Celebration of Scholars nets students presentation experience, prizes

Celebration of Scholars nets students presentation experience, prizes

From heart rate studies to memory research to teaching strategies, topics of all kinds showed on posters across the J.W. Jones Student Union Ballroom on April 3 as Northwest Missouri State University hosted its annual Celebration of Scholars.

Sponsored by the Society of President's Scholars, the Honors Program, the Office of the Provost and Career Services, the symposium is open to all Northwest students and gives students representing varied academic areas an opportunity to present their work outside of the classroom.

The event also includes some friendly competition as exhibits and presentations are judged by a committee of Northwest faculty. Among this year's award winners was MaryJane Pitthan, a junior studio art major from Savannah, Missouri, who received a $250 cash prize for her presentation, titled "Artemisia Gentileschi's Life and Paintings."

Pitthan presented a brief podcast about Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi that she created as part of an art history course with Associate Professor of Art Dr. Karen Britt.

Going beyond the initial class assignment of recording a podcast about an artist of interest, Pitthan created an audio presentation with imagery that included a caricature of herself and some of her own commentary about Gentileschi's work. Pitthan wants to pursue a career in concept art and animation after graduating from Northwest.

"I really liked how she illuminated female characters, specifically biblical heroines, and I found that interesting, just simply because you look at artists at the time and they're male-focused," Pitthan said of her interest in Gentilesch. "I started getting into the research and there were so many little details about her that I thought were interesting. Once I started kind of snowballing the little things, I was like, 'Ok, wait, this is kind of exciting,' and then it kind of turned into a passion project more than a class project."

As students gave oral presentations in the Student Union meeting rooms, posters lined the walls of the Ballroom with students standing by to discuss their research projects with the celebration's attendees.

Psychology students Tarah Jackson, Lauren Gillig and Kinzey Meyer presented research they conducted under the supervision of Dr. Amy Barton, an associate professor of psychology, titled "The Role of Unconscious Stimuli on Working Memory."

Participants in their research project looked through a stereoscope and were shown a number of white bars followed by a number of gray bars in differing locations and orientations. The results of their testing showed participants' ability to accurately recall the white bars - conscious, visible items - decreased as the number of gray bars - nonconscious, masked items - they were shown increased. The results suggest unconscious, masked visual items may interfere with the maintenance of consciously encoded items.

"It's really interesting from a cognitive perspective - how unconscious items or stuff we don't really think we perceive can impact our working memory and our ability to perform daily tasks," said Jackson, a senior psychology major from Glenwood, Iowa. She added, "I also loved the speaking portion of it because I'm not the most confident in public speaking, so definitely being able to put myself out there and be able to present a poster boosts my confidence in that way too."

The students said they appreciated interacting with people who showed interest in their research at the Celebration of Scholars - which also gave them some practice for presenting their research at the Midwestern Psychological Association Conference April 10-12 in Chicago.

"This is a great event," Gillig said. "There's just so many different topics, and it is cool to see exposure from science to exercise and then psychology. It's cool to just be in a room with other dedicated people."

Celebration of Scholars award winners

Meeting Room A winners

• First place: "We Are Not Playing Around" Games Can Grow Mathematical Thinking," Emily Farris, sponsored by Brian Swink
• Second place: "Threads of Revolution: Watts to Minneapolis," Abigail Vajgrt, sponsored by Dr. Dana Ternus
• Third place: "YouTube Trend Optimizer," Sai Swetha Bodlapati and Akshitha Katyaini Reddy Akkireddy, sponsored by Dr. Isam Alobaidi

Meeting Room B winners

• First place: "Formal Verification of Fog Computing Systems Using UPPAAL," Vasanth Kumar Palla, sponsored by Dr. Ratan Lal
• Second place: "Chatbot for Conversational Interaction with PDF and Audio Email Attachments," Ashish KC, Anil Panday and Rojina Raut, sponsored by Dr. Mark Chai
• Third place: "Data-Driven Analysis of User Sentiments and App Success on Google Play Store Using Machine Learning Techniques," Govardhan Konduru and Sai Swetha Bodlapati, sponsored by Dr. Cindy Tu

Arts Award

• "Artemisia Gentileschi's Life and Paintings," MaryJane Pitthan, sponsored by Dr. Karen Britt