Ever wanted to learn how to artificially inseminate a horse?

More than 80 honors students had the opportunity to showcase their research on this topic and a broad range of other subjects at the Spring 2004 Honors Poster Presentation.

Their research was completed for their honors projects, which every honors student must complete before graduation.

But even though the project is a requirement, that doesn’t mean it has to be boring — students have free reign to study whatever they want, even if it’s outside of their major.

Jessica Wonderlich, senior in nutritional science, took this opportunity to learn about the experiences her grandfather and his two brothers had while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.

After four months of interviewing them and having them record their thoughts about the war in a notebook, she put their words, along with pictures they provided, into an 86-page book, “The Wonderlich Brothers: Memoirs of Three World War II Veterans.”

“No one in the family really talked about the war with them,” she said. “No one really knew how to bring it up, so this was kind of a way for everyone to learn about it.”

Wonderlich said her grandfather, Charles, and his younger brother, Milford, were both in the Navy and stationed in the South Pacific during the war. Charles was a baker on a ship, and Milford worked on a supply ship in another division. Her grandfather’s identical twin brother, Robert, did maintenance work for the Army and was a member of one of the groups responsible for liberating Dachau, the infamous Nazi concentration camp.

“He saw firsthand all of the starved Jewish people,” she said. “It was so hard for him because they were told, ‘Whatever you do, don’t feed them because their bodies couldn’t handle [food].’ There were boxcars loaded full of dead bodies.”

Wonderlich said it was important to record their stories so they weren’t forgotten.

“I know my grandpa wouldn’t talk about the war for a long time even if you asked him,” she said. “But so many veterans are dying and their memories are dying with them. I learned so much about what helped shape their lives.”

She is also sending a copy of her book to the Library of Congress in hopes they can use it in their Veteran’s History Project, she said.

While some students did research outside their major, others tried to use their research to improve their own academic programs.

Leslie Custer, senior in elementary education, compared the experiences of students in her learning community, Project Opportunity: the West Des Moines Cohort, to traditional elementary education students’ experiences.

“I saw benefits to being in my community, so that’s why I chose this project — to find out if there were any definite benefits to it.”

She said since her sophomore year in the group, she had been paired with an elementary school teacher mentor in West Des Moines through her learning community and had in-classroom experience, whereas traditional education students don’t go into the classroom until their junior year.

To find out how effective her learning community is, she surveyed education students in her learning community, traditional education students, teachers who worked with both kinds of students and student teaching supervisors who oversee both kinds of students.

“We had twice as much classroom experience as traditional education students have before student teaching,” she said. “I found that 100 percent of cooperating teachers and students in the cohort who were interviewed felt the student was ready to have a classroom of their own. While 95 percent of traditional students felt the same way, it’s still important — our numbers are higher because we had increased preparation.”

Custer said she will present her findings to the College of Education in an effort to help improve its teacher education program.