Faculty and Students Present Bird Research at National Conference
left to right) Tara Paterson, Kristan Cale, Laken Cooper and Sarah Foltz visited Muir Woods National Monument during their trip to San Francisco.
Biology faculty member Jason Davis and biology majors Laken Cooper, Tara Paterson and Kristan Cale traveled to San Francisco in January to present their research at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology conference.
Cooper presented a talk Stop on Red: Neophobia and corticosterone in house sparrows (Passer domesticus). Paterson presented a poster Effect of captivity on hippocamal volume of Passer domseticus, and Cale presented her poster Developmental Investigation of Juvenile Hormone and Royal Jelly in Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa).
Cooper, a senior biology major and Radford native, says that presenting at this conference that was dominated by graduate students was a little overwhelming. "Surprising, given the norm, most of the attendants expect you to be a graduate student and are delightfully surprised and impressed when they find out that you are not," says Cooper.
Davis says the students represented Radford University very well and many of the faculty in attendance were amazed that they were undergraduate students. "Laken gave her talk to a packed auditorium, Kristan and Tara were so busy talking to people in front of their posters that I couldn't even find a moment to step in and check on them. They did an incredible job, made me very proud, and represented Radford fantastically well," says Davis.
Cooper says this was a great learning experience. "From this experience, I was able to make connections with other professors as well as get feedback for ideas of future study," says Cooper. She also enjoyed hearing talks from other disciplines, which made her think of other areas of interest she might want to explore.