Published on January 17, 2025

Four students to present at conference in Pittsburgh, PA

Four undergraduate students--Corrie Bonomi (Sociology, Early Childhood Education), Meghan McAuliffe, Ella Pitman (Data Science), and Ryan Toomey (Math)--have been accepted to present their research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in April 2025.

The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) encourages student researchers to participate in NCUR. According to CUR's website, the conference is "dedicated to promoting undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity in all fields of study." NCUR 2025 will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from April 7 to 9.

Corrie Bonomi's research, titled "Emergent Bilingual Preschoolers’ Math Proficiencies and Development," examines the cognitive processing skills of dual language learners during math learning in a supportive classroom environment. Corrie presented her research at CREATE in 2024.

Meghan McAuliffe's research is titled, "Study of Relationship Between Complexity of Play and Social Participation in Preschoolers' Play."

Ella Pitman's research, titled "Study of Programming Behaviors by Preschoolers and Its Impact on Their Math Abilities," examined the behaviors of preschoolers while programming with tangible robots in order to identify the types of programming behaviors that preschoolers exhibit. Ella presented her research at CREATE in 2024.

Ryan Toomey's research is titled "A Comparative Study on how Board Games Affect Monolingual and Bilingual Preschoolers' Math Abilities."

All four students worked as research assistants for the CECE and are recipients of the Jeffrey and Nancy Trawick-Smith Early Childhood Undergraduate Research Award.