Summer Program for Undergraduate Research

Each Summer students from all over the United States come to the University as part of the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR).  University faculty participate as mentors for these students and work with them for the 10 week program.  Ed Muñoz participated as a faculty mentor for the 2025 SPUR program as he has multiple times before guiding undergraduate students in research projects and working side by side with them as a mentor.

Summer Research Symposium

Natalia Lopez, a junior pursuing a Bachelor of University Studies Degree in Humanities and Chicano studies worked with faculty mentor Ed Muñoz (Ethnic Studies) this summer on a project titled Latinx Criminal Justice Professional: Exploring Career Motivations.

This research was also presented at the Summer 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. You can read more about this project here.

Range Journal

The Office of Undergraduate Research publishes Range: Undergraduate Research Journal twice per year.  These students all represented the School for Cultural & Social Transformation by publishing their research in this issue of the journal.

Brittney Mellin, an honors student triple major in Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies and International Studies, published her research titled Feeling Safety Through Friendship and Memory: Crossing (In)Between Safe and Non-Safe Spaces Within (Living) Colonial Systems. Brittney worked with faculty mentor Annie Isabel Fukushima (Ethnic Studies) on this project.

Gabriela Merida, an honors students studying Ethnic Studies and Political Science, worked with faculty mentor Andrea Baldwin (Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies) to publish her project US and British Imperialist Destabilization in Guatemala and Jamaica Through the Banana Trade.

Talea Steele, a senior studying Ethnic Studies and Criminology, worked with faculty mentor Annie Isabel Fukushima (Ethnic Studies) on her published work.  Talea’s project is titled Empowering People With Menses. She won the “Best in Humanities and Fine Arts” prize for her poster on the same research at the Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Amelia Strunk, an honors student in Gender Studies, worked with faculty mentor Kim Hackford-Peer (Gender Studies)   on a publication about her project titled Queer and LDS: Oral Histories of Organizations Supporting This Intersectional Existence.