WKU News

With 269 presentations, the 42nd annual WKU Student Research Conference was the biggest in the event’s history as Saturday’s event at Gary A. Ransdell Hall featured 146 papers, 111 posters/exhibits, six performances/videos and six spotlight presentations.

A total of 184 undergraduate students and 85 graduate students were primary authors this year, and an additional 151 students were co-authors. A total of 154 faculty members served as mentors, providing expert instruction and guidance to student researchers and artists.

This year’s conference featured a presentation by a student of the new Educational Leadership doctoral program (Ed.D.) in the Department of Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research. Wesley Waddle presented a paper titled “An Analysis of Factors Impacting K-12 Technology-Infused Lesson Design.”

Among the undergraduate participants in the conference were 69 Honors College students and 32 students in the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science in Kentucky.

Student participants represented 33 departments and programs from all colleges: Agriculture; Architectural and Manufacturing Sciences; Art; Biology; Business; Chemistry; Communication; Communication Disorders; Computer Science; Consumer and Family Sciences; Economics; Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research; Engineering; English; Folk Studies and Anthropology; Gender and Women’s Studies; Geography and Geology; History; Interdisciplinary Studies; Management; Mathematics and Computer Science; Modern Languages; Music; Nursing; Philosophy and Religion; Physics and Astronomy; Political Science; Popular Culture Studies; Psychology; Public Health; Social Work; Sociology; and Theatre and Dance.

Award recipients included the following (faculty mentor in parenthesis):

Graduate Students

• Damian Wirth, Masters of Business Administration Program; Best Graduate Business/Interdisciplinary Paper, Session 1 — Extended Drive-Thru Staffing (Dr. Zubair Mohamed)
• Wesley Waddle, Department of Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research; Best Graduate Paper in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 2 — An Analysis of Factors Impacting K-12 Technology-Infused Lesson Design (Dr. William Schlinker)
• Gilman Ouellette, Department of Geography and Geology; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 3 — Paleohydrology and Climate Change in the Eastern Caribbean from Barbadian Speleothems (Dr. Jason Polk)
• Amanda Campbell, Department of Biology; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 4 — Tracing the Evolution of Telomerase for an Ancestral Precursor to Define and Suggest Cancer Therapeutics (Dr. Chandrakanth Emani)
• Chandra Pranav, Department of Biology; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 5 — Effect of Coconut Oil (Cocos nucifera) on Ulcerative Colitis in a Mouse Model (Dr. Nilesh Sharma)
• Linda Baizel, Department of Geography and Geology; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 6 — Use of the Handheld Gamma-Ray Scintillometer for Correlation of Outcrops and Subsurface Mississippian and Pennsylvanian Rocks of Northern Warren County, Kentucky (Dr. Michael May)
• Andrea Toll, Department of Chemistry; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 7 — Racemization of Amino Acids in Teeth for the Determination of Age (Dr. Darwin Dahl)
• Gopinath Rajadinakaran, Department of Biology; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 8 — Cell Proliferation and Apoptotic Pathways Regulated in Zebrafish Auditory Hair Cell Regeneration Using Next Generation Sequencing (Dr. Michael Smith)
• Rachel Hopkin, Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology; Best Graduate Paper in the Humanities, Session 9 — The Bottle Artist (Dr. Tim Evans)
• Mitchell Gaines, Department of Geography and Geology; Best Graduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 10 — WRF Modeling of the January 29th and 30th 2008 Ohio Valley Squall Line (Dr. Rezaul Mahmood)
• Rebecca Wilson, Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology; Best Graduate Paper in the Humanities, Session 11 — Miracle on Any Street (Dr. Ann Ferrell)
• Amanda Seaton, Department of Biology; Best Graduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 1 — Defining the Essential Components of Bacteriophage HK639 Early Gene Expression (Dr. Rodney King)
• Begum Fouzia, Department of Chemistry; Best Graduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 2 — Calcium and Rubidium Based Metal Organic Frameworks (Dr. Bangbo Yan)
• Lauren Weathers, Department of Psychology; Best Graduate Poster in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 3 — Attention, Support, and Face-to-Face Self-Disclosure as Predictors of Self-Disclosure on Facebook (Dr. Pitt Derryberry)
• Josh Moncrief, Department of Psychology; Best Graduate Poster in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 4 — Thinking of Home and the Effects of Willpower (Dr. Aaron Wichman)

Undergraduate Students

• Jessica Williams, Department of Theatre and Dance; Best Undergraduate Performance in the Humanities, Session 1 (tie) — Rhythm of My Sole (Professor Amanda Clark)
• Kyle MacDonald, Department of Music; Best Undergraduate Performance in the Humanities, Session 1 (tie) — Olympia, a Musical Composition for Wind Ensemble (Dr. Michael Kallstrom)
• Victoria Gilkison, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 1 – Stable Isotopic Analysis of the Upper Green River in Hart County, Kentucky (Dr. Albert Meier)
• Leah Frazier, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 2 — Stimulation of Cell Migration in Corneal Endothelial Cells (Dr. Ken Crawford)
• Ashley Coulter, Department of English; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Humanities, Session 3 — Pale in Comparison: Dissent within Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (Dr. Sandra Hughes)
• Cody Nimmo, Department of Art; Best Undergraduate Paper in the