KSC students from a wide variety of courses got to share the projects they worked on throughout the fall semester with the campus community at last week’s Fall 2025 Academic Showcase.
The Academic Showcase is a traditional event that is hosted on the last Friday of each semester at KSC, filling the L.P. Young Student Center with posters and students who have the chance to share their class projects with the community.
This fall’s edition of the event took place on Friday, Dec. 5, showcasing student work throughout the fall 2025 semester.
Physics Department Chair Sarah McGregor, who is part of the team that plans the showcase each semester, said it gives students an alternative to simply presenting projects to their classmates.
“This is a way for you to be able to show the broader community all the really cool work that students have done,” said McGregor. “Especially when there are these really fantastic term creative projects or research projects, there’s some amazing work that students do and now they get to show the broader community instead of just the class.”
McGregor said the work that is presented in the showcase is a variety of projects from students in different courses. She explained that the reason students participate in the showcase varies depending on the course itself, such as some courses requiring students to present their work in the showcase at the end of the semester and others offering the event as an extra credit opportunity.
From independent research projects to prototype designs to artwork, McGregor said the showcase highlights a wide range of student work. “It really is about embracing whatever that course is doing and what the outcomes for that course are,” she said.
McGregor said she is part of a group that works together to plan each academic showcase and explained the planning process for the event. “Nothing can ever be done in a vacuum and by yourself, you need great people who are supporting you, so there’s a group of us who do that.”
She said the group effort involves tasks like communicating with faculty who want their classes to present at the event, working with a local printing company to collect posters for students and setting up the event itself throughout the lobby of the student center.
Before the showcase became the large-scale event that it is today, though, McGregor said it originated with just one of her classes.
“It actually started with one of the classes that I teach, which is Data Analytics for Scientists,” said McGregor. “It started because in that very beginning we were working with local industry trying to figure out what data analytics needs they needed, so we decided to, instead of just presenting projects in our class, invite the local industry to come and see them.”
From there, McGregor said the event continued to develop into what it is known as now, as more classes joined her class in wanting to share their work with the community.
McGregor said she sees many different values in sharing student work with the community, both for the students presenting and those who come to see the event.
“Students are more likely to reach higher potentials with the fact that this is a larger scale thing, it’s not just something that’s happening in class,” said McGregor. “This allows people to really have that experience of recognizing how far they come over the course of a term, what they’re capable of and then what that means that they’re capable of again in the future.”
“Those are the students who are presenting, but then students who get to come and look, they get to see what is capable,” she continued. “You can do that. You can be that person. You can do all these great and amazing things even if you haven’t thought that you could yet.”
Senior Rebecca Brennan, who presented her semester-long project for her Management Information Systems course at the showcase, said she enjoyed getting the experience to share her hard work with the community.
“It’s great because people work really hard on their projects all semester,” Brennan said. “It’s really nice to just show people, ‘This is what we’re doing in classes these days.’”
Brennan said she also enjoyed seeing projects from students in other programs at the showcase.
“I personally love seeing the other majors because I’m a business major, so it’s really cool seeing some of the environmental projects. I saw a really cool 3D design one going on,” she said. “It’s really cool because sometimes we stay in our major’s realm and we don’t really see what other people are doing.”
First-year Lena Corbin experienced her first KSC Academic Showcase at this fall’s event, where she presented a project about women in STEM. Like Brennan, Corbin said she enjoyed the experience of presenting and getting to see her peers’ work.
“I like seeing other people’s work, especially as a STEM major because a lot of the stuff is very science-y, so I enjoy that,” Corbin said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for people to show off their hard work throughout the semester.”
After her first chance to participate in the showcase, Corbin concluded that she “would definitely love to do this again.”
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
jdearborn@kscequinox.com
