Project 1: Facilities Management: The Backbone of all University Infrastructure
By James “JJ the goat” McCauley
Major: Aerospace Engineering
Scholars Program: SGC (CPSG359G)
Manhattan University, a private college of just around 1000 students, is just barely staying afloat due to declining attendance and staff layoffs after COVID. In fact, the campus HVAC crew didn’t have a project manager, which is where JJ came in. JJ took the role of project manager for several weeks at MU and put together a new preventative style program for the HVAC workers there. JJ described how his customer service skills and overall leadership skills improved as a project manager. However, showing up and creating a whole new strategy for systems he’s not familiar with wasn’t an easy task. After learning about all the HVAC systems on campus and logging EVERY SINGLE PART in a massive binder, he had to power through a boss with his job at risk and teaching several workers about his new plan. When I asked why he didn’t use excel sheets to gather part data for his plan, he simply said, “none of the other HVAC workers would be able to use it,” which just puts into perspective how different an environment this was for him.
JJ's binders of preventative planning and index of HVAC parts
Project 2: Python-Pandas Automation - IWCO Direct
By Alexander Geretz
Major: Applied Mathematics
Scholars Program: SGC (CPSP259G)
IWCO, a mail marketing company, isn’t the most tech friendly place, so all of their files with research on where to send mail were in different formats in different scattered files. However, when Alex spent his summer coding python (especially with the pandas module) programs to help organize the files, he compiled all the data into one single, neat spreadsheet. During his time working for IWCO, Alex learned how to code with Python and the pandas module and code without any code editing software. When asked about the experience of working with old people that don’t understand what code can do, Alex admitted that he wished that he had set boundaries with what he was working on because management kept asking for more throughout the summer within his project. In addition to this challenge, Alex also had to make scripts without a code editor, which means you’re unable to see what parts of your code succeed and fail, making the process take significantly longer.
Project 3: Perinatal Care Practices: Observations from Labor & Delivery and Neonatal Intensive Care
By Emmalynn Malixi
Major: Biophysics & Astronomy
Scholars Program: SGC (CPSP359G)
Emmalynn got the unique opportunity to observe the delivery of several babies at Virtua Voorhees Hospital. Throughout her time working with other delivery nurses and doctors, she got lots of experience and information about how and when c sections are administered. Now, with all hospitals, there is a risk of something going wrong. Though, even things going wrong, like a baby’s vitals dropping, was important experience for Emmalynn. When asked how she was able to stomach watching several procedures, she said it was something she got used to after watching through several youtube videos so she wouldn’t feel sick in the delivery room.
Project 4: Information Overload and Fatigue: How Modern Media Exposure Contributes to Societal Apathy and Declining Moral Outrage
By Carlos Vasquez
Major: Psychology
Scholars Program: Public Leadership (Discovery Research)
Carlos’s project explores American internet culture among youth, particularly relating to underreactions to the Epstein Files and Trump’s presidency. Several statistics regarding current opinions about the state of America and testimonials of people of younger generations time and time again show that a very few select number of people believe that we are on the right track as a nation. Carlos described how much he learned from his research into media consumption and youth reactions. He’s learned about desensitization of media and mental exhaustion causing states of denial among people. The main obstacle he encountered while researching was the issue of too much information. Cherry picking would lead to an inaccurate assessment, but there is simply too much information about this newer issue out there to cover all of it.
Project 5: Campus Antisemitism After October 7th: How Jewish Students’ Experiences are Impacted
By Andrew Lefkowitz
Major: Government and Politics
Scholars Program: Public Leadership
In early October 2023, Hamas and Israeli tension broke out into official conflict again, which has been on and off for multiple decades. Even though UMD’s campus is several thousands of miles away, Jewish students still the cultural impacts from Israeli military criticism. The goal of Andrew’s project was to identify the changes in antisemetic culture on campus before and after recent Middle Eastern tensions through interviewing and collecting opinions of Jewish students on campus as well as analyzing any antisemitic (or lack thereof) events on campus. Andrew found the most difficult part of the project in general simply getting enough data to draw conclusions from it. Taking the time to gather hundreds of students’ opinions, all based on the presumptions that each respondent is actually a part of the Jewish community. Even through these difficulties, Andrew still felt he gained significant knowledge in widespread data collection and learning what it takes to advertise his survey. I asked Andrew where he personally stood on this issue, and, surprisingly, he said that he doesn’t think there is any difference on UMD’s campus. However, he said there certainly is on several other campuses throughout the country.