2025 Celebration of Scholarly Works Highlights Innovation

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April 17, 2025

More than 50 student research and capstone projects appeared during a poster session at this year's Eastern Washington University College of Health Science and Public Health's "Celebration of Scholarly Works."

This two-day showcase, held April 14 and 15 at the SIERR building in Spokane, highlighted the efforts of graduate and undergraduate researchers who completed insightful, perceptive scientific and scholarly investigations.

Many of these projects have been years in the making. "It feels great to finally show the results after over a year because I'm super interested in this topic," says Hailey Owen, a second year graduate student in the communication sciences and disorders program. "I hope people can learn something from it."

Hailey Owen, future speech language pathologist, researched tongue strength in Parkinson's patients participating in the SPEAK OUT! program.

Her research assessed tongue strength in Parkinson's patients who completed SPEAK OUT! Therapy-an evidence-based treatment intended to regain and retain patients' speech and swallowing. Owens' research observed improvement in tongue strength in all study participants who completed the SPEAK OUT! program.

Two occupational therapy students, master's degree candidates Shannon Gillespie and Alyssa Larson, researched barriers to postpartum women receiving "pelvic floor therapy," a treatment program that addresses a type of pelvic muscle dysfunction that is common after childbirth.

"We found five major themes in the barriers, including: lack of time, prioritization of self, lack of knowledge, lack of client-centered care, and health care policies," says Gillespie. Due to a lack of literature about pelvic floor therapy and the postpartum population, their search expanded to include barriers to mental health services and Ob/GYN postpartum care, she says.

"We ultimately hope that these barriers can be heard and utilized in future research to improve overall care and service for these women," Larson adds.

Now second-year students, the research has spanned nearly the entirety of their time in the occupational therapy program. "It means a lot to present our work here," says Larson. "It's like a final stamp within our professional experience in the OT program, especially to showcase our work and share our passion."

Occupational Therapy students Shannon Gillespie and Alyssa Larson presented research on barriers to postpartum women receiving therapy to prevent pelvic muscle dysfunction common after childbirth.

On down the line of poster displays, Isabelle Sikora presented her findings on the connection between brain injuries, humor and artificial intelligence (AI).

"I looked at individuals with an acquired brain injury (ABI), like a stroke or traumatic brain injury, and their humor comprehension," says Sikora, a second year master's degree student in the communication sciences and disorders program. "Humor requires the cognitive ability of frame shifting, which is taking old information and applying it to new information. With jokes, we shift frames quickly, so I wondered if individuals with ABIs could use AI to better understand jokes."

Participants in the study responded to AI-prompted jokes, explaining how they interpreted the joke. Afterward, AI gave participants strategies to better understand the joke.

"We don't usually think about using AI for something so humanistic," Sikora says, but her research found improvement in joke interpretation after participants were given the AI strategies.

Two School of Nursing students, meanwhile, made history presenting at the event as members of Eastern's soon-to-be first class of nursing graduates. "We are the only group of nursing students here today," says Runar Camp, a senior in the nursing program. "As Eastern's first graduating class of nurses, we wanted to make sure nursing had a voice in the public and health sciences."

Nursing students T.J. Malzahn and Runar Camp created a way for students to review for final exams using virtual "escape rooms."

With his research partner, T.J. Malzahn, Camp created a virtual "escape" room as a final exam review activity.

"You get to move through the rooms by solving problems and answering the questions correctly," says Camp. "Each of the rooms were titled and themed based on concepts being tested on the final exam."

For example, Camp says, the pharmacology test rooms included concepts such as perfusion, infection and medication safety. The virtual review lasted approximately two hours. It concluded with a survey asking participants how prepared they felt before and after the escape room experience.

The results reported 40% of participants felt unprepared for their exams prior to the escape room review, while that fell to just 12% afterward. Additionally, according to Camp and Malzahn, 73% of students agreed the escape room activity was a better review than traditional review methods.

To learn more about the virtual escape room, and all of the other research and capstone projects, visit here.

Want more EWU student research? Mark your calendars May 6 and 7 for the 2025 Student Research and Creative Works Symposium, which will be held on the Cheney campus.

Story written by Avery Knochel.

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