Many thanks to Brandon Bennes, former chair of the Undergraduate Research Journal at UCCS, and to all the URJ-UCCS Committee for organizing this issue.

This issue of the URJ-UCCS is truly multidisciplinary as it explores an array of issues from Jane Austen to video games and more. Each article represents a new topic from students in different areas of study. Many thanks go out to the great teachers that support undergraduate research excellence here at UCCS.

This issue of the URJ features several papers written in the UCCS Writing Program ranging from traditional research papers written in Rhetoric and Writing to proposal papers from the Business and Technical Writing classes. Many thanks go to Julie Hoffman, Juliana Frost, Cheryl Birkelo, Justin Jory and Jaime Filpi, who teach these classes and recommended the following papers.

This URJ highlights undergraduate research in the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs' Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Department. These papers represent a wide array of MAE topics from collecting thermal energy to beamed energy propulsion for improving space launches. Many thanks to Dr. Andrew Ketsdever, Dr. James Stevens and all MAE faculty for inspiring excellence in undergraduate research.

Features a selection of papers written in History 499, Senior Thesis Seminar: Approaches to the Study of History, during the Spring 2009 semester. These papers represent a wide range of historical topics from early Christian history to desegregation issues in the 1960s. Many thanks go to Dr. Paul Harvey and Dr. Bernice Forrest, the UCCS professors who lead these classes.

This issue focuses on the Darfur conflict and features several research papers authored by English 141 students.

The first issue of Undergraduate Research Journal at UCCS starts off with two thesis papers from a political science honors class. The first paper looks at the adoption of democracy in Arab countries, giving a historical and current looks at selected countries. The second paper discusses the papal election process and the indicators that could be used to predict the next pope. These papers represent the diversity found in political science and prove there is a lot more to political science than just the current elections.