Week of May 15, 2006
Four students from California State University, Long Beach -- T.J. Huberg, Miriam Melton-Villanueva, Benjamin Bush and Anthony Olea -- captured top honors at the 20th annual CSU Student Research Competition, a statewide contest that showcases the significant research done by undergraduate and graduate students in the 23-campus CSU system.
Graduate students Huber and Melton-Villanueva both garnered first-place awards, including $500 cash prizes, in their respective divisions and categories. Seniors Bush and Olea earned second-place finishes, which included a $200 cash prize, in the undergraduate divisions of their respective categories.
Student participants made oral presentations before juries of professional experts from major corporations, foundations, public agencies and college and universities in California. Each campus in the CSU system was allowed a maximum of 10 presentations.
Huberg, a grad student, earned the top award in the undergraduate/graduate division of the interdisciplinary category with her project titled "The Queer Lyrical Story of Eminem," which employed rhetorical and narrative criticism and queer theory to analyze the lyrics of the successful, controversial rap artist Eminem.
"By performing an in-depth narrative criticism of his music from 1999 to the present, this paper not only looks at the way that Eminem moves in and out of the queer spectrum," Huberg explained, "but also how he creates his own spectrum in which he discusses intense friendship, love, desire and sex with other men.
"I think my research is very innovative and I was so happy that hip-hop and queer theory could be looked at with respect," she added. "I think there is so much out there for people to dissect and I feel that giving first prize to my research has opened many doors for people with transgressive ideas."
Melton-Villanueva grabbed the top prize in the graduate division of the behavioral and social sciences category with her project on "Indias y Cacias: Women of status in indigenous Jilotepec communities."
"Because traditional histories excluded them, the popular assumption about indigenous women remains that they lived secluded lives, outside the economic and political spheres of colonial Latin America," Melton-Villanueva noted. "However, documents exist that offer more multifaceted descriptions of behavior."
In 18th century central Mexico, Melton-Villanueva's research found that the pueblos of and around Jilotepec hired a judge to act as a notary to formalize agreements between individuals, groups, and institutions. Thirteen of these records from pueblos' notaries' books not only mention Indias, but show them engaged in complex economic and social activities.
"I would like to thank the director of the historical seccion of the General Notarial Archive of the State of Mexico, Marisela de la luz Beltrán Silva, who enthusiastically supported my research with generous access to archival material," Melton-Villanueva said. "I praise her and her staff for their tireless effort to preserve and organize the patrimonial record that otherwise, due to limited funding, would have been lost."
Bush placed second in the undergraduate division of the physical and mathematical science category with his project on "An assessment of the Building Block Hypothesis as Applied to the Automoatic generation of a LOGO Command Sequence for the Turtle Based Reproduction of a Line Drawing," which investigated the problem of "evolving" a computer program that would allow a small robot (the LOGO Turtle) to reproduce a human-made line drawing.
By comparing the performance of different types of "sexual reproduction," Bush was able to show the existence of "highly fit" partial solutions (building blocks) within the search space of his problem. His results contribute the growing body of empirical research regarding the function of sexual reproduction, both in engineering as well as in biology.
Olea took second in the undergraduate division of the business, economics and public administration category with his project on "Have underwriters underpriced IPOs during the bear market?" The study investigated whether market condition, bear market, mitigates the IPO underpricing phenomenon.
Olea's findings indicated that IPOs completed over the sample period, 2001-2004, report much smaller average first-day return than the previous findings. Further, the findings indicate that underpricing is positively related to underwriter prestige and shows a significant negative correlation to size of IPO issuance.