Dr. Wolk, Joseph Coleman and Carl Varnerin at the conference in New Brunswick.

Students Travel North to Present Papers at Prestigious Symposium

Posted on July 17, 2008 - Permalink
Audiences: Current Students Faculty and Staff HomePage Research

On June 27, Joseph Coleman, a Barnstable resident who recently earned his bachelor's degree in marketing, presented a paper at the annual International Symposium on Technology and Society. While BSC students presenting papers at top conferences is nothing new, what Mr. Coleman discovered when he arrived in Canada for the ISTAS event was that he was competing against a slew of doctorate-level presenters.

Still, he held his own. Mr. Coleman's paper, "Colliding Fronts: Making Sense of the Wind Power Debate," centers on the Internet's potential role in supplying misinformation about The Cape Wind Project, a proposed offshore wind farm near Cape Cod. To gather data for his paper, Mr. Coleman surveyed 600 BSC students who would be affected by the farm should it be constructed. At the time of the conference, which was held at the University of New Brunswick, his survey represented the largest ever completed on the subject in Massachusetts.

In 2007, Mr. Coleman, an honor student, earned an Adrian Tinsley Program summer grant that funded all facets of his project including the trip to ISTAS, which is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Dr. Robert Wolk, an assistant professor of management, was Mr. Coleman's ATP mentor and accompanied him to ISTAS.

"Joseph showed an extraordinary amount of dedication to his project," said Dr. Wolk.

Although presenting to primarily doctorate-level students was intimidating, Mr. Coleman said he had confidence in the conclusions drawn from his ATP research and "that confidence was key, because I had to be prepared to not only explain my findings but to defend them as well."

Mr. Coleman said he credits Dr. Wolk in guiding him through his research and presentation.

Fresh out of college, Mr. Coleman is already employed full-time at Management Insight Technologies, a firm that centers on market research for major Information Technology companies. He said earning this career is due in large part to the research experience he gained through the ATP grant and the education he received at BSC.

"The opportunities I have been presented are credited to the school and the program," he said.

BSC graduate student Carl Varnerin, a management major, also presented his paper, "Socio-Political Response to Land Based Wind Power and the Manifestation of the Response via the Internet," at ISTAS, and Dr. Wolk presented his own paper, "Utilizing Google Earth and Google Sketchup to Visualize Wind Farms," as well. (Rob Matheson, Office of Institutional Communications)