Gatton Academy Students, Alumni Honored at 42nd Annual WKU Student Research Conference

With 269 presentations, the 42nd annual WKU Student Research Conferencewas 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.

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.  Among the students honored, 9 current Academy students were recognized and 4 alumni saluted for their findings.

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 students noted below (faculty mentor in parenthesis).  Current Gatton Academy students’ names are listed in green.  Academy alumni are marked with an asterisk (*).

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 Humanities, Session 4 — Change: Altering How We Perceive an Environment through Sculpture (Professor David Marquez)
• John “Jack” LeSieur, Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 5 —Cultural Resources at Kyrock, Kentucky: An Initial Assessment (Dr. Darlene Applegate)
• Brenna Tinsley, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 6 — The Ecological Roles of Podostemum ceratophyllum and Cladophora in the Habitat and Dietary Preferences of the Riverine Caddisfly Hydropsyche simulans (Dr. Scott Grubbs)
• Rebecca Crouch, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 7 — Chutes and Ladders with Markov Chains (Dr. Melanie Autin)
• Shelby Rader*, Department of Geography and Geology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 8 — Ion Selectivity Studies on Umbite (Dr. Aaron Celestian)
• Anne Walsh, Department of Art; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Humanities, Session 9 — Call Me Ishmael? The Subject of Jackson Pollock’s Portrait of H.M. (Dr. Guy Jordan)
• Nathan Bishop, Department of History; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Humanities, Session 10 — Willis v. Walker: Good Faith Alone Is Not the Test (Dr. Patricia Minter)
• Taylor Sang, Department of English; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Humanities, Session 11 — Crusader for Transparency (Dr. Sandra Hughes)
• Armando Sanchez, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies; Best Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Paper, Session 12 — Truth and Photography (Dr. Sara Northerner)
• Shelby Overstreet, Department of Psychology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 13 — STEM Career Switchers: Why Education? (Dr. Lisa Duffin)
• Steven Calhoun, Department of Chemistry; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 14 — Synthesis, Structure, and Characterization of Two Polyoxometalate-Photosensitizer Hybrid Materials (Dr. Bangbo Yan)
• Henry Uradu, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Paper in the Natural Sciences, Session 15 — The Winter-Active Dung Beetle Fauna of a Costa Rican Cloud Forest (Dr. Keith Phillips)
• Jarrod Connally, Department of Economics; Best Undergraduate Business/Interdisciplinary Poster, Session 1 — Managerial Turnover in the English Premiership and the Subsequent Results (Dr. Dennis Wilson)
• Ann-Alan Callahan, Department of Consumer and Family Sciences; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Humanities, Session 2 — Beading ’til They’re Cured (Ms. Sheila Flener)
• Jesse Hazel, Department of Art; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Humanities, Session 3 — Humbling (Professor Laurin Notheisen)
• Wesley Miller, Department of Art; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Humanities, Session 4 — Secular Nativity in Print – Exploring Origin(Professor Laurin Notheisen)
• Akhil Ghanta, Shane Masuda, and Duncan Wood, Department of Physics and Astronomy; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 5 — Dynamical Field Equations That Couple a Morris-Thorne Wormhole to an Expanding Cosmology (Dr. Keith Andrew)
• Elizabeth Gatten, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 6 — Isolation and Characterization of Bacteriophage Magnolia (Dr. Rodney King)
• Cynthia Tope*, Department of Chemistry; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 7 (tie) — Reactions of the Amino Acid Cysteine with Analogs of the Anticancer Drug Cisplatin (Dr. Kevin Williams)
• Lori Lovell, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 7 (tie) — Land Use and E. Coli / Fecal Coliform Violations in the Upper Green Watershed (Dr. Ouida Meier)
• David Brown, Department of Chemistry; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 8 — Novel Î-Conjugated Organic Macromolecules for Electronic Devices (Dr. Hemali Rathnayake)
• Andrea Eastes and Erin Walch, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 9 — Nitric Oxide Synthase 3 Gene Regulation in Pulmonary Myofibroblasts (Dr. Nancy Rice)
• Charles Coomer, Department of Biology; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Natural Sciences, Session 10 — Bacteriophage Classification Via PCR Analysis: An Alternative to Complete Genome Sequencing (Dr. Rodney King)
• Brittany Crowley, Department of Psychology; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 11 — Examination of Self-Regulation Constructs as Explanatory Variables for Attendance and Performance (Dr. Steven Wininger)
• Cortney Scott, Department of Agriculture; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 12 — Student Influences to Become an Agriculture Major at Western Kentucky University (Professor Thomas Kingery)
• Kristin Wallace, Department of Consumer and Family Sciences; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 13 —Sephora: Men: A Pop-up Marketing Concept (Kristina Goff)
• Caitlin Reyes, Department of Modern Languages; Best Undergraduate Poster in the Social Sciences/Services, Session 14 — Hispanic Outreach in Bowling Green, Kentucky: Defining the Needs of the Hispanic Community(Dr. Sonia Lenk)