Monmouth University will celebrate its third annual Student Scholarship Week from April 16 to April 22. More than 700 students will present their work in events that are, unless noted otherwise, free of charge.
Student Scholarship Week is a week long conference that presents more than 40 events showcasing and celebrating students’ academic work both inside and outside of the classroom. The celebration will include faculty-student collaborations, along with poster sessions, panels, and performances. The week long event will highlight student’s scholarly contributions in research, service learning, writing, theater and musical productions, and art exhibits, according to a statement released by Provost Laura Moriarty.
Featured events include HawkTalks, Interprofessional Exhibitions, Service Learning Showcases, and Summer Scholar’s Poster presentations.
The HawkTalks, according to the University website, will be held on April 18 from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. on the first floor of Woodrow Wilson Hall. This event format will showcase student work through poster presentations and five minute TED-talk style presentations.
Gary Lewandowski, Ph.D., Chair of the Psychology Department, was on the steering committee which helped organize the week overall. He also helped develop the HawkTalk event, which he said allowed students to share their “thought-provoking work in an interdisciplinary format.”
“Scholarship Week is such an important event because it shows what we do best at Monmouth: foster collaboration between students and faculty,” Lewandowski said. “It highlights the wide array of unique opportunities our students have to immerse themselves in their majors, often in ways that are atypical at the undergraduate level.”
Interprofessional Exhibitions, highlighted by the Schools of Social Work, Education, and Nursing and Health Studies, will be a student research and practice reflection on April 19 from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Anacon Hall (A&B) of the Rebecca Stafford Student Center. There will be a panel on interprofessional approaches to suicidality among adolescents. The Serving Learning Showcase will take place on the first floor of Wilson Hall on April 17. Here, students will reflect on their service learning courses and experiences in the local community. Service learning projects will be included from the English, Communication, Education, Social Work and Health Studies Departments.
The final featured event will be the Summer Scholars Poster Presentations from 4:15 -5 :45 p.m. in Club Dining in the Magill Commons. The Summers Scholar Program offered eight students free housing and a stipend to work on a research project – these students are from the departments of political science, biology, management and decision sciences, history, psychology, and criminal justice.
Immersive Virtual Worlds, Discovering the Ecological Self Art Exhibit, Graphic Design Display, and Street Art and Its Impact are all-day events that will be taking place each day from April 16 to April 20. All four of these events will be held in the front lobby of Rechnitz Hall.
Immersive Virtual Worlds is a year-long experiment where students taking AR-394 will “be taking their 3D virtual worlds into virtual reality degree movie and add a few real-time rendered elements,” according to the University website. On the Sunday of Scholarship Week, which coincides with opening of the all student show, the virtual worlds can be experienced through a head mounted display (also known as VR Goggles) in Rechnitz Hall.
Kimberly Callas, an assistant professor of art and design, played a major role in the development of the Discovering the Ecological Self Art Exhibit. According to her website, kimerlycallas.com, Discovering the Ecological Self is a multi-institutional art project designed to foster environmental stewardship and create environmental leaders and Social Practice artists. “I hope people come away from this exhibit and find their own personal, meaningful way to reconnect with nature, to find something that they really love, then go protect it,” said Callas.
“Scholarship Week is a very important event for the University as it celebrates the work of our undergraduate students and their faculty and showcases the joint research they have accomplished together,” said President Grey Dimenna, Esq. “It underscores what Monmouth is all about, getting to know and work closely with the faculty and having a transformative educational experience. Such opportunities are rare for undergraduate students at other institutions and can be instrumental in obtaining employment or getting into graduate school.”
IMAGE TAKEN from monmouth.edu
