Students display posters and research during conference
April 20, starting at 4 p.m. at the Bayou Building, Atrium II, the poster sessions took place during the Annual Student Conference for Research and Creative Arts (SCRCA). The research primarily reflected the students’ work using graphs, diagrams, photos and a small amount of text.
There were two poster sessions; one at 4 p.m. and the other at 5:30 p.m. This allowed students roughly two hours to discuss their findings with other conference attendees. Students were allowed the option to perform the research on their own or in a group with a faculty sponsor that supervised the research process.
The conference drew attendees from a variety of disciplines, which included psychology majors, to the sciences and humanities, creative arts, law, animation and others.
Crystal Pike, psychology major, researched the motivational differences among psychology students in graduate school.
“I never knew how difficult it was to collect data from an actual sample size. Due to a small sample size, it really restricted the capacity of our results,” Pike said. “Overall, the research process was a great learning experience for myself and the rest of my group.”
Among the students at the conference, there were high school seniors from surrounding schools that participated at the student conference.
Tanya Kumar, a senior at Clear Brook High School wants to be a pediatrician when she graduates college. She showed attendees her extensive research on the next generation of ovarian reserve testing.
Emma Day, DMST major, demonstrated an interactive animation paper airplane game created by Matt McKenzie, DMST major. The games that the DMST students created were on display for all conference attendees to play at their leisure.
“Patience and hard work certainly pays off when you ‘hit’ the test button and everything works, but I have yet to have that happen on the first try,” McKenzie said. “We are very proud of what we’ve accomplished and the work we’ve put it to showcasing our interactive animations.”
Maegan Michala, sociology major, presented her creative research on how DNA affects opinions towards the death penalty.
“At first, it was nerve-racking waiting to speak with people about my research findings,” Michala said. “After a few times of explaining my research, it became a lot easier.”
Michael Hunt, co-director for SCRCA and associate professor of psychology, said the poster sessions went really well this year.
“A large amount of disciplines were represented at the poster sessions,” Hunt said. “The students knew their topics quite well and several of the participants said they plan on using their work to develop masters and Ph.D. projects.”
Students that participate will be enhancing their resumes by participating in the conference and being exposed to a professional environment.
“All who participated received first-hand professional advice and had the opportunity to share their scholarly work with their peers,” Hunt said.
