The L. P. Young Student Center’s first floor filled with students across a number of fields Friday, Dec. 8 for an academic showcase. Anyone who entered the building from 2 to 4 p.m. could see posters and presentations from students of the humanities, business, safety and STEM alike.
Dozens of attendees came from both on and off campus to see what these students had been working on throughout the semester. Sarah McGregor, one of the event’s organizers and chair of the physics department, said several parents showed up to visit their children’s displays.
Refreshments were offered at multiple tables across the length of the building. McGregor said the showcase originally began as an event for just two classes, one of her own and one taught by Dave Beaudry, the showcase’s other organizer and chair of the management department.
As time has gone on, the scope has expanded considerably, McGregor said. In more recent years, the two organizers reach out to many other teaching faculty and invite them to involve their students in the showcase.
Sophomore mathematics major Matt Sturtevant was presenting his findings on how to build the ideal fantasy football team. Featured on his poster were graphs plotting statistics about the performances of quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
“I tried to settle debates among fantasy football players,” Sturtevant said. “A lot of people, when they’re looking for a quarterback, they want someone who can run the ball too, as well as pass, so I looked into that and I realized … the top-of-the-league quarterbacks are better at running the ball, but it’s important to have a quarterback who can pass it too.”
Sturtevant completed this project as part of a data analysis course instructed by McGregor. Senior Tess Marsden architecture major, presented findings about radon levels in single-family homes. Two homes were used in the study, one in Connecticut and one in New Hampshire.
“One was my professor’s brother’s house and [the other was] my house, so they were just houses that we had access to to test,” Marsden said.
Marsden explained the only way to fully prevent radon from entering a house was with a radon barrier, which runs underneath the concrete slab foundation of homes constructed from approximately the 1980s to the present. In older homes, proper ventilation is a method of preventing radon from rising to dangerous levels.
Junior neuroscience major Aurora Mastro had a poster presentation outside of the Keene State bookstore. The presentation showed results from a study Mastro conducted in collaboration with the Fichtenholtz neuroscience laboratory about perceptions of facial expressions in people with Parkinson’s disease.
“One of my rugby teammates said that she was presenting at the showcase and I was like, ‘I want to do that as well,’” Mastro said. “Because I’ve presented this at two or three different conferences before, and it’s always a fun time.”
Mastro estimated she recites her presentation speech about “three dozen times” at each conference.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
