Research and Creative Activity Funding
The Experiential Education and Engagement Center and the Office of the Provost are offering funding for faculty-led research opportunities. To learn more about applying for undergraduate research and creative activity funding, please review the documents below.
Celebration of Research and Creative Activity
The annual Celebration of Research and Creative Activity highlights the work of students from all five of AUM’s Colleges. This celebration allows students to present posters and oral presentations about their research to faculty, staff, and fellow students.
Funded Research Projects
On-Campus Undergraduate Research Opportunities
Undergraduate research provides invaluable opportunities for you to deepen your understanding of your discipline or to prepare for graduate school and career. The Professors below have opportunities available. Please contact them and get started today!
Faculty, if you haven’t already worked with students, you’ll find that mentoring them in research is rewarding and that they can make meaningful contributions to your project. If you would like to have students work with you on a project please let us know at [email protected].
Department of Psychology, College of Sciences
Project start: Open Project end: Open
Description of opportunity:
Students would have the opportunity to continue to run a previous MS thesis social-cognitive psychological experiment to gather more data.
In this study, we will continue to examine how a single bout of intense exercise and repeated exposure to individuating information changes the accessibility to person versus group-based (i.e., group stereotypes) memories. This experiment requires all research assistants to be CPR certified. You’ll also learn how to use a cycle ergometer, monitor heart rates, and test for blood pressure.
Looking for: This experiment will likely take a year to complete. Students should be either a psychology major or minor. This is a rather arduous experimental design. Students should be dependable, motivated, and have flexible schedules.
Duties: Students will be expected to run the experiment and help train other students to run the experiment. Students will be expected to read literature on background theories involved within the experiment. Students may also be involved in writing an IRB protocol and data analysis (via SAS).
Amount of time estimated/week: Average of 5 hours a week. This is flexible.
To learn more: Email: [email protected]
Dr. Tara L.R. Beziat is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Auburn University at Montgomery. Her research focuses on metacognition and its effects on teaching, learning and assessment. More recently, her focus has been on helping college faculty make changes to their teaching and assessment that lead to significant gains in learning while improving faculty morale. She is currently a consulting editor for Teaching of Psychology and has served as the president of the Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association. Faculty’s Expertise: Quantitative Methods, Grant Writing, Faculty Development, Metacognition
Tara Beziat
Associate Professor | College of Education
Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Technology; College of Education
Project start: Open Project end: Open
Description of opportunity:
My research topic is metacognition. Cleaning and sorting survey data. Finding and summarizing articles including annotations.
Looking for: No qualifications necessary
Duties: Reviewing Data sets collected through Qualtrics and sorting and cleaning the data using Excel. If time allows, I can work with the student to show them how to use SPSS- statistical software. Conducting literature reviews.
Amount of time estimated per week: 1-5 hours
To learn more: Email is best – [email protected]
Dr. Kim Brackett, tenured professor of Sociology in the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology, is Associate Dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. She is the faculty sponsor for the Sociology Honor Society, Alpha Kappa Delta, and is currently serving as the National President-Elect. Her research and interests include religion and family life, relationship formation, and gender. She is a past recipient of both the AUM Distinguished Teaching Professor and Distinguished Service Professor awards.
Kim Brackett
Associate Dean; Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work; College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: Open Project end: Open
Description of opportunity:
Constructions of family life and pathways to family formation. Currently we have data about family ministry and I am interested in looking at grandparents as part of the family experience. My past research includes examinations of dating and relationship formation. I’d love to work on some of these topics again. I do some additional work on pedagogy and meta-cognition. A curiosity I currently have involves the evolving language in the area of gender.
Looking for: I’d like to work with a student for longer than just one semester. It’s important that the student have a basic understanding of sociological concepts and an academic interest in personal relationships. Curiosity about society is a huge plus.
Duties: Reading and literature review work on grandparenting and family ministry. Possible interview question development, IRB protocol work, and data collection around a gender study or dating study.
Amount of time estimated/week: I am flexible on this. It depends on student availability.
To learn more: Stop by my office -319 Clement Hall or send me an email – [email protected]
Named Mississippi Humanities Teacher of the year when he taught in that state, Michael Burger teaches advanced courses in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe at AUM. He is the author of Bishops, Clerks, and Diocesan Governance in Thirteenth-Century England: Reward and Punishment (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and books with the University of Toronto Press: The Shaping of Western Civilization (2 volumes, third edition, 2024); Reading History (2022); as well as editing Sources for the History of Western Civilization (2 volumes, third edition, 2024). His articles have appeared in Law and Liberty as well as specialized historical journals. He earlier served AUM as Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He once lived in what had been a twelfth-century chapel, which is probably the only interesting thing about him.
