Beginning in 2007, Elizabethtown College has held a spring event to showcase student academics. At Scholarship and Creative Arts Day (SCAD), students showcase their creativity and intellect through presentations about topics that are significant to them.
To ensure academic quality, all SCAD presentations must first be approved by a professor. Beyond that, however, the responsibility to showcase something substantial falls solely on the student. The 2019 SCAD presentations marked the event’s 12th year and featured a wide variety of student scholarship across years and disciplines. As with years prior, participants from the College had the ability to transform a topic of personal interest into a professional, academic presentation.
One student presenting was junior communications major Pleasant Sprinkle-Williams. When asked about what she enjoyed most about SCAD, she mentioned the element of collaboration with professors. This means, essentially, that Sprinkle-Williams had the experience of a professor “seeing something great in [her] work and want[ing] [her] to share it.”
She said her project “was on exploring the Gaelic lens to interpret notions of exoticism, tokenization and capitalization through my own intersectional and lived experiences.” To this end, Sprinkle-Williams examined the ways in which “globalized sources of media and entertainment often frame conceptions of culture and otherness.” This has allowed her to specifically question and analyze “the creation of ‘the other’: the creation of ‘the exotic.’” She specifically did this through the lens of her own experiences on campus, “This all wraps back around to my experiences as being part of the ‘other’ during my years here at E-town college and how I turned the normally demeaning (tiring) aspect of being the “other” into a more empowering position,” she said.
What is so influential about SCAD is the individuality of it. Sprinkle-Williams was able to work across disciplines to explore her own experiences with diversity on campus.
In a similar vein, senior Etownian staff writer V. Edwards “delivered a SCAD presentation titled ‘The Voice of a Generation: Japanese Youth Political Participation and Social Media.’” This specific topic served as “a continuation from [her] last SCAD presentation, which discussed the role of opposition parties in the Japanese political system.” Edwards additionally regards it as “a precursor to the research [she] will complete as a 2019-20 Fulbright Fellow.”
For Edwards, SCAD is significant for students because it “enable[s] students to network with individuals of similar interests and abilities, as well as polish their work in response to feedback from faculty and peers.”
“The exchange enriches presenters’ and audience members’ understanding of a diversity of subjects and augments their communicative abilities,” she continued.
Some students had SCAD presentations that they completed as part of a course they were already enrolled in, as was the case for first-year staff writer Elizabeth LePore. LePore’s presentation “was with three other students from [her] family business class.” Together they “presented on Hillbrush, a business that belongs to the family of one of [her] group members.”
“It was fascinating learning about the family aspect of the business, its history and its future,” LePore said.
Lepore said she believes that because “students are able to present their projects and research that they are passionate about… SCAD can be seen as a student appreciation day because of the time dedicated to student presentations on their hard work.”
“I have seen four SCAD days and I think this year was especially neat because I knew so many people presenting projects,” senior business manager Emily Seratch said. “My favorite part was being able to support students and friends in their research. [She] really loved seeing everyone’s work.”
This year, Seratch “presented [her] Honors in the Discipline paper, titled ‘Did You See That? An exploration of product placement in theatre.’” As a business major with passions for theater and marketing, this project “really allowed [her] to explore other disciplines [she has] a passion for.”
In Seratch’s experience, SCAD often comes as a welcome relief since “students spend so many semesters working on research that makes them happy or speaks to them,” which Seratch “think[s]… is really important.”
“Oftentimes we feel bogged down with work we don’t enjoy or feel passionate about, so this is a chance for Etown to really encourage students to find a passion and follow it,” she said.
