As Scholarship and Creative Arts Day (SCAD) draws closer, two other departments on campus are holding their own student research presentations at Elizabethtown College. One of these presentations, the 19th Annual Student Conference in Business and Economics, was held Wednesday, April 10 in Hoover 212.
Professor of finance and international business and Director of the International Business Program Dr. Hossein Varamini held the first conference in the spring of 2001, and nine international business students presented. The size of the conference has varied over the years, though for the 2019 conference, eight students presented. Of those students, six were pursuing Honors in the Discipline for business, and one student was from Dickinson College.
Business majors and minors from all years, as well as students from other colleges, are free to submit abstracts to take part in the conference. A cash prize is also given out to the best student presentations, judged on the quality and the presentation skills of the students. The 2019 cash prize winners were seniors Anastassiya Sayenko and Etownian Business Manager Emily Seratch.
“To me, [the] student conference is a forum in which highly motivated students present their research to their peers and faculty,” Varamini said.
He also mentioned how this conference is a way for students to gain confidence and presentation skills by stepping out of their comfort zones.
Some students who have presented at this conference over the years have also presented their research at national conferences or had their work be in professional publications.
What excited Varamini for the 2019 conference was to see some of the presenters who he has had in class before and how far they have come since their first years at Etown.
“I see the growth in them, the level of confidence,” Varamini said. He also said he hoped that first-year and sophomore students went to the conference to watch their peers present, so that they could look at themselves and say, “I can do this, too.”
Most of all, Varamini said he wanted to acknowledge all the students’ work that went into the conference.
“They deserve all the credit,” he said.
The other student presentation, the Occupational Therapy Graduate Research Symposium (OTGRS), will be held Monday, April 15 in the Masters Center for Science, Mathematics and Engineering.
“It’s an annual tradition in the OT department,” associate professor of occupational therapy (OT) Dr. Nancy Carlson said. The tradition started with the first cohort of graduate students at Etown.
OT graduate students typically work in a group of three students with a faculty mentor for their research projects. Students normally present in two different ways: poster presentations and formal presentations. Something that the OT department is introducing for the 2019 OTGRS is electronic, interactive poster presentations.
“We empower students to be clinicians who use research and scholarly inquiry to inform their OT practice,” Carlson said.
Clinicians, alumni, fieldwork coordinators and undergraduate OT students will all be in attendance at the 2019 OTGRS. Carlson said she expects there to be 350 to 400 people, and the department will need to use two satellite presentation rooms since Gibble Auditorium will be filled. Carlson also said that anyone is invited to the OTGRS events Monday night, since it is a part of SCAD.
“I am always excited and amazed by the students as they present their work,” Carlson said. She also said that the OTGRS is “one of the milestones that really highlight how [students] have evolved” during their time at Etown.
Carlson said she wanted to acknowledge all the people whose hard work went into planning OTGRS. She acknowledged graduate student and chair of the OTGRS committee Madalene Rutherford, administrative assistant Jean Dietrich and the OT faculty for their help. Carlson also said that the OT students were “the engine that drives” OTGRS.
“It’s a team effort,” Carlson said.
