The Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research, Art and Leadership Symposium is an opportunity for new and returning students at Colorado State University to showcase their scholarly work and form new connections.
This annual symposium is a platform for undergraduate students to conduct research on topics they’re passionate about while also providing the opportunity to meet fellow students and faculty.
Rickey Frierson, assistant vice president for Strategic Student Success Initiatives, said MURALS creates a unique chance for CSU students of all backgrounds to gain research skills.
“MURALS empowers all students to see themselves as researchers,” Frierson said. “It closes opportunity gaps in the research field by allowing undergraduate students from all academic and personal backgrounds a platform to present their independent research projects or give new perspectives and insights on existing research on campus and in the world.”
Students learn from faculty, staff and graduate students with research experience, all of whom may serve as mentors throughout the research process and will provide feedback to students the day of the symposium.
Participants work individually or in a group and choose research in an array of disciplines. These can be creative writing, visual and performing arts, entrepreneurship, social sciences and humanities or science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.
Within MURALS, the First-Year Scholars Academy tailors its programming toward incoming students who want to find community and learn valuable skills upon arriving at CSU.
“First-Year Scholars Academy is a unique approach in providing students with an immersive experience in research,” Frierson said. “The program allows students to gain social skills and a sense of community through working with students who are also new to CSU and to research.”
CSU has held MURALS for over 10 years, and the symposium has grown considerably in both size and participation, according to Michelle Foster, who serves as an associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion for the College of Health and Human Science.
“Our first year was fairly small, like 21 students when we actually did it, and now we’re reaching closer to over 200,” Foster said.
Beyond the research, Foster said the community created by MURALS is what drives the program forward.
“It does create a tight community,” Foster said. “We have these students year after year coming back.”
One student that returned to MURALS for a second year was sociology student Jay Bates Domenech, whose project on intersectional exclusions of autism in television earned the symposium’s overall award in 2026.
“I just decided to do a project that I was passionate about and ended up getting rewarded for it,” Domenech said.
Domenech said they were inspired to research autism representation in U.S. television after being diagnosed at age 18. They conducted their research project through a mixed methods approach that looked at 30 autistic characters from U.S. shows that aired between the years 2000 and 2024.
Through their research, Domenech identified patterns in how television portrayed autistic characters and how those portrayals differed based on race and gender.
“There’s a very uneven distribution of how autism is portrayed in media, and the gendered and radicalized stereotypes are very present and overwhelming,” Domenech said.
Last year’s symposium keynote featured Alejandra Catalina Quesada-Stoner, a CSU alumna and overall winner of MURALS in 2023. Her project that year focused on creating a tool to help researchers adapt family support programs for Latino immigrant families.
“Presenting at MURALS was my first opportunity to share prevention science research, work that later became my senior honors thesis, and it helped me realize the kind of research I wanted to pursue long-term,” Quesada-Stoner said. “MURALS doesn’t just teach students how to conduct research; it helps them discover that their voices, experiences and ideas belong in research.”
Quesada-Stoner said MURALS provided her a hands-on opportunity to try things she never had before and helped her develop important skills she still uses to this day.
“The confidence and communication skills I developed through MURALS continue to shape how I present research today, and they will continue to serve me as I begin medical school at the UC San Diego School of Medicine,” Quesada-Stoner said.
This year’s MURALS will be held April 2, 2027. The deadline to apply for the First-Year Scholars Academy is 11:59 p.m. Aug. 28.
Reach Katya Arzubi at science@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
