Penn State Wilkes-Barre hosted its first Undergraduate Research Day, a showcase of student work, on Wednesday, April 29, 2015. The event, which was co-sponsored and supported by Penn State Wilkes-Barre and the Penn State University Libraries, consisted of 61 posters created by 107 students, highlighting their research this semester. Students, faculty and staff converged in the campus’s historic Hayfield House to share, learn and admire the results of their scholarship.
The event was organized by a planning committee made up of two Penn State Wilkes-Barre faculty, Renee Rosier (biology) and Timothy Sichler (engineering) and librarians Jennie Knies and Megan Mac Gregor.
The committee created a website which served as a resource guide for participating students, highlighting best practices for poster creation and discussing research techniques. Knies and Mac Gregor taught two heavily attended workshops in the Nesbitt Library, reinforcing the process and techniques for effective poster creation. Fourteen faculty members on campus encouraged their students to participate in the event, representing every discipline on campus (including biology, math, electrical engineering, English, information technology, rehabilitation and human services and surveying engineering). Faculty and staff volunteers evaluated the posters based on three criteria: content, display and oral presentation.
The winning poster highlighted research on improvements to the Wilkes-Barre campus: “Expansion of Penn State Lehman Pond for the Benefit of Students and Wildlife Proposal,” by Stephen Jesso and Vanessa Robbins. Three honorable mentions were awarded to “Campus Thoroughfare,” by Carlos Candelario, Greg Copelli, Bryan Flynn, Mark Rowe and Mike Vadas; “Proposal to Complete/Restore PSU-WB's Fitness Path," by Bryan Whiting and “3D Printing of Senior Project satellite,” by Jimmy Cosgrove, Mike Gentile, Danny Leighow and Mike Wright.
These posters, plus an additional eight top-scoring submissions, will be displayed in the Penn State Wilkes-Barre’s Nesbitt Library through the end of 2015, and on the Undergraduate Research Day website. In addition, students have been encouraged to deposit their posters into Penn State’s ScholarSphere repository service. The committee received positive feedback about the event and plans to hold another Undergraduate Research Day next year.