Buff Bulletin Board

The Buff Bulletin Board, a listing of campus announcements, is a service of Campus Communications.

 

Students: Play collaborative learning games, earn $50

The Emotive Computing Lab at CU Boulder is seeking participants for a study of collaboration. 

You are eligible to participate in this research study if you:

  • Are a CU Boulder student at least 18 years of age
  • Speak English
  • Do not have significant and uncorrected vision impairments
  • Have not previously played Physics Playground or a similar game (e.g., Crayon Physics Deluxe, Magic Pen) for more than an hour

The study contains two parts: 

  1. An at home portion where you fill out some surveys and practice the game (lasting one hour) for a $15 Amazon gift card
  2. A visit to the lab, which will be scheduled at a mutually convenient time (lasting two hours) for a $35 Amazon gift card

If you are interested in participating, please contact Angela Stewart at angela.stewart@colorado.edu for more information.

Support undergraduate research at BSI Scholars Poster Symposium

Attendees at BSI Scholars Poster Symposium
Please join the Biological Sciences Initiative for their annual BSI Scholars Poster Symposium from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 23, at the Recreation Center, room C250. Refreshments will be served. This year will feature undergraduates presenting work from Chemistry and Biochemistry, EBIO, Geological Sciences, IPHY, MCDB, and Psychology and Neuroscience.

First-year students: Get paid $25 for your opinion!

Strategic Relations and Communications is seeking first-year students to participate in a 90-minute focus group on either April 25 or 26. We want to hear your opinions about different CU Boulder offerings and services. Participation is confidential, and all responses will be anonymous.
 
As a token of appreciation, we are offering each participant an Amazon gift card worth $25.
 
Please use the link below to find a date and time that works for you and reserve your spot. Participation will be on a first-come, first-served basis—so sign up today!

Seeking participants for paid research on exercise behavior change

Understanding Mechanisms of Exercise Behavior Change

This research is being done to help researchers understand the psychological factors related to health behaviors, including how rewarding people for completing health behaviors can change their thoughts and attitudes about those behaviors. The findings from this research will help us learn how to develop better interventions to increase health behaviors. This study will examine physical activity.

Participating in this study involves two study sessions at the CU Boulder Center for Innovation and Creativity (1777 Exposition Drive in Boulder). The sessions will be three weeks apart. The first session requires one hour and fifteen minutes. During the session, you will complete surveys that will ask you about how you think, feel and behave. 

For the 21 days after that session, you will complete a brief (three-minute) assessment every day via the internet at times and locations that are convenient to you. These assessments will ask you about how you felt that day and whether you engaged in any physical activity. We will also ask you to wear a heart-rate monitoring watch when you exercise during the 21 days and include information from the watch in the daily surveys. 

On the 21st day, we will ask you to come back to the lab for another assessment that requires one hour. Finally, two and four weeks after that, we will ask you to do two more online surveys, at times and locations convenient to you, which will each require 25 minutes.

If you participate in this study, you will earn up to $52.50 for your time and effort during the assessments. Additionally, you may have the opportunity to earn additional payments for your reported behavior during the course of the study.

Learn more

If you are interested, please complete a brief online screening measure. If you are eligible to participate in this study, a member of the research team will contact you to schedule a research session. If you have questions before completing the screening or would like to learn more about the study, please contact the researcher, Casey Gardiner, via email at caga9763@colorado.edu.

Research subjects needed for study on multiple sclerosis

The Neurophysiology of Movement Lab on CU Boulder's Main Campus is conducting a study to compare neuromuscular function in healthy adults with persons diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Qualifications:

  • 45–65 years of age
  • Healthy and free of neurologic disease 

 The study will consist of two visits on separate days:

  • First visit (approximately 15 minutes): Familiarization session
  • Second visit (approximately three hours): Experimental session
    • Lower leg muscle contractions
    • Walking tests
    • Recording muscle activity

Compensation: $20 for the experimental session

If interested, please contact Leah Davis at leah.davis@colorado.edu for more information.

Biological Sciences Initiative hosting scholars poster symposium

Visitors at the annual BSI Scholars Poster Symposium
Save the date! Please join the Biological Sciences Initiative for the annual BSI Scholars Poster Symposium from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 23, at the Recreation Center, room C250. Refreshments will be served. This year will feature undergraduates presenting their work from labs in chemistry and biochemistry, MCDB, IPHY, psychology and neuroscience, EBIO and geological sciences.

Participants needed for paid decision-making study on aging and movement

The Neurophysiology of Movement Lab needs volunteers for a study on aging and movement decision-making. Participants will be using their right wrist to generate low forces and lean with their whole body to play decision-making games. 

Participants must be/have:

  • English-speaking
  • Right-handed
  • Between 40-60 or 65-89 years old
  • Normal or corrected vision
  • No movement control problems
  • No recent orthopedic surgeries or broken bones

Experiment involves one sessions, which lasts approximately three hours. Subjects will be compensated at $10 per hour with an opportunity to win up to an additional $40. Email Landon Hamilton at landon.hamilton@colorado.edu.

Participate in paid MRI study on brain function

We are looking for healthy, right-handed individuals who are fluent in English to participate in a paid research study at CU Boulder looking at how the brain directs and focuses attention. 

Participants must be fluent English speakers, right handed, not pregnant, no history of brain injury or neurological disorder, and must be safe to enter an MRI scanner. There are two sessions associated with this study, a 3-hour MRI session, for which participants will be paid $50, and a 1.5-hour behavioral session, for which participants will be paid $25. 

