Project Spotlights

Imagine going to a local seafood restaurant and not being able to order your favorite dish-ever again. Research being conducted by Clemson students is showing that blue crabs may disappear from the menu due to human impacts on the environment....

What if you learned we only had 30 years left of oil reserves and less than 80 years worth of Uranium? Obviously you would want to find an alternative, especially using resources you already have. Dr. Terry Walker, Robert Clark, Charles Thornton,...

Many Clemson students are training to become future scientists, but some are actively assisting the scientific community already. There are dozens upon dozens of papers where chicken genes have been described, but it's an immense task to find all...

Medical implant devices (MIDs) have been used widely for more than 40 years, and it is estimated that 8 to 10 percent of Americans (20-25 million people) currently have such a device. Although implant devices produce great benefits, sometimes MIDs...

Getting your temperature and pulse taken in the doctor's office seem like routine tasks. Many parents even complete these tests at home. In a country with so much medical technology, it is hard to imagine life without our luxuries. However,...

Most movie theaters in towns surrounding Clemson, SC show only the major Hollywood flicks, full of hot lead actresses, 3D explosions, and big-name directors?all this "entertainment" for nearly fifteen bucks. However, one Creative Inquiry, in...

When President Jim Barker was asked to help simplify and improve the Division I rulebook for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), he asked, "How can we make this a teachable moment?" Barker turned to colleague Dan Wueste,...

South Carolina's culture is viewed, sometimes quite literally, in black and white. That is, white culture is one facet and black history and tradition, another. While this might have largely been the case for decades, a burgeoning Hispanic...

Your task, should you choose to acc ept it, is to design a mission to an asteroid. Sound like an old episode of Mission Impossible? Not quite. This time, it's NASA, Clemson University and other members of the NASA Human Health and Performance Center...

Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. The heart of a participant beats as Dr. Jim McCubbin's students listen through a stethoscope for the faint whoosh that indicates systolic blood pressure, with an eye on the blood pressure gauge and a cuff on the subject's...

Professor Susanna Ashton's 2007-2008 Creative Inquiry project team sought to collect and publish slave narratives of South Carolina. Now their hard work is being rewarded. I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives is being...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. In 2008, over one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese. Physical activity plays a role in numerous...

Your pulse is racing and you can feel your heartbeat resonating through your chest. The emergency room doctors hurriedly push you down the cold hallway, trying to hide the panic on their faces. When a patient is lying in the hospital with a serious...

A group of Clemson University students has come up with a way football fans can make tailgating more environmentally friendly. A team led by students in civil engineering and architecture designed a sustainable tailgating trailer that can be...

In recent years, fruits like the acai berry and pomegranate (coined 'superfruits') have been wildly heralded for their numerous health benefits. But what role do such fruits actually play in increasing the human lifespan? Groundbreaking research is...

Four Clemson University students took first place in a national marketing competition. The Creative Inquiry team topped students from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas/Arlington to win the Chevrolet Sonic Marketing Challenge...

Prospective students and their parents can now tour Clemson University's campus with an iPhone as their guide. The application developed by students as a Creative Inquiry project offers an interactive way to learn more about buildings and...

The story of robotics hasn't always been a happy one, with countless tales of robots causing an end to humankind However, Dr. Delphine Dean and Dr. David Kwartowitz have put a new spin on the classic tale. Their Creative Inquiry project in the...

An architecture Creative Inquiry project that focused on designs for the Clemson University Student Organic Farm was honored in an international design competition, Structures for Inclusion 2011, for a project called STEPS to Connectivity and...

Coffee and cancer aren't often mentioned in the same sentence, but in Dr. Feng Chen's laboratory, both are topics of much debate. On Dr. Chen's Creative Inquiry team, students from the Department of Food, Nutrition, and Packaging Science get lab...

From the classroom to the laboratory to professional conferences, students are exploring solutions to the complex problems of today and tomorrow, and everybody plays a role. Creative Inquiry project teams are comprised of undergraduates, graduate...

