By Orion Wright, Transcript Correspondent
Students and faculty chatting together over refreshments; rows of posters displaying the details of research projects; students giving presentations on the work they had completed over the course of the semester- these are the sights attendees of the Student Symposium enjoyed on Thursday.
The Student Symposium is an annual event organized by The OWU Connection, an OWU program intended as a “commitment to help you find your pathway to meaningful work and a rewarding life,” according to the university website.
“The spring Student Symposium showcases the research and creative work of Ohio Wesleyan students across the academic spectrum. The Symposium provides an opportunity for students to share their work with the OWU community and enter a dialogue that can spur ideas for new projects,” according to the Academic Affairs page on OWU’s website.
“The Student Symposium really gives us a chance to see the incredible work that students are doing in a variety of . . . fields,” said Dr. Shala Hankison, Associate Professor of Zoology.
“I think it is also great for students to see the wide variety of ways that their classroom topics can be put into practice for a variety of research projects,” Hankison said.
And variety indeed- the research on display ranged from sociology to chemistry to ecology, and everything in between.
Among the diverse topics explored on the posters were projects such as “Mobilizing the LGBTQIA+ Movement,” Stochastic Stage-Based Population Model for Loggerhead Sea Turtle,” and “Common Core Standards: More Than a Meme.”
Ellen Sizer, one of the students presenting research at the Symposium, had been working on her project “Physical Fences and Social Boundaries: The Human Implications of Privatizing Nature in Patagonia Park,” for a year. She hadn’t set out with the intent of displaying it at the event- rather, the reward was “fun.”
“I came in thinking it would all be physical and environmental geography, but it ended up being more human and cultural,” Sizer said.
“I see [the Symposium] as practice for how to talk to people and hopefully get an idea of presenting at a larger scale,” Sizer said.
The Symposium was held in the atrium of the Schimmel-Conrades Science Center from 4 to 7 p.m. on April 18.