Category Archive

Major and Classification Political Science, Psychology Faculty Mentor Ricardo Ramirez, Ph.D. Department Political Science McNair Project Latino This, Latino That: The Role of Race in the Villaraigosa Mayoralty For the first time in over 130 years, a Mexican-American served as mayor in the major metropolitan center of Los Angeles with the election of Antonio Villaraigosa. However, the question of whether …

Major and Classification Biomedical Engineering Faculty Mentor Martin Gunderson, Ph.D. Department Biomedical Engineering McNair Project Kilovolt Nanosecond Pulse Generator: Design for Apoptosis Inducing Cancer Therapy Experiments in cell electroperturbation require high-voltage nanosecond pulses delivered by a pulse generator. The required electric field for electroperturbation demands pulses with an amplitude in the range of 10 kV produced at about 5 ns …

Major and Classification Neuroscience Faculty Mentor Albert Herrera, Ph.D. Department Neurobiology McNair Project Using DiI to Label Motor Axons in Embrionic Developmental States of Xenopus Laevis Experiments on learning and memory acquisition in human beings have confirmed the importance of experience as a critical modulator of synaptic circuitry. Neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) of frogs are very essential to study the anatomical …

Major and Classification Theatre Faculty Mentor David Roman, Ph.D. Department English McNair Project Politics and Pride: Contemporary Latin Identity on the Los Angeles Stage As the Latin@/Chican@ movement began to gain momentum in the late sixties and seventies, many Latin@ theatre groups began to emerge across the U.S. Among the politically-charged troupes, El Teatro Campesino, or Farmworker’s Theatre, was considered …

Major and Classification Psychology Faculty Mentor Franklin Manis, Ph.D. Department Psychology McNair Project The Critical Period Hypothesis The current study attempted to confirm that the critical period for second language acquisition occurred around puberty and examined the differential effects of the critical period on three aspects of language acquisition, phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. This study took on a cross-sectional design …

Major and Classification Classics Faculty Mentor Daniel Richter, Ph.D. Department Classics McNair Project Race Relations in the Seleucid Empire:The Case of the Phoenicians Though the academic study of race relations has only been established fairly recently in modern scholarship, the social phenomenon of race relations has existed for thousands of years. This paper will examine race relations in the Seleucid …

Major and Classification History, Political Science Faculty Mentor Alison D. Renteln, Ph.D. Department Political Science McNair Project Shattering the Silence: The Criminal Prosecution of Rape as a War Crime In early 2003, Sudanese government forces and ethnic militias known as “Janjaweed” commenced war crimes begun “ethnic cleansing” in the Darfur region of Sudan. Part of the “ethnic cleansing” prominently included …

Major and Classification Music Faculty Mentor Brian Shepard, Ph.D. Department Music McNair Project Music at the Speed of Light: Emerging Issues Surrounding Distance Learning in Music Education Distance learning is becoming an effective tool at the university level, but does not yet have a prominent place in collegiate music education. The emergence of high-bandwidth networks such as Internet2, and the …

Major and Classification French, Psychology Faculty Mentor Franklin Manis, Ph.D. Department Psychology McNair Project Contribution of Spanish Reading Comprehension The Simple View of Reading (Hoover and Gough, 1990) suggests that reading comprehension is the product of two developing clusters of skills; word decoding accuracy and oral language comprehension ability. The model is well supported by data on monolingual English-speaking children, …

Major and Classification Psychology Faculty Mentor Stanley Huey, Ph.D. Department Psychology McNair Project Perceived Discrimination and Academic Achievement Research has shown that students from disadvantaged U.S. minority groups tend to do less well academically than dominant-group students. This study examined the relationship between perceived discrimination and academic performance in a sample of African American and Latino high school students. Participating …