From left, Susan Smith, Aaron Nard, Jessica Gulisek, John Heiserman and President Stephen Greiner are shown at the awards ceremony.
WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., March 22, 2018 — Just as spring returns to campus, West Liberty University planned a new academic symposium offering students in all disciplines a new chance to compete and win cash prizes.
The competition was designed to recognize and reward outstanding achievement in scholarly Research, Creative Activity, and Performance (RECAP) and it took place on Wednesday, March 21 in College Hall, ending with closing remarks from President Stephen Greiner and the announcement of the winners.
“West Liberty University is proud of the academic work of the many students who participated in our first interdisciplinary research symposium. I congratulate the winners and all the students who took advantage of this opportunity to engage in research and formal presentation, which is such a big part of advancement in the academic and professional world,” Greiner said.
RECAP included three different styles of presentations consisting of posters on display in the ASRC lobby, formal presentations with PowerPoint in the Boyle Conference Center, and presentations or performances in College Hall.
First place winners, categories and titles of research include:
- Poster category, Aaron Nard, “Freshwater Ecosystem Studies.”
- Paper category, Susan J. Smith, “Change-Maker, Home-Maker, or Booty-Shaker? An analysis of Meghan Trainor and her Contributions to Mass Media Content.”
- Presentation/Performance category, John Heiserman and Jessica Gulisek for “Early 20th Century arts songs by Samuel Barber.”
“Our RECAP event was a big success with 73 participants, at both the graduate and undergraduate level,” said Dr. Matthew Harder, dean of the College of Art and Communications. Also assisting in the organization of the symposium were Dr. Linda Cowan, chair of the Department of Music and Theatre, Dr. Robert Kreisberg, dean of the College of Sciences, Dr. Angela Rehbein, associate professor of English and Sara Sweeney, director of the Office of Graduate Studies.
“On behalf of the committee, I am very pleased to report that RECAP, our newly revamped student research competition, drew more student participation than we anticipated for its inaugural year and we congratulate all our student partipants,” Harder added.
A 17-member panel of judges, consisting of faculty, graded the students on their research and performances.
Senior Miranda Snell of Pittsburgh, Pa. exercise physiology major, who plans on applying to the WLU master’s of physician assistant studies program this spring, enjoyed the chance to enter her research paper.
“I wrote the paper over Christmas break and will be using the longer version of my paper for my senior capstone project in April. So it was cool to have a chance to use it to compete for this honor and for a cash prize,” Snell said. Her full-length paper is 22 pages of online research that looks at “Emergency Administration of n-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids to Correct Fatal Arrhythmias.”
“RECAP offered another chance to test our my paper before judges before capstone.”
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