Issue link: http://tcnj.uberflip.com/i/86727
5 The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) brought its annual conference to TCNJ during the summer of 2012. Founded in 1978, CUR is a national organization representing more than 900 colleges and universities. The mission of CUR is to support and promote high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship. Hosting the conference provided broad exposure to TCNJ's highly successful Mentored Undergraduate Research program and provided an opportunity for TCNJ faculty to learn from peers about novel approaches to faculty-student scholarship. Associate Professor of Biology Curt Elderkin received a Fulbright Scholar award to conduct research at the Justus Liebig University– Giessen in Germany. During his semester abroad, Elderkin, a population geneticist, utilized genetic tools to answer ecological questions, including investigating genetic diversity across the landscape, determining evolutionary relationships among species, and identifying biodiversity hot-spots for conservation. Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Suriza van der Sandt's research is focused on stopping math anxiety by boosting teachers' skills, knowledge, and confidence so they will provide better help to their students, become more supportive of innovation, learn to demonstrate concepts, and, in general, make a greater commitment to teaching math. Teachers who are insecure about their math abilities can have a particularly damaging impact on girls, who still lag behind boys in the amount of math and science they study and in their pursuit of careers that rely on quantitative skills. Van der Sandt's work focuses on elementary school teachers. Physics Professor Thulsi Wickramasinghe spent the past academic year as a Fulbright Scholar in his native Sri Lanka, where he divided his time at the University of Peradeniya in Kandy between lecturing and performing research. Wickramasinghe lectured on two courses: advanced astrophysics and general relativity, both new additions to the advanced physics curriculum at his host university. His research investigated astrophysical ways of detecting gravitational waves.