Newswise — Olivia Reyes, a 2018 graduate of the University of Central Oklahoma, has been selected as the recipient of the first Trimmer Travel Award of the Council on Undergraduate Research. The $500 award will assist Reyes with travel expenses to the Second World Congress on Undergraduate Research on May 23–25, 2019, at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. At the World Congress she will present her undergraduate research on “Cubano Polaco Americano: A Study on the Globalization of Capitalist and Socialist Poster Art during the Cold War,” which explores artistic exchange between socialist countries and the United States via film poster art for George C. Scott’s Rage (1972) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972).

Said CUR Arts and Humanities Division chair Maria T. Iacullo-Bird (Pace University), “CUR is pleased to support Ms. Reyes’s research presentation, which will be of interest to scholars from around the world who are participating in the Second World Congress on Undergraduate Research.”

The Trimmer Travel Award Fund was established in 2018 by a gift from Joe and Carol Trimmer to support arts and humanities undergraduate scholars in presenting their research at professional meetings. Joe Trimmer, professor emeritus at Ball State University (Muncie, IN), is the founding director of the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, the author of numerous books on literature and culture, and a founding member of the CUR Arts and Humanities Division. Carol Trimmer has served as the outreach coordinator for Indiana Public Radio (IPR), Ball State University’s NPR member station.

The Second World Congress on Undergraduate Research is hosting 244 student researchers from 92 higher education institutions and 35 countries, who represent more than 100 academic disciplines.

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