Student researchers presented their research on GREAT Day, educating students and faculty about the arts, biology and business. The researchers encourage students to attend this event to become involved in research studies (Udeshi Seneviratne/outgoing Photo Editor).
Students, faculty and administrators gathered together on April 17 for Geneseo Recognizing Excellence, Achievement and Talent Day. The day allowed students to present the research they have been diligently working on, with topics ranging from science to arts and beyond.
Three of the many student researchers presented their studies on biology, diversity and business.
Biology major senior Olivia Card spoke about how she felt about being a participant in this program. She enjoyed being able to both see and learn from her fellow peers’ presentations.
“It was really nice to be surrounded by other members of the academic communities … you get to see what your friends are doing, and you also have something that you did,” Card said. “It’s also a good feeling of accomplishment because you’ve done a lot of work leading up to it and then you get to present it and you can be proud of it.”
Card continued to address her involvement in the biology-related directed study. She began her note-taking at the beginning of this year, and her presentation this semester. She comments on the significant amount of time she dedicated to this research project overall.
“I’ve been doing that research since early sophomore year. I went to the Biology Tri-Beta fair, and I met people who were doing a project [on modeling biological systems],” Card said. “They were two seniors and they needed … an underclassman to take over the project … I joined their project and I’ve been on it ever since.”
In addition to Card’s study on modeling biological systems, physics major senior Barak Stockler presented a theatrical project with students from his diversity and social injustice theatre course.
“I presented as part of a class, but within that class I was part of a group. Our group, our class has a theme and a focus … of diversity and social justice. Our group kind of talked about what we were interested in,” Stockler said. “[We picked the] topics we want[ed] to address, our topic was about addressing social change and issues.”
Stockler and his fellow peers had to brainstorm ways that they could communicate discriminatory events to an audience, theatrically.
“Going into the class we knew we were going to present on GREAT Day. So, it starts with work in the beginning of the semester and … kind of thinking about what we want to do. Especially this last month has [had a heavy focus on] need[ing] to execute our vision and put it together in a format where we can present it to an audience,” Stockler said. “We didn’t really know until Monday, before GREAT Day, [how we would present] … and then after we did it, we had to talk and meet about ‘what did this theatre mean?’”
Chemistry and business administration double major junior Shoshana Rosenstein presented her research and had industry experts in attendance who provided helpful feedback.
“This wasn’t intended to be a GREAT Day presentation … I started doing a lot of the research on the industry that was used for the presentation probably back in November,” Rosenstein said. “It’s been really cool to see the ideas grow and all come together into such a nice presentation.”
Rosenstein encourages students to attend GREAT Day, as she believes both participating and observing can help hone public speaking and presentation skills.
“I definitely recommend that students participate in GREAT Day. I think it’s a great learning experience to get practice presenting to people,” Rosenstein said. “[It’s] a good chance to get feedback from other people to see where you can improve your presentation skills or improve your research in general.”
The three students believe that attending this event is a learning experience for both presenters and audience members alike.