The Online Reflector

Many students in the University of Indianapolis Honors College will present their final research projects to the public in April.

The projects are presented in the basement of Schwitzer Student Center or Good Recital Hall and are open to all UIndy students and faculty. Students can receive LP credit as well.

The Honors College project is an accumulation of the student’s work over the years he or she has been in the Honors program. The presentation reflects the student’s educational interests.

Senior elementary education major Lindsey Allen presented a creative piece about her pre-service teaching as well as her childhood experiences in the education system. Allen said she combined her past experiences with what she is learning about teaching in the classroom into a collection of lyric essays.

Senior pre-med biology major Brittany Araki’s project was a chemotherapeutic study on how a chemotherapeutic drug affects specific molecules in a cell. She also attempted to establish a cell line that is resistant to the chemotherapeutic drug to see if it is different from the parent strand.
Allen and Araki presented March 26 at 4 p.m. in Good Recital Hall.

Junior human biology and pre-physical therapy major Heidi King is presenting a descriptive analysis on a program called the Community Patient Resource Group (CPRG), a group of people who perform as patients for the students in physical therapy to work with.

“The purpose of the study was to see how the faculty and students perceived how working with the CPRG was benefitting the students in their learning,” King said.

Junior exercise science and pre-physical therapy major Lauren Bailey is presenting a new user’s guide for the Institutional Review Board (IRB) submission process for future researchers after running into problems during her original research project.

King and Bailey will present on April 5 in Good Recital Hall from 6 to 8 p.m.

Lastly, senior international relations and French double major Sarah VanVlerah’s project is a phenomenological study on swing dancing in Indianapolis and London, England. VanVlerah said she conducted 10 in-depth interviews on how swing dancing lessons have affected their lives.

“The most incredible thing that this project did for me was put a concrete reward on pursuing higher education,” VanVlerah said. “It goes beyond a piece of paper that says I did this; it’s a 50 page book that says I did this.”

Senior psychology major Imen Saadeh will be presenting a qualitative analysis on Muslim Middle-Eastern women in America with higher education degrees and their decisions to work or stay at home. Saadeh said she interviewed four Muslim women, two who stay in the home and two who work outside the home.

“The media in this country portrays Muslim women as uneducated and suppressed. I wanted to prove otherwise,” Saadeh said.

Alongside senior Jessica Arnett, who  will be presenting her chemical analysis of melamine in milk, VanVlerah and Saadeh will be presenting on April 7 from 6 to 8 p.m. in Good Recital Hall.

Executive Director of the Honors College Greta Pennell noted the importance of these presentations.

“Too often in academia we take good work for granted, moving on to the next test, the next academic milestone without pausing to recognize the individual for their efforts,” Pennell said.

These students have been working on these projects for more than a year and hope the campus will support their work by coming to watch their presentations in the upcoming weeks.