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MILLIGAN COLLEGE, TN (March 24, 2004) — Over 60 undergraduate students from 10 colleges and universities throughout the Southern Appalachian Region will participate in this year’s 11th annual Blue Ridge Undergraduate Research Conference hosted at Milligan College on Friday, April 2. The students will present papers on topics ranging from environmental studies to gender and literature, educational psychology, molecular biology , and military history.
While academic research was once solely the domain of professors or graduate students, undergraduates are now tackling this academic realm with zeal, explained Dr. Joy Drinnon, conference chair and assistant professor of psychology at Milligan.
The trend started gaining widespread national popularity in 1998 when the Boyer Commission, an 11-member team of academic and educational professionals, issued a report urging universities to include undergraduates in research.
“The Blue Ridge conference is an opportunity for undergraduates to present their research in a professional forum,” said Drinnon. “It is different from other conferences in that it is diverse in both its content and audience. There are papers from many disciplines and students from many schools in attendance.”
This year’s keynote speaker is Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian Studies and English courses at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). His topic is “Reviving Tradition after the Millennium: Recent Efforts to Study and Celebrate Appalachian Folk Culture.” Olson also serves as director of the Appalachian, Scottish, and Irish Studies Program and as interim director of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at ETSU.
Olson is the author of Blue Ridge Folklife (the University Press of Mississippi, 1998), the editor of James Still’s From the Mountain and From the Valley: New and Collected Poems (University Press of Kentucky, 2001). He is the co-editor (with Charles Wolfe) of The Big Bang of Country Music: A Bristol Sessions Reader (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004), the editor of Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual (Mercer University Press, 2004), and the section editor for the forthcoming The Encyclopedia of Appalachia (University of Tennessee Press, 2005).
To find out more about the BRURC at Milligan, contact Dr. Joy Drinnon at 423-461-8661 or visit www.milligan.edu/BRURC .