Five projects have been selected for the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) at Morningside College. 

Sioux City, IA – Five projects have been selected for the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) at Morningside College. SURP is a funded scholar’s program at Morningside that provides students and faculty an opportunity to collaborate on research and scholarly work during the summer.

The following students and faculty members will participate in Morningside’s SURP during summer 2020:

• Damian Herrera and Stacey Alex, assistant professor of Spanish. Their project, “Latina/o/x Stories of Siouxland: An Oral History Archive,” seeks to establish a publicly available digital video archive of Latina/o/x life-histories in Siouxland.
• Krista Zenk, Caitlin Makovicka, and Shannon Claxton, assistant professor of psychology. Their project, “Attachment and Sociosexuality: Exploring Differences Based on Religion and Parental Divorce,” will evaluate whether parental divorce and religiosity moderate the relationship between attachment styles and sociosexual orientation for emerging adults.
• Alexandra Inskeep, Keonté Robertson, and Elizabeth Coody, assistant professor of religious studies. Their project, “The Comics and Sacred Text Database Project” aims to establish a scholarly database that organizes and catalogs instances of sacred texts in comic books.
• Margaret Bass and John Helms, associate professor of chemistry. Their project, “Photochemical dissolution of phosphorus from soil runoff and resuspended freshwater sediments: How the ‘unlocking’ of recalcitrant nutrients may lead to algal bloom conditions,” will utilize a new method of phosphorus quantification to investigate the transition of phosphorus from solid and/or adsorbed phases into the freely dissolved phase.
• Andi Hays and Anni Moore, assistant professor of biology. Their project, “Comparison of Upper Respiratory Microbiomes of Free Range and Caged Chickens,” will compare the upper respiratory microbiomes of free range and commercial traditionally caged egg-laying chickens.

The students will present their research on July 28. Due to the situation surrounding COVID-19, the presentation is not open to the public. However, a video of the presentation will be shared on the Morningside College YouTube channel following the session.

Student research is an important part of the Morningside experience. While the Morningside College Palmer Student Research Symposium and Maud Adams Nursing Research Day was unfortunately canceled in spring 2020 due to COVID-19, normally this symposium provides a valuable opportunity for students to present research completed in a class or as an independent project with faculty supervision to the campus community.