By Cora Allard-Keese,
Associate Director – Creative Inquiry
Before attending college, Randi Sims, senior environmental and natural resources major, wanted nothing more than to study marine biology. She was not sure if attending Clemson, the school of her dreams, was the best place to do that until she found out about the Creative Inquiry (CI) program. She joined Dr. Michael Childress and Kylie Smith’s CI, Conservation of Marine Resources project in biological sciences. Sims and the CI team are investigating coral reef communities in the Florida Keys. They will be presenting their work at this week’s annual Creative Inquiry event, Focus on Creative Inquiry (FoCI).
Students like Sims and their mentors are what makes Creative Inquiry great. This has been a banner year for CI. The program received national recognition from the Council of Undergraduate Research, Campus-wide award for Undergraduate Research Accomplishments (CUR-AURA). This award identified Clemson as providing exemplary undergraduate research and has garnered nationwide attention. In May, Creative Inquiry will present a nationwide webinar to help other programs attain undergraduate research excellence.
On Wednesday and Thursday (April 5-6) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. CI teams representing the work of more than 1,000 students will be presented in the Watt Family Innovation Center. This event, the 12th Annual Focus on Creative Inquiry, will feature projects from throughout campus from Architecture to Genetics. Special highlights for this year include an interactive, digital poster competition with prizes sponsored by Adobe; the announcement of the 2017 CI Graduate Student Mentor Award and the plenary seminar given by Dr. Michael Sehorn (Genetics and Biochemistry). This event is open to all, and we encourage our faculty, staff and students to attend. Refreshments will be provided.
Creative Inquiry is Clemson’s unique brand of undergraduate research in which teams of students lead by faculty, staff and graduate students work to solve real-word problems that may be part of the mentor’s research, a question from a student or needs of the world around. Since CI began in 2005, there have been more than 39,000 CI student research experiences. Creative Inquiry projects often result in presentations at national conferences, publication in journals, grant submissions and patent disclosures. This year, more than 3,000 students are participating in CI.
For questions or for more information regarding Creative Inquiry, contact associate director of Creative Inquiry, Cora Allard-Keese at callara@clemson.edu or 864-656-0721.
