companion site for adoption in classrooms across the region.

Part B: The researcher will join the team on the Wyandot Heritage Digital Archive (WHDA) to help process our archival collections. The WHDA’s mission is to digitally reassemble the Wyandots’ historical records, which are housed in dispersed archives across multiple states. We have acquired digital facsimiles of these papers and objects. The researcher will apply our metadata protocols to each record and upload them to our archival management system.

At the end of the fellowship, the student will present their work back to the Cultural Division of Wyandotte Nation.

Project Hours: 40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Gary Weissman

Project Description:

Internet archives contain hundreds of horror and science fiction pulp magazines, dating from the 1930s to the early 1960s, that would otherwise be lost to history. While much of what was published may be regarded as rubbish, these magazines were the primary venue for genre fiction at a time when very little science fiction and horror appeared in book form. While internet sites preserve great numbers of pulp magazines, their content has not been catalogued in any systematic way. Your research task is to comb through the online archive in search of sf and horror tales that that contains subject matter relating to World War II, fascism, eugenics, racism, Nazism, the genocide of the European Jews,  and environmental degradation or catastrophe. You will compile an inventory of noteworthy narratives and have the option of developing your own writing project based on this research and what you discover.

Project Hours: 30-40

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Audrey Hickert

Project Description:

Educational and self-improvement programming for incarcerated individuals is commonly accepted as an important strategy to improve post-release outcomes and security within facilities (Davis et al., 2013). But the availability, format, and extent of such programs vary widely and are often limited due to budget and staffing constraints. One potential solution to programming access is tablet-based learning, which has dramatically increased in correctional settings over the past decade, with added acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic (Davis et al., 2024). One of the fastest growing providers of high-quality educational and rehabilitation tablet-based programming is Edovo (edovo.org). Edovo is a non-profit offering their platform in more than 1,100 prisons and jails in 47 states in 2024 (Edovo, 2025) across the three major tablet providers (Securus Technologies, ViaPath Technologies, ICSolutions). While adoption of tablet-based programming in correctional settings is growing, research in this area remains limited. This project will explore the nature of correctional education, especially tablet-based programming, and contribute to a larger research project looking at the impact of Edovo on learner outcomes and correctional systems.

Project Hours: 30

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Thomas Moore

Project Description:

From 1980 to 2020, countries experienced unprecedented levels of interdependence socially, culturally, ecologically, environmentally, and militarily, with deepening economic ties often being the primary driver of this growing cross-border interconnectedness. Recently, however, economic globalization has stalled or even reversed. If you’re interested in international economic affairs, especially the geopolitical implications of a de-globalizing world economy, as well as the use of quantitative and qualitative evidence to address policy-relevant social science questions, working on this project should provide an enriching experience.

At the quarter mark of this century, scholars who study international relations – economists, political scientists, and public policy experts – are reassessing the extent to which “developing” countries from the “Global South,” such as China, India, and Brazil, are challenging – individually or collectively – the long-standing dominance of “developed” countries from the “Global North,” such as the US, Germany, and Japan. As part of this endeavor, scholars are debating whether the period of intensifying economic globalization from 1980 to 2020 helped or hindered the ability of the Global South to “catch up” to the Global North. To this end, scholars are also exploring new ways to assess where and how economic globalization has been experienced most and least strongly among countries, industries, and regions of the world.

Much of the research has already been completed; students have already created original databases in which the world’s top 2,000 companies are organized by industry and nationality so we can track changes in the prominence of companies from 60 countries in over 80 industries. We’ve collected company-specific data about how “globalized” companies are in their sales, asset deployment, and shareholders. Take the Chinese EV automaker BYD. We’ve retrieved data on the balance of Chinese vs. international ownership in BYD over time; digging deeper, we’ve identified the ownership percentage for each foreign country (e.g., US, Japanese, Korean ownership in BYD). We’ve also retrieved data on how the share of BYD’s Chinese vs. foreign sales has changed over time. In a similar vein, we’ve retrieved data on how the distribution of BYD’s physical assets (e.g., factories) has shifted between Chinese and international locations. All of this is designed to assess whether companies from different countries and industries are more “globalized” than others and whether more highly “globalized” companies and countries perform better.

Summer 2026 will focus on data analysis/visualization and interpreting the results. Although students from the Lindner College of Business and the College of Arts & Sciences (especially social science majors) might find the subject matter of this project particularly relevant to their studies, I’ll happily consider any motivated UHP student who finds the topic interesting, as the work does not necessarily presume any particular academic background.

Project Hours: 40 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Vikas Mehta

Project Description:

In recent years, there has been an effort to recenter urban design from an area of expertise largely concerned with the aesthetics of form and space to one which actively engages the political, social, and economic complexities of cities. In this scenario, the primary purpose for urban design is not limited to the aesthetic but focused on broader goals related to the common good such as equity & spatial justice through empowerment and well-being for all communities, social cohesion in the context of demographic shifts, equitable economic development, biodiversity and climate adaptation, to mention a few. The pedagogical goals for urban design are also slowly shifting toward a discipline that is purpose-driven and more broadly relevant to the current crises facing societies—whether to address the issues of democracy, polarization, housing, public health, equitable access to amenities, or other imperative challenges. As a result, there is an emphasis to situate urban design as a discipline that contributes to the common good viewed collectively through the lenses of political, social, economic and environmental.

Project Hours: 40 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Kara Moranski

Project Description:

The student researcher will work with a research team on the project “Making Sense in Virtual Environments: Sensory Research in Virtual Reality for Language Learners,” which is housed within the CEDAR Language Resource Center (LRC). The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of virtual reality (VR) experiences for language learners. The student researcher will work with the Principal Investigator, a Postdoctoral Fellow, and collaborators at Digital Futures to analyze data on language learners’ experience before, during, and after their participation in various virtual environments. Data analyses will include a variety of instruments and techniques, such as surveys, sensory data collected via wearable technology, and stimulated-recall interviews. The VR materials included in this study were developed at the CEDAR LRC and are designed for Spanish and Arabic courses; proficiency in one of these languages is highly desirable. The student researcher will participate in all aspects of the study that are currently in progress, including reviewing current literature in VR research and analyzing data. Pending funding, the student researcher may also have the opportunity to work on an expansion of this study which includes interaction with artificial intelligence (AI) in immersive environments. The student researcher will also occasionally participate in activities and events of the CEDAR LRC, thus gaining experience in working at a Language Resource Center.

Project Hours: 35-40 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid

Faculty: Dr. Shelina Brown

Project Description:

This summer, an exciting opportunity awaits an undergraduate student interested in exploring the vibrant youth cultural music scenes of Cincinnati. Working closely with a professor, the student will delve into a specific music community within the city, uncovering its cultural, social, and artistic dynamics.

Project Hours: 30 

Anticipated Format: Hybrid