On Tues., March 25, 30 students spent two hours presenting their personal research projects to faculty, staff, judges and peers. The President’s Academic Showcase offers undergraduates the opportunity to pursue in-depth research on a topic of their choice, under the guidance of a faculty mentor. 

By writing a 10 to 25 page paper, designing a poster and reciting a two-minute speech, participants compete for the chance to win thousands of dollars in prize money. This year, topics ranged from generative AI in writing and liturgical sheet music to DNA value algorithms and the effect of dance on people with Parkinson's disease.

Students who complete a showcase gain valuable experience and learn important lessons throughout the process. “It was really fun getting to figure out how to write a proper research paper, as that's something I've never done before,” said Maddy Chatwin, freshman. “Working with my faculty mentor, Zoë, was really fun because she taught me a lot that I had no idea was needed for such an intensive project. I feel like I've grown so much both in the field that I studied and academically. And now I know how to do APA! So that's fun too.”

The showcase always requires commitment and dedication. “My project combined math and art, and the reason I chose to do this is because in our core math class, we did some research about Fibonacci, and it was really fun, actually,” said Audrey Kaufman, freshman. “I just love to do art on my own, so I thought it would be a fun way to combine my love of art and what I've learned with math. Overall, it's been a kind of a difficult process, it’s been long, but productive.”

“Doing this showcase was definitely challenging,” said Josiah Chin, junior. “Originally I just wanted to do an honors investigation just to get the paper done but doing the showcase took it to another level, an experience that I thought I'd never do before. But it's really cool because I get to challenge myself and really present to people what I've researched. It helps to share knowledge and exchange knowledge with one another and to help us see more of the reality of this world.”

Students often utilize the showcase as a way to study their personal interests more closely. “So my major is Church Music,” said Olivia Thoelke, junior. “And so that's why I ultimately decided to talk about the liturgy and talk about its beauty. A lot of times the perceived notion of liturgy is that it's boring, old antiquated, and because it's done week to week, there's not a lot of things that you can still gain from it. But I'd like to argue that there is more room for wonder and curiosity within the liturgy.”

The research extends beyond campus and personal use as well. “My showcase allowed me to get involved with a local community of people who suffer from Parkinson's and contribute to research about interventions that may improve their overall quality of life,” said Britton Cheney, junior. “I found it to be a very valuable experience. I got to meet people and work with them and hear about their experience as they wrestle with the disease. And so it becomes a little different when you're working with real people and you actually get to talk to the participants, and it's not just reading research and learning abstractly about a disease.”

Academic Showcase research has the potential to be expanded upon or used by others in the field. “My project was about looking for expected value algorithms, finding counting k-mers and DNA sequences,” said Paul Schulteis, freshman. “K-mers are like little DNA words made up of nucleotides, and so by using the different algorithms I worked on, they provide different approaches that scientists can use finding expected value and what makes it significant is you compare the expected value to what we observe. That significance is what future scientists can study.”

With the research, design and presentation mostly accomplished on their own, students gain a strong sense of independence through the showcase process. "The showcase was such a wonderful process this year, because it really taught me that I'm capable of doing academic research, mostly by myself. Of course, I had guidance from professors, but I was really able to deep dive into something that I'm passionate about, and I'm really excited to share it with other people too,” said Gracie Leininger, junior. 

For more information about the President’s Academic Showcase, contact Nathan Meier at nathan.meier@cui.edu or Erin Nelson at erin.nelson@cui.edu. 

 

Tags: Academic Showcase, entrepreneur, Research

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