iUTAH Team - Undergraduate iFellows

 

Luis Vidal

University of Utah

 

Mentors:

Faculty: Mark Brunson, USU

Graduate: Taya Carothers, USU

 

Research Focus:

Research Focus Area 2

 

Major:

Geology

 

Biography:

Luis Vidal is a junior studying Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Utah. He is involved with the Bennion Center, the University’s volunteer center. He was born in Lima, Peru and was raised in Utah. He enjoys being outside traveling, hiking and cycling. He has been interested in Utah’s water issues with an interest in how water is used and how we can conserve it.

 

iFellow Presentation:

 

 

 

Weekly Recap:

 

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11

 

Week 1: May 16-20, 2016

It has been an exciting first week. I got to meet the people I will be working with and the previous people working in the lab as well. Monday we had our orientation which laid out the framework for the rest of the summer. Tuesday we had our first lab meeting. Wednesday was spent reading the required material for the IRB certification. Thursday we spent practicing surveying people in a park. And finally Saturday we spent Pre-testing the survey we will primarily conduct this semester at the Living traditions festival in Salt Lake.

 

Week 2: May 23-27, 2016

I spent the first part of the week finishing readings. The readings helped prepare me for the upcoming surveys and understanding the methods and purpose of surveys in research. In anticipation of the Sorenson CommUNITY Fair on Thursday we made our final corrections to our survey after last weeks pre-test. We collected our first results at the fair and afterwards discussed other possible questions we could apply to our research.

 

Week 3: May 30-June 3, 2016

This past week we had the help of friends from outside of the iFellows program who came from Southeastern Utah. We spent the first part of the week and planning and then touring the sites related to our survey. We then attended a Jordan River Comprehensive Management Plan meeting. Later in the week we were able to survey a good number of community members at the local grocery market where we collected interesting results for our survey. We were also able to get more surveys due to the extra help even though a good part of our lab was sick for most of the week.

 

 

Week 4: June 6-10, 2016

This week we attended a community stakeholder meeting where we talked and met with the developers and frontrunners of the three creeks project. Earlier in the day we also surveyed at a free lunch in the park event at Sherwood park. There we got an excellent number of responses from the Poplar Grove neighborhood. After the stakeholder meeting we attended the public meeting at the Glendale Community library. We returned to Salt Lake again that week for more surveys and spent the week working on our intro and methods section of our paper.

 

Week 5: June 13-17, 2016

This was a great week of results and community involvement. The week started off with an iFellows cohort session in which we went over presenting our research topics and receiving feedback for the first parts of our paper. Later in the week we went to the Glendale Community Council meeting were we met lots of civicly engaged residents. We got a great number of quality surveys at the meeting and a chance to speak. Later on Friday we surveyed at Smiths and Rancho market grocery stores. I lost my voice due to a sore throat but we still got great results at each location. 

 

Week 6: June 20-24, 2016

We started off the week by surveying at the Glendale library in the Glendale neighborhood of Salt Lake City. It was interesting to learn about the community activism in the neighborhood as we were told of how they recently overthrew their community council and are now very much active. Later in the week on Thursday we were intercepting people at Jordan park and that Friday we received many great responses at the Jordan Park free summer lunch event. 

 

Week 7: June 27-July 1, 2016

This week we reached our goal of hitting 400 survey responses and concludes our data collecting part of the summer. We still have a scheduled event in the future but now we can start doing data analysis. The week started off with a cohort session where we shared our current graphs and figures for feedback. The next day we went down to the Partners in the Park event where we reached our goal. The latter part of the week was then focused on preparing our research paper for submission.

 

 

Week 8: July 4-8, 2016

This past week was spent mostly working on data analysis and working on our rough draft posters that we presented on Friday. It was great to finally start looking at results from all the data we gathered and to start interpreting the data. We learned to use SPSS which is a statistical software that is used by more and more people in the research field to analyze our data. On Friday we received feedback from this week's work.

 

 

Week 10: July 18-22, 2016

This week I used the feedback from the iUtah symposium and looked more into the data and gave second glances at things I already looked. It's interesting how you find new things again when you look again with a different perspective. I found more relationships between race/ethnicity groups and it helped explain some questions but also bring up more as well. 

 

Week 11: July 27-31, 2015

A lot of this week was spent working on the presentation and the final paper. The majority of this week was spent inside the lab which was a great relief from the summer heat. I got to see everyone for the last time this summer at the iFellow symposium was on Wednesday. It was a great conclusion of everyone’s work and was inspiring to see how many issues were researched and were going to be continued into the fall.

 

All content provided on this iUTAH Team - Undergraduate iFellows weekly recap is unedited, updated by each participant to provide a review of their progress, and is for informational purposes only.