If you are interested, please sign up.

For parents: Cognitive Development Center offers fun research projects for kids

The Cognitive Development Center in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience is looking for children ages birth to 12 years old who are interested in playing games that will help teach us about self-control, language and cognitive strategies. 

A visit, scheduled at your convenience, lasts about 60 minutes. Babysitting is available for siblings. Parents are compensated for travel, and kids receive a fun prize.

To sign up, please do one of the following:

For more information, feel free to check out our Facebook page and website.
 

Earn $750: Participate in research study on digital sensing, job performance

Researchers at the CU Boulder Institute of Cognitive Science are looking for interested people to participate in Project Tesserae, a groundbreaking new study that will explore how recent advances in digital sensing can help us better understand workplace performance in the modern, digital age.   

Who can participate?

In order to participate, you must work full-time in a cognitively demanding job (programmer, engineer, marketing, management) or work with individuals in such roles. Note we are looking for participants who have more structured workplace environments, so we are not seeking faculty, students and postdoctoral researchers. 

What do I need to do?

The study will run for approximately one year (March 2019), during which you will be:

  • Wearing a health sensor on your wrist (Garmin vivoSmart).
  • Running a lightweight app on your smartphone.
  • Taking a set of surveys at the start, end and during the study.
  • Placing and carrying a few Bluetooth beacons.
  • Providing a view into your social media.

What are the benefits to participating?

  • You will be paid $750 for your participation and will get to keep the wearable (Garmin).
  • You will receive a personalized report at the end of the study summarizing observations related to you in an easy-to-understand form to help you understand factors that affect your stress and workplace performance.    

How will you protect my data?

Participation in the study is strictly optional. The study will not share whether or not you are participating nor any of your data associated with the study with your employer. Our researchers have long, established track records of running large-scale studies similar to Project Tesserae with special emphases on data security and protecting individual privacy.  

I’m interested. What next?

Please fill out the form to express your interest in potentially participating and to receive further details.  

How do I find out more?

This study is in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame, University of California-Irvine, Georgia Tech, Dartmouth, Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State University, the University of Texas and the University of Washington. See our website for more details. 

We hope you will consider participating in Project Tesserae!

Paid research for young adults with public-speaking anxiety

Do you fear public speaking? Feel highly anxious in social situations? Have no major health problems? Ages 18-25?

You may be eligible to participate in a paid study at CU Boulder.

Participation includes completing questionnaires, social tasks and a brief intervention for social and public-speaking anxiety. Participants will earn $32 for completing the two-part, four-hour study. 

To sign up for the study, please select experiment No. 1022 on the paid Sona website or email intervention-study@colorado.edu for more information. 

For parents: Cognitive Development Center offers fun research projects for kids

The Cognitive Development Center in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience is looking for children ages birth to 12 years old who are interested in playing games that will help teach us about self-control, language and cognitive strategies. 

A visit, scheduled at your convenience, lasts about 60 minutes. Babysitting is available for siblings. Parents are compensated for travel, and kids receive a fun prize.

To sign up, please do one of the following:

For more information, feel free to check out our Facebook page and website
 

Student-participants wanted for reading study

The Emotive Computing Lab at CU Boulder is looking for participants for a study of eye movements during reading. 

You are eligible to participant in this research study if you:

  • Are at least 18 years of age
  • Are a CU Boulder student
  • Speak English
  • Do not have significant and uncorrected vision impairments

The study contains two parts: 

  1. A visit to the lab will be scheduled at a mutually convenient time (lasting one hour and fifteen minutes) for a $20 Amazon gift card.
  2. A week later, we will email you a follow-up questionnaire to complete remotely online (lasting 30 minutes) for a $10 Amazon gift card.

If you are interested in participating, please contact Julie Gregg at eyetrackingandreading@gmail.com for more information.

Fulbright student grant informational meetings

Where in the world do you want to go? 

The Fulbright program is the U.S. government’s flagship program for international educational exchange, and CU Boulder is a top-producing institution for U.S. Fulbright student grants. 

Come to Norlin Library, room S-421, for an informational meeting to learn how you can apply for a Fulbright grant to do overseas study/research or to be an English teaching assistant overseas. These grants are for any student who will have at least a bachelor's degree by the time the grant starts and won’t yet have completed a PhD. 

All meetings are the same; choose the most convenient for you. Email deborah.viles@colorado.edu for more details.

Upcoming meetings:
Monday, March 12, 4–5 p.m.
Wednesday, April 4, 4:30–5:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 24, 5–6 p.m.

Win $500: Deadline approaching for Western American writing awards

March 20 is the deadline for a chance to win $500 in the 19th annual Thompson Writing Awards. 

The contest is open to all CU Boulder students at both graduate and undergraduate levels. Prizes are $500 in each of four categories: fiction, memoir, poetry and creative non-fiction. Enter your writing in any or all of the four categories. 

Your topic should touch on any issue of the American West - past, present or future. To name some examples: growing up in a Western town; visiting a Western place for the first time; Native American history, culture and current events; immigration; myth and stereotype in movies and books about the West; ranching; prairie dogs; wolves; wild horses; water, dams and drought; tourism; public lands; national parks and monuments; energy development. 

Visit our website for details and the entry form and to read winning entries from past years. Contact us with your questions at academics@centerwest.org or 303-735-1399.