Michael Burger
Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of History and World Languages and Cultures, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: Already started Project end: Until about December 2021 or so.
Description of opportunity:
I’m working on a book on spatial dimensions of medieval diocesan administration. Bishops were increasing their control over their dioceses and creating centralized bureaucracies to enable them to do so. How hard was it to overcome a culture that expected power to be exercised face to face? One aspect of the book will be analyzing the movement of bishops and its relationship (or lack of relationship) with the locale of the business they handled using Geographic Information Systems (i.e., the application of computer technology to spatial relationships). This will require a lot of data entry, where a student might be helpful.
Looking for: I would need a student who reads well and is anal retentive about detail. Ability to read Latin would be a big plus, but in certain phases of the project would not be necessary. A plus also would be command of the GIS program, GeoMedia.
Duties: Reading the chief administrative records of medieval bishops, called “bishop’s registers” and entering data from them into Excel spreadsheets. Some of these registers are primarily in the form of English summaries, so Latin will not always be needed depending on what register I’m working on.
Amount of time estimated/week: This could be quite variable. Say, 3 hours per week?
To learn more: Email would be best: [email protected].
Dr. Agnitra Roy Choudhury is an Associate Professor in the Economics department. Dr. Roy Choudhury received his PhD and MA in Economics from Binghamton University. His training is in applied microeconomics and applied econometrics. His research interests include studying the impact of regulations on health care, labor markets, and entrepreneurship. Currently Dr. Roy Choudhury’s research includes analyzing scope of practice regulations, Certificate of Need laws, and determinants of promoting entrepreneurship. His research papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals like Vaccine, Economic Letters, Applied Economics Letters, Health Policy, and Journal of Risk & Financial Management.
Agnitra Roy Choudhury
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: as soon as possible Project end: March 2020
Description of opportunity:
Mainly work on empirical projects and quantitative analysis. This project deals with analyzing how access to paid family leave affects early childhood health investments. We will be looking at various markers to detect health investments, such as birth weight, infant mortality, etc. The other side of this same project is analyzing the impact of paid family leave programs on employment of women in the child bearing years and their labor market opportunities.
Looking for: Economics, Computer science, finance, mathematics
Duties: Work on data transformations, aggregating data, cleaning data, and some basic statistical analysis.
Amount of time estimated/week: 10 hours per week maximum
To learn more: Email – [email protected]
Dr. Lee A. Farrow was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is a first-generation graduate. She specializes in Russian History and has published a number of articles and books over her 25-year career at Auburn University at Montgomery. Some of her publications are Alexis in America: A Grand Duke’s Tour, 1871-72, Seward’s Folly: A New Look at the Alaska Purchase, and The Catacazy Affair and the Uneasy Path of Russian American Relations. She also has given many public lectures on various aspects of Russian history and literature. She has served in various administrative positions, including as Associate Dean and Director of a teaching and learning center. She is in her fifth year as Chair of the Department of History and World Cultures.
Lee Farrow
Chair; Distinguished Research & Distinguished Teaching Professor
Lee Farrow
Chair; Distinguished Research & Distinguished Teaching Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of History, World Languages, and Cultures, College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: Any time Project end: None at the moment
Description of opportunity:
I am considering writing my next book on the travels of Emmeline Pankhurst, the British feminist and suffragette, in Russia. Pankhurst visited Russia during the Russian Revolution, eager to capitalize on the changes taking place to further the rights of women. A student could help me research for mentions of this in secondary literature and, possibly, newspapers.
Looking for: Any major, but student needs to be thorough and pay attention to details.
Duties: Secondary research online; ordering potential sources through interlibrary loan and copying relevant pages; possibly research in newspapers online or on microfilm.
Amount of time estimated per week: To be negotiated, flexible.
To learn more: Email [email protected] or stop by my office, 345 Liberal Arts on Wednesdays or make and appointment
Ph.D. Microbiology, May 1992, University of Kentucky Dr. Haddix is an Associate Professor in the Biology Department in the School of Sciences. He has a broad background in microbiology and molecular biology. His research interests are in the biological functions of bacterial pigments and the use of bacteria as biological sensors for the detection of environmental contaminants. Dr. Haddix’s primary research interest involves identifying and characterizing the biological function of a red pigment made by the soil bacterium and opportunistic bacterial pathogen Serratia marcescens. His early work on this project built a circumstantial case for a negative role for prodigiosin pigment in cellular energy production during high-rate cell multiplication when cellular energy levels begin at their maximum (PubMed ID # 18805986). More recent work has revealed that the pigment has a positive function in cellular energy production when cellular energy levels are low; this positive function ultimately produces a doubling of pigmented cell yield over that of non-pigmented cells (PMID # 29616306). His most recent work has more clearly defined the negative role, and a manuscript describing these results is due to be submitted for publication in spring, 2019. Ongoing experimental work will more closely address the positive function and build a model for prodigiosin pigment in the cellular energy fluxes associated with Serratia marcescens population growth.
