McNair Scholars to present findings today

While people across Michigan were busy enjoying summer’s beautiful
sunshine and humid weather, Sarah Karl spent her summer days studying
it.

While people across Michigan were busy enjoying summer’s beautiful
sunshine and humid weather, Sarah Karl spent her summer days studying
it.

The St. Louis junior is one of the nine CMU students part of the
McNair Scholars Program — a program designed for students to work on a
research project advised by a mentor during the summer.

The scholars, whose research subject matters range from weather
patterns to drug delivery vehicles, will present their findings today
from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Charles V. Park Library Auditorium.

Karn, along with her applied physical methods professor John
Daniels, created a study to determine if El Niño had effects on
Mount Pleasant and Michigan during the years it was active.

“The only place you care about the weather is where you live,”
Daniels said. “So we decided to just look at Mount Pleasant and see
what we could come up with.”

The pair took temperature data from 1948 until present and created
an average temperature, as well as several charts and graphs, to
compare the changes.

At the end of the study, the two came up with an interesting result.

“We set up an equation to test if there was a valid change and there
did turn out to warmer temperature in the years of El Niño,”
said Karn, a statistics major and mathematics minor.

The McNair Scholars Program is a program named after Dr. Ronald E.
McNair, one of the astronauts killed when the space shuttle Challenger
exploded in 1986 and gives students working on projects a set amount in
different installments to fund the project.

Karn said she felt lucky in a way to be apart of the program and the
fact they could show an actual change in weather was wonderful.

CMU’s Park Library Auditorium is not the first place Karn will
present her El Niño Southern Oscillation study.

Karn has already gone to a conference at Ohio State University and
is traveling to Seattle in November to present the project to a
scientific society.

“Sarah deserves all the credit,” Daniels said. “I threw her a bone
and she ran with it.”