Penn State Behrend is funding more than $41,000 in undergraduate research this spring. Sixty-two students will participate in the studies, working directly with faculty mentors.
Students in the Black School of Business will study the effectiveness of product placement in massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as “Splinter Cell” and “Rainbow Six: Lockdown.”
History students will assess the treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and compare it to the experience of those who served in Vietnam.
Biology students will continue a four-year effort to catalog insect species collected on the 854-acre Penn State Behrend campus. DNA samples will be extracted from each insect and shared with the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, where DNA barcodes are used to improve species discovery and identification.
Faculty-guided research is a vital component of the undergraduate experience at Penn State Behrend. The college provides funding for research studies and travel grants each year, and students present their work at an annual conference that is open to the region’s other colleges and universities.
“Through undergraduate research, students have the opportunity to work more closely with faculty members,” said Bob Light, senior associate dean for research and outreach and chief operating officer at Penn State Behrend. “They can have their work published in scholarly journals, present their research at regional and national conferences and gain admittance to prestigious graduate programs.”