Current Volume: Volume 14 (2017) Mosaic

Message from Editors in Chief

It is a pleasure to announce the 14th issue of the Western Journal of Graduate Research (WJGR), a publication that showcases the proceedings from our winter graduate research conference, the Western Research Forum. This conference is hosted by the SOGS Academic Committee and is held on a yearly basis and invites graduate students from all across campus to participate and share their research work and experience. The primary goal of both the forum and the journal is to emphasize the diversity of research and highlight the importance of the multifaceted approach to research questions. It allows graduate students to present their work to a wider community, outside their relevant areas of expertise, while encouraging them to view their research from multiple perspectives and consider how it fits into the “big picture”. Importantly, these venues help create opportunities for collaboration among different disciplines facilitating integrative work, expanding research horizons and establishing new networks. This year’s journal theme, Mosaic, was selected to mark the multidisciplinary nature of the graduate research it harbors. It helps reinforce the idea that different graduate work serves as small pieces that complement one another to “paint” a unifying research portrait. In this issue we have an assortment of research work depicting critical topics in biology, engineering, geography, health sciences, information and media studies and psychology. Notably this year we are excited to move to an online platform, Scholarship@Western, to launch the first online version of the WJGR. This is an important step towards advancing the journal and acknowledging the valuable research work it hosts. The online publication permits wider dissemination and enhanced accessibility to the content enabling a greater research impact. This significant development would not have been possible without the perseverance and hard work of our previous co-chairs, Jina Kum and Ysabel Domingo, to whom we are sincerely grateful. In closing, we would like to thank our current and past committee members for their help in making this journal possible. Special thanks goes to our reviewers; Ariel Frame, Daniel Dilliott, Francesco Lucia, Grace Gomashie, Sarah Moor and Vishaka Rajan, as well as to Julia Sunstrum and Vy Ngo for helping with proof reading and formatting. We extend our gratitude to Jina Kum and Ysabel Domingo for their guidance through the transition. Last but not least, we would like to present our sincerest appreciation to the authors and participants for choosing WJGR to showcase their high caliber research.