It happens all the time - the last chip in the bag drops onto the floor, so you quickly snatch it up, and eat it while quoting the five-second rule to your friends. But how legitimate is the five-second rule? Dr. Paul Dawson, a professor in the...

Five thousand children a day or 3.5 million people a year - that's the number of lives that could be saved if the whole world had clean water. Here in America this basic necessity is often taken for granted, but in places like Haiti, easy access to...

A young nurse, no older than 25, extends her trembling hand - ready to inject you with a needle. You squirm away, not comforted by the fact that the first person she is performing this procedure on is you. Although this may sound like an unlikely...

What starts with 'reading' and ends in 'fun'? Read-a-Rama! Camp Read-a-Rama is a program that gets kids from different backgrounds excited about reading. Launched in 2001 by Dr. Michelle Martin from the teacher education department, Read-a-Rama...

Mark Charney, Clemson University's resident playwright and director of theater, is the 2010 recipient of the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award given by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, the Association for Theatre in...

It's a Thursday evening in downtown Clemson. The night is young, and many students are enjoying one of their favorite beverages. Alcohol flows as the lifeblood for many a college party, but the mechanics behind its production could yield new...

Hummingbirds disappear in the winter and return in the springtime, hovering outside your window while drinking from a bright red feeder. Chirping birds are a sign that spring has finally arrived, shortly followed by blossoming trees and warm...

We've all been there: slouching down in class, trying to peel your eyes open, suffering from that all-nighter. Especially in a college setting, sleep deprivation can be a normal part of life. Whether it is before a big exam or a project deadline,...

Seven Clemson University students and political science professor Colin Pearce attended the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS) Biennial Conference held in Ottawa, Canada. The Creative Inquiry group, the only student...

It's a typical school day: students sit at their desks, keep a close eye on the clock, scribble notes, and try to stay awake. After the lecture ends, how much information will be retained? Will the students even care about the topics discussed?...

Clemson University architecture students are beginning final construction on a unique piece of urban furniture: The HATCHpad, which will find a temporary home on the streets of Asheville, N.C. The project is part of a Creative Inquiry project...

The October 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier shocked parents and students nationwide. Meier, barely out of childhood and into adolescence, had felt such torment when a boy who had befriended her on MySpace.com suddenly turned on her,...

Updating your Facebook status and adding pictures from your weekend trip might seem like typical college activities, but there may be a lot more to these tasks. A new Creative Inquiry team is collecting information presented in social media outlets...

If you've never ventured through the South Carolina Botanical Gardens, you should make plans to go there as soon as possible. It's not just because of the fluttering butterflies, the vibrant daffodils, or the splashing ducklings, either. You're in...

Fifteen students plus numerous ClemsonLIFE mentors equals one life changing experience. Going away to college is a luxury that isn't available to many students with intellectual disabilities. However, with Clemson's unique program, students are...

Anyone who has spent time with kids knows it all too well - they never seem to sit still. This is especially true in a hospital, where children are surrounded by strangers, needles, and scary-looking equipment. Trying to complete routine tests can...

Cannon blast. Roaring crowds. The team comes dashing down the hill. As this happens, thousands of balloons are released into the air. This scene is familiar to anyone who's attended a Clemson University football game. However, the fate of these...

What do diet supplements, cuttlefish, and newspapers have in common? A scientific journalism Creative Inquiry team is drawing these seemingly unrelated topics together. In doing so, they are making an impact on the community's knowledge of recent...

It was a bright spring day when Clemson's director of landscape architecture, Matthew Powers, unveiled his latest "learning landscape" to an audience of students, teachers and administrators in a courtyard of Dacusville Middle School in upstate...

Students in the Popular Science Journalism Creative Inquiry project are finding out for themselves. Members of the project team are undergraduates majoring in a variety of biological sciences but all with the same goal: to discover what being a...