The second floor of the Ceddia Union Building (CUB) was peppered with nearly 400 students on April 22, during Shippensburg University’s (SU) annual Celebration of Student Research Conference.
In the CUB’s multipurpose room, Orndorff Theater and several conference rooms throughout the CUB, students gave panel presentations on a variety of topics, spanning across all three colleges. Students were able to present their research on posters during two sessions in multipurpose room sections A and B.
Colleen Bauer, a graduate student who was presenting a poster project on social media, said that she appreciated the platform the conference provided.
“It’s a good chance to showcase my work and explain to people what I’ve been doing and spending all this time on,” Bauer said.
According to Marc Renault, chair of the dean of arts and sciences’ advisory council for undergraduate research, the conference was open to any student who had a project to present.
The conference was an opportunity for those students to share their work in a public space.
“When you find something that nobody’s ever seen before, you want to share it. So this event is a nice way of recognizing the students who do that, and gives them a chance to present their work to others. But also, we want to show other students that research is possible. It’s a fun thing to do. It’s a gratifying experience,” Renault said.
Renault added that the conference provides an endpoint to the students’ projects.
“Research that isn’t communicated is missing something. And new findings need to be communicated and I think this conference plays a vital role in that,” Renault said.
The evening before the conference, Kent Meyers, global director of advanced engineering project management for Volvo construction equipment, gave the keynote address in Memorial Auditorium. The talk was titled “Volvo CE — A Global Approach to Research and Innovation” and profiled Volvo’s recent transition that took several independent business units and fused them into one international company.
Both the keynote address and the conference were free and open to the public.
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