Jane Landrum standing in front of poster presentation.
Author: Jane Landrum | Major: Earth Science, Anthropology | Semester: Spring 2025
My name is Jane Landrum, and I am a senior Honors student majoring in Earth Science and Anthropology, with a minor in French. This past year, I have been working on a research project with Dr. Brad Peter of the geosciences department, analyzing the environmental and societal impacts of agricultural land abandonment in Indonesia through a free-form literature review as well as bibliometrics analyses. After defending my thesis, I had the opportunity to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh, PA and present on this work.
For the past year, I have been researching agricultural land abandonment in Indonesia, primarily focuses on qualitative data regarding governmental programs aimed at reducing food insecurity through agricultural extensification, as well as the broad societal impacts of phenomena such as urbanization, deforestation, and land use change. I chose to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) held in Pittsburgh as it was an interdisciplinary conference, and I wanted to be able to talk about my project with researchers from all disciplines. While working on this project, I have been a part of Dr. Peter’s lab, which is a mix of geography and geoscience students, so I really looked forward to the opportunity to share my work with similar researchers as well as some other, unrelated disciplines. During the conference, I presented my poster in a session, attended several sessions where I was able to discuss with other students’ their research, and witnessed several keynote speakers give talks on their own disciplines.
While presenting my work, a few students from another college came to look specifically at my methodology and complimented the graphics I used to demonstrate the findings of my bibliometric analyses. They had also conducted literature reviews in their work, but didn’t know how to display them without an overload of text, and I appreciated their feedback regarding that aspect of my project. I also had several environmental scientists come to discuss my work, and they asked insightful questions which allowed me to improve upon my communication of the project to others. I was able to share information with several of these people, and I hope to continue our professional relationships beyond the conference. It was incredibly beneficial for me to learn how to introduce and discuss my work with others in a short time frame, as it forced me to narrow down what the key points of my project were. Since I chose a poster presentation, I actually enjoyed the more informal presentation manner and the ability to discuss my work in depth with those who were interested.
Beyond presenting, I found the conference to be very motivational in terms of academic and professional development. During poster sessions, I was able to have discussions about the sustainability of tourism in Indonesia with a fellow environmental science student, closely related to my own project, but also the history of pockets in women’s clothing, with a fashion design student. I appreciated the opportunity to have both of these experiences while at the conference. I am currently working on a paper with some of Dr. Peter’s students, related to agricultural land abandonment in Indonesia, for which I will be a co-author. After graduation, I will be moving to the Philadelphia area and pursuing an industry job as an environmental scientist. This conference helped to determine which parts of my research were most interesting and insightful and should be included in the paper we are currently working on, but also helped me network with people from Pennsylvania who have worked with organizations I would be interested in working with.