MANKATO — Minnesota State University professors are preparing to share their studies with their respective fields, and this summer’s offering includes a look into how track athletes pick colleges and whether fruit flies respond to peer pressure.
They’re just a few of the 10 research grants awarded by MSU’s College of Graduate Studies & Research for $5,000 each.
Put me in, coach!
Jon Lim, with the college’s sports management program, examined how Division II track and field athletes choose which college to attend.
Past research has shown the success of college athletic teams can boost merchandise and promotional profits, sponsorships, revenues from television coverage, enrollment and philanthropic giving, Lim wrote.
So as colleges seek to create winning teams it’s become important to understand why top athletes select one school over another. It would be valuable information for administrators, recruiters and coaches.
Lim got a chance to survey athletes from around the country last year when MSU hosted the NCAA Division II track and field championship. A total of 320 athletes from 72 schools agreed to participate in the survey.
Along with graduate assistant Lisa Paulson, Lim asked the athletes to rank, with one being the lowest and five the highest, a set of 11 college choice factors.
The five most significant factors, along with the average ranking of each, are: the opportunity to compete (4.3), head coach and coaching staff (3.92), athletic scholarships (3.72), degree programs offered (3.64) and team atmosphere (3.47).
Lim hopes to finish writing up the study this summer and submit it to the International Journal of Sport Management.
Flies of a feather fly together?
Biology professor Daniel Toma’s ongoing experiment measures the behavior of fruit flies genetically bred to navigate a vertical maze by either going up (away from gravity) or down (toward gravity).
He used fruit fly genetic lines started in the 1950s by Jerry Hirsch, a longtime professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Toma received his Ph.D.
Hirsch bred flies that behaved certain ways together, and eventually created entire lines of flies that reliably navigated a maze in similar ways. His work essentially created the field that is today known as behavior genetics.
“He was the first person to prove scientifically a genetic basis for behavior,” Toma said.
Fruit flies, which breed quickly and easily, have remained the organism most commonly used in these studies.
Hirsch used large groups of fruit flies, but Toma’s study examines the behavior of individual flies.
He’s looking to see whether there’s a social effect among the fruit flies.
Put another way: “Is the group simply constituted on the basis of all the individuals doing the same thing or is there something unique about the group?”
To find out, Toma and his undergraduate assistants compared individual behavior with collective behavior.
For example, that might mean mixing 10 “high” flies with 1 “low” fly. Will the fly that previously tended to walk toward gravity decide to follow its brethren?
Hirsch showed he could breed flies that flocked in groups in different directions, but will those results hold for individual flies?
The study isn’t finished so he doesn’t yet know the answer to that question.
Toma’s work is entirely theoretical; it has no bearing on human social effects, he said.
Local News
Professors prep research
From fruit fly pressure to athletes’ choices, 10 summer studies received $5,000 grants
- Local News
-
-
Mankato's civic center strategy: Ask for $14.5 million, but plan for less
The city’s strategy to get state money to expand the Verizon Wireless Center is to ask for the full $14.5 million but show the state it can build the project in phases, City Manager Pat Hentges said.
-
City gives thumbs down to chickens
Chickens won’t be coming home to roost in Mankato anytime soon.
-
Attorney plans mental illness defense for stabbing
Requests for search warrants that have been filed with the case also reveal clues Minnesota Security Hospital staff missed when they let Ewing leave the facility with his mother, Marlys Helen Olson of Coon Rapids.
-
Cooperative baseball complex to be christened Saturday
The fledgling community athletic fields at Rosa Parks Elementary School is a joint venture of the city of Mankato, Mankato Area Public Schools and MAYBA.
- Mankato council to talk gay marriage
- City approves new bus routes
-
Highway 93 near Henderson reopened
Highway 93 reopened.
-
Helicopter pilot hospitalized after crash near Delavan
Pilot remains hospitalized after crash near Delavan Friday.
- Storms prompt flood concerns
-
Suffering in Silence, Part 3: Core services remain, but professionals are spread thin
When Irvin Schaefer left the hospital, the first thing he did was sign up for day treatment. It’s a kind of step down from the hospital for people who aren’t ready to live on their own.
- More Local News Headlines
-
Mankato's civic center strategy: Ask for $14.5 million, but plan for less

