By: Kaitlyn Sutton

Before Richard Deeg became Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in fall 2016, he was the college's inaugural Associate Dean for Research—a title bestowed upon him by Temple University's Vice President for Research, Michele Masucci.

"Michele understood that there was a clear need to increase the support surrounding the amazing research taking place in our college," Dean Deeg noted. "It wasn't long after that conversation that I quickly realized how big that need was."

The first program the Dean's Office introduced was the College of Liberal Arts Research Awards (CLARA). CLARA provides support for faculty-driven research projects. This program was the first of its kind for the college but not a new idea at the University.

"After organizing CLARA, we realized there was no college-based program for undergraduate research at Temple," Dean Deeg stated. "What we really needed was a program where our students could work directly with faculty members on their research projects to create a different experiential learning opportunity that would be unique to CLA."

So, in summer 2017, under the direction of Sandra Suarez, senior associate dean for research and Kim Fahey, director of research administration, the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Research Awards were born.

LAURA creates more opportunities for undergraduate students to develop research skills by working with faculty mentors on faculty-led research projects while simultaneously increasing support for faculty research in the College of Liberal Arts. This program also continues to create experiences beyond the typical lab-based research with topics from the humanities and social sciences disciplines.

"I am deeply invested in the quality of work that is being done at the College of Liberal Arts and am thrilled that a program such as LAURA exists," said Michele Masucci. "I am very excited for the future of this program and the opportunities for collaboration within our own [Office of Research]."

The list of 2017-18 faculty mentor and undergraduate student participants is as follows:

Summer 2017

Lauren Alloy, Psychology, and Caroline O'Brien: Risk for Bipolar Disorder: Reward-related Brain Function & Social Rhythms | Adolescent Cognition and Emotion | Teen Emotion and Motivation

Lisa Briand, Psychology and Neuroscience Kelsey Lucerne: The Role of Cocaine Use in Vulnerability to Social Stress

Nyron Crawford, Political Science, and Bria Wilson: The Suspicious Mind: Race, Information Processing, and Scandal

Tania Giovannetti, Psychology, and Ross Divers: The Use of Non-Immersive Virtual Reality to Improve Everyday Functioning in People with Dementia

Liz Gunderson, Psychology, Audrey Wrobel: The Importance of Parent Language and Gesture for Child's Spatial Reasoning

Robert Mason, Geography and Urban Studies, and Cedric Jouin: Civic Engagement in Watershed Management

David Smith, Psychology and Neuroscience, and Jane Michele Gaisinsky: Altering Social Interactions with Noninvasive Brain Stimulation

Jeffrey Ward, Criminal Justice, and Sara Jane Hunt: Self-Reliance and Consequences of Involuntary Contact with the Criminal Justice System

Fall 2017

Debra Bangasser, Psychology and Neuroscience, and Attilio Ceretti: Sex Differences in the Regulation of Spatial Learning by a Stress Hormone: Do Ovarian or Testicular Hormones Play a Modulatory Role?

Sarah Bush, Political Science, and Anna Panutsa: Why Do Countries Allow Democracy Assistance?

Matt Hiller, Criminal Justice, Stephanie Hudson: Surveying Student, Staff, and Faculty Attitudes Towards Concealed Carry of Firearms on Campus

Judith Levine, Sociology, and Caitlin McGrory: Class, Race, Gender and Moving from College to Employment in the New Economy and What is the Middle Class? How Sociologists Define and Measure Class Groups

Patricia Melzer, French, German, Italian and Slavic, and Evron Hadley: Women and Political Violence in 20th Century Germany

Tom Olino, Psychology, and Sidney Saleh-Kurtz: Neural Substrates of Responses to Peer Acceptance and Rejection: The Influence of Negative Parenting Style

Vinay Parikh, Psychology and Neuroscience, and Zoe Steinberg: Behavioral and Neural Endophenotypes in Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease

Spring 2018

Lauren Alloy, Psychology, and Rory McNicholl: The Influence of Peer Victimization Moderated by Parenting Styles in Adolescents' Immune Stress Reactivity

Debra Bangasser, Psychology and Neuroscience, Aaron Hall: Metabolism and Stress: How Early Life Stress Induces Metabolic Changes in Rats

Marcus Bingenheimer, Religion, and Thomas Kuklinski: Distribution and Location of Temples in China—Before and After the 20th Century

Eunice Chen, Psychology, and Joo Kim: Why Diversity Matters in Brain Sciences

Eugene Chislenko, Philosophy, and Maura Edwards: Representations of Evil

Michael Kaufmann, English, Gianna McDevitt: Philadelphia Theater Digital Archive Project

Michael Leeds, Economics, and Han Hong Pham: No Country for Young Women? The Impact of Restrictive Legislation on Women's Health in Texas

Judith Levine, Sociology, and Caitlin McGrory: Moving from College to Employment in the New Economy

Patricia Melzer, French, German, Italian and Slavic, and Evron Hadly: Women and Political Violence in 20th Century Germany

Ingrid Olson, Psychology, and Richard Ho: Awake Targeted Memory Reactivation and Foreign Language Learning

David Smith, Psychology and Neuroscience, and Jane Gaisinsky: Modulating Deception with Noninvasive Brain Stimulation

Mat Wimmer, Psychology, and Shivam Bhakta: Epigenetic Modulation of BDNF Expression in the Ventral Tegmental Area Following Prolonged Opioid Abstinence