Pryce Haddix
Associate Professor | College of Sciences
B.A. Biology with chemistry emphasis, May 1985, Transylvania University, Lexington, KY
Department of Biology, College of Sciences
Project start: Although project is ongoing, Dr. Haddix is willing to mentor new students after Spring 2020.
Project end: Ongoing
Description of opportunity:
Research in microbiology involving the biological function of a red pigment produced by Serratia marcescens bacteria. My ongoing work has shown that the pigment modulates in a complex manner the production of the energy storage compound ATP.
Looking for: Junior or Senior standing; successful completion of two semesters of general chemistry with their labs as well as microbiology and its labs.
Duties: Experimental work on the project using laboratory equipment including a spectrophotometer and a chemostat. Data analysis and conclusion using Microsoft Excel. Preparation of a poster presentation describing the results.
Amount of time estimated/week: That depends on the credit hour option for our research course BIOL 4932
Directed Research: 1 credit = 3 hours; 2 credits = 6 hours; 3 credits = 9 hours
To learn more: Dr. Pete Haddix [email protected]; 334-244-3333
Dr. Brett Lehman graduated with a doctorate in Sociology from Louisiana State University in 2014. He studies various social issues in education such as bullying, other forms of aggression in schools, and the college student experience. At AUM he has taught courses on Sociology of Education, Criminology, Social Movements, Social Stratification, Statistics, Research Methods, and Senior Capstone while also contributing to other programs such as Criminal Justice, the Honors Program, the Bachelors of Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Masters of Liberal Arts.
Brett Lehman
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work , College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: Open Project end: Open
Description of opportunity:
Social impact of the Legacy Museum on the wider Montgomery/River Region community.
Looking for:
Students should be interested in social change, social inequality, and/or community engagement. Intro to sociology course experience, and the ability to effectively describe what was learned from the course. Look for students who have at least 1 year of school remaining to gain maximum benefit from the experience.
Duties:
Ethical conduct of research training; otherwise, the duties will depend on student interest and availability.
Amount of time estimated/week: Flexible: 1-3 hours a week
To learn more: Email [email protected]
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work , College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: Open Project end: Open
Description of opportunity:
Social impact of the Legacy Museum on the wider Montgomery/River Region community.
Looking for:
In-depth observation of students’ social life on the AUM campus. This is a student-led project due to the nature of the project.
Duties:
Ethical conduct of research training; otherwise, the duties will depend on student interest and availability.
Amount of time estimated/week: Flexible: 1-3 hours a week
To learn more: Email [email protected]
Dr. Jackie Chavez McNett is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology at Auburn University at Montgomery. She received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from The University of Alabama, a Master of Science in Criminal Justice from The University of Alabama, and her Ph.D. from Mississippi State University. Dr. McNett teaches for the graduate program in Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Her research and teaching interests include homeland security, emergency management, criminological theory, crime and deviance, jury studies, and fear of crime. Currently, she serves as the advisor for the department’s criminal justice club The American Criminal Justice Association – Lambda Alpha Epsilon (ACJA-LAE) and is co-advisor for the Beta Delta Chapter of the Criminal Justice Honor Society Alpha Phi Sigma.
Jacqueline McNett
Assistant Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Criminal Justice , College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
Project start: Open Project end: Open
Description of opportunity:
Media Content Analysis of Forensic Files
Looking for:
Access to Netflix
Experience with Microsoft Excel
Any major
Undergraduate or graduate
Duties:
1) Watching Forensic Files
2) Taking detailed notes
3) Creating Excel spreadsheets
Amount of time estimated/week: Flexible: 1-3 hours a week
To learn more: Email [email protected]
Faculty and Undergraduate Research
Our faculty members are professionals in the various fields of Chemistry and other Physical Sciences. They are active in research in all areas of Chemistry and in Meteorology. Undergraduate research is a way to get research experience before leaving college. As a student you will work closely with a faculty advisor on a shared research project. The research options are almost limitless and the experience is invaluable.
