Esteemed Colleagues and Undergraduate Researchers:
It gives me immense pride and pleasure to officially commence the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) Summer 2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Boot Camp and to welcome you all to our week-long, immersive, and interactive experience. Incoming freshmen, transfer students, and returning novice undergraduate researchers are the foci of this program, as we use broad strokes to depict a picture of UNLV’s rich, diverse, and inclusive research ecosystem, to inform you of OUR’s programs and services, and to introduce you to our ever-growing undergraduate researcher community. Our event is free of charge and features an online undergraduate researcher showcase, faculty research mentor keynote speakers, professional development webinars, and training sessions.
As we are all adjusting to life after the pandemic with the pandemic still being around as a real threat to public health, we strive to support you within our best capacity to help you achieve academic progress and get research and career ready. Being an undergraduate researcher will benefit you in so many ways: It will enhance your learning; increase your likelihood of timely graduation; increase your chances of admission to a great graduate program; and help you develop advanced and transferable skills such as problem solving and critical thinking, to name but a few. In addition, early research involvement will give you a notably strong head start, ensuring you stay on track and focused during your undergraduate education.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to offer my gratitude to those who support undergraduate research education at UNLV. I recognize and celebrate the outstanding research conducted by our undergraduate researchers, inspired and supervised by their dedicated faculty mentors, and supported institutionally by UNLV’s top leaders including President Whitfield, Executive Vice President and Provost Heavey, Vice President for Research Olafson, and all the deans.
OUR’s special thanks are also due to Drs. Samantha John and Amy Reed-Sandoval for their fascinating research, visible commitment to mentoring undergraduate researchers, and inspiring keynote speeches. Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Nathalie Martinez, Janelle Domantay, Ilya Pivavaruk, and Victor Taksheyev epitomize excellence in undergraduate research and also deserve a big round of applause. As always, I recognize OUR’s Dr. Rafael Oganesyan, Kira Tran, and Susan Hall for their excellence and commitment to research education at UNLV.
Thank you for attending the Summer 2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Boot Camp and for giving us the opportunity to be a part of your research journey. At UNLV’s OUR, we say YES to undergraduate research and we invite you all to join us!
I hope to see you all at OUR’s Fall 2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium on November 15th!
Sincerely,
Levent Atici, Ph.D.
Executive Director of Undergraduate Research
Professor of Anthropology
Levent Atici, Ph.D.
Executive Director of Undergraduate Research
Professor of Anthropology
