Author: Richie DeMaria
As the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) approached, I was feeling hesitant about attending the event. The conference, promoting “undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity,” was held this year in Missoula, Montana. It sounded like a boring time in a boring place. Happily, I was proved very wrong.
The conference title inspires thoughts of nervous, stuffily dressed students PowerPointing their way through obscure subjects thrust upon them by over-enthused professors, addressing sterile conference rooms of disinterested strangers, with neither speaker nor audience understanding or enjoying the session. As for Missoula, well, what do they have there but an abundance of sky?
I embarked upon this seemingly unexciting excursion with 22 other Oxy students from April 14 to 18 – and I am very glad I did. Though the details made for a somewhat unappetizing alternative to Coachella, the all-but-meals-expenses paid trip proved a fantastic time. I came to Montana with only mild excitement about seeing a new state and left with great memories, newfound friends and an unexpected place I want to call home.
We left Oxy on April 14 in the brutal predawn dark, then returned to sleep. When we awoke, we were in Missoula, where the airport was tastefully decorated with moose heads, elk heads and a towering bear.
NCUR 2010 began Thursday morning at the scenic University of Montana. Each of us was to give either a 15-minute speech, with five minutes for questions, or an 80-minute poster presentation, in which the poster-bearers took questions from passersby. The day was broken into three 60- to 80-minute blocks, with some of us presenting in the morning and some in the afternoon.
The presentations from other schools varied in quality, with a number of noticeable vocal tics amongst them. One girl spoke in a scarily prim and proper manner, her words manicured like hedges. Another made so many forceful exhalations and huffs that her presentation on Brazilian misappropriation of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble felt accusatory. A third delivered a little too chipper of a talk on madness in the novels of the Bronte sisters in a speech two pom poms shy of a cheerleading routine.
Most of the papers I saw were enjoyable, and most of the topics very compelling – but there was a general lack of critical theory in the NCUR papers, as well as a general lack of nuance. The aforementioned “new historicist” paper on madness strangely made no mention of the critical studies on madness by Michel Foucault. The post-colonialist discussion of Candomble in Brazil, although very interesting, might have been even stronger with a mention of orientalism theorists Edward Said or Gayatri Chakravortiy Spivak.
For this reason, Oxy’s student presentations stood apart for their sophisticated work and theoretical applications. By and large, Oxy students took a critical approach in their papers and posters, utilizing the theories of Homi Bhabha and Immanuel Kant, to name a few. To the great credit of our faculty, Oxy’s NCUR contingent was more well-versed academically than the average group of undergraduate researchers.
Though we had only a short time to deliver our speeches or present our posters, those few minutes gave us a valuable experience. The conference gave us a taste of academic life outside of Oxy and introduced those of us who were new to it to the strange, unimaginative format of research conventions. NCUR was the metric we could use to measure ourselves as academics.
NCUR also provided us with the rare feeling that our particular Oxy pursuits aren’t just self-serving exercises written in an academic vacuum, but subjects which provoke further discussion and suggest routes for additional research – they seemed like works that might actually matter.
Anahid Yahjian’s (junior) paper “Determining Friend and Enemy in the Nationalist Moment: Raffi’s ‘The Fool,'” for example, provided a critical analysis of a work by Raffi, whose novel “The Fool” has been neglected by scholars, and as such was something of a first in its analysis of the Armenian’s work.
Chris Jackson’s (senior) “Outcome of Endoscopic Resection of Colorectal Tumors” presented current research done in tandem with Kaiser Permanente on the efficacy of endoscopic mucosal resection – the removal of a polyp nodule instead of surgery – as treatment for colorectal cancer.
NCUR was mainly about student presentations, but there were a few other planned events. On Friday night, several of us attended a so-called Montana style barbecue, which was a small indoor buffet with a giant image of John Wayne projected onto the wall (maybe that’s the Montana style?).
Following this, NCUR offered a Kyi-Yo Pow-Wow, which was either awesome or heartbreaking, depending upon your point of reference. After an opening invocation, in which the chieftain told the dancers to preserve their own language so as not to lose their identity altogether, 300 dancers moved to the steady pound of a drum as an emcee dished out compliments like, “Lookin’ good, ladies of Silent Hill!”
Attendees could take their photo with one of the dancers after the ceremony or choose from a wide selection of native-themed souvenirs while ruminating over the sad reality of an entire culture reduced to a marginalized NCUR sideshow.
Besides our 20- to 80-minute allotments, we had no other scheduled commitments, leaving us with what is a rare commodity at Oxy: time. There was plenty of time to sit in the library and focus on schoolwork for once, to hike, unwind and feel at ease; time to do things we always wanted to at Oxy, but never had the time.
Maybe this had to do with the pace of life in Missoula. The town is small and sleepy, with everything a 15-minute walk away. The surroundings – a running river, huge, slumbering amber hills, a clear and wide blue sky – were both striking and tranquil. Missoula is quieter than L.A., too, not only in its relative lack of sounds but in its lower volume, as if someone turned down the dial. Here we were shown a kind of peace that L.A. never could offer.
Not only was life seemingly more relaxed in Missoula, but the people were far friendlier than we were used to. From the bus driver who offered to take a shortcut on our behalf, to the waitresses who made us feel loved, everyone we met was warm and good-spirited.
Maybe it’s the small size, maybe it’s the wide selection of charming local joints and lack of chains – or maybe it’s the nightlife. Missoula is, after all, a university town, with bars on every block and $3 pints of beer.
The town is an interesting mix of yuppie cafes and cowboy hangouts, where chintzy boutiques and cafes share street space with pocketknife sharpeners and a store that sells “Guns, Guitars, and Blades.”
When our last day in Missoula rolled around, we were sad to leave it behind. We had come expecting a cultural wasteland and found, instead, a lovely refuge from smoggy, stressful Southern California.
Maybe ours is a case of grass seeming greener, maybe we read too much into the vast expanses beyond the city limits, and maybe anywhere would have seemed like paradise by virtue of it distracting us from our schoolwork, but I do think Missoula stole our hearts for a few days. As one fellow student said, we ought to return here so we can be around nice people and breathe.
Weeks from graduation, several of the other presenters and I will not qualify for next year’s NCUR, but many others will – and they ought to apply. When else can one share his or her academic passions to an audience of interested strangers entirely on Oxy’s dime? In providing students this space in an unexpectedly lovely area of the country, NCUR, boring as it sounds, was and will be an unforgettable time.
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