On behalf of the students, faculty and staff of Keene State College, I am pleased to welcome you to our campus for the 2019 Northeast Regional Undergraduate Research, Scholarly and Creative Activity (URSCA) Conference of COPLAC, the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. This annual event provides the opportunity for northeastern COPLAC member institutions to celebrate the very best in faculty-mentored undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative endeavors.
The twenty-nine COPLAC member institutions are unified by their commitment to liberal arts and sciences, public education, and our student-centered missions, preparing students to be engaged citizens, lifelong learners, and adaptable to careers yet to emerge. COPLAC’s annual showcase of undergraduate research illustrates our shared commitment to high impact practices, including faculty mentorship, and establishes a broader community of peers for student networking and support.
Keene State College is proud to be a founding COPLAC institution. Our commitment to liberal arts education and the teacher-scholar-mentor model is the essence of the undergraduate experience on our campus. We are fortunate to have our COPLAC peer institutions standing with us and exemplifying the richness of the public liberal arts.
Our commitment to the liberal arts can be seen in the Putnam Science Center, where undergrads pursue research with a bio-medical focus; and in the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, currently exhibiting “This is Country,” a photo collection curated from Florentine Film’s most recent documentary series, Country Music, with an exhibit catalogue created by Keene State intern. In every building across campus, much like your own campuses, students and faculty are invested in collaboration, discovery, and making meaningful contributions as engaged citizens.
Thank you for being here and for supporting one another. Please join me in sincere appreciation to our colleagues at COPLAC for making all of this possible. We hope this conference provides you with inspiration, connections, and encouragement as you continue in your academic pursuits.
Sincerely, Melinda D. Treadwell, President, Keene State College
Infants’ Responses to Ambiguity in the Context of Parental Affect Monica Kerr Faculty mentor: Gina Mireault Northern Vermont University - Johnson
By the age of eight months infants use parental affect to interpret ambiguous situations, a phenomenon known as social referencing. Whether younger infants also do so is unclear. We explored whether parents’ emotional cues influence 6-month-olds’ (N=29; 15 females) behavior when confronted by an ambiguous stimulus. Data were collected in infants’ homes in a within-subjects counterbalanced design. Infants employed social looking when parents were positive or negative, rather than neutral, and gazed at the stimulus longer when parents were positive. Overall, infants preferred gazing at the stimulus regardless of parental affect, such that the stimulus captured their attention more than parental emotion. These findings suggest that 6-month-olds employ social looking when parents are affectively positive or negative, but unlike 8-month-olds, they do not use parental affect to navigate their own emotions. Social looking appears to be the first step in the development of social referencing. Monica Kerr is from Woodbury, Vermont. A senior studying Psychology, Monica plans to work as a behavior interventionist following graduation.
