Celebration of Scholarship helps students prepare for the workforce

Camryn Pierson

Clarissa Watson and Brooklyn Rapp present their research

Shawnee State University held its annual Celebration of Scholarship on April 6-10, where students have the chance to present a research project that relates to their area of study. These are one- to two-semester long, detailed projects that students may decide to take on. These students have the support of a professor to mentor them, but it is no small task. To ensure a satisfactory study, students must go through all the steps of a research project, put in extra time, write a detailed paper, put aside biases and more. Through the process, students learn how to execute skills that will help them in the workforce like oral, presentation and research skills. 

Harley Helterbridle, a senior in biology, presented her research on animal behaviors in different quality zoos and enclosures throughout the area. She specifically focused on behavioral differences between private and public zoos, and how their funding affects the enclosures. She selected specific species to look at, then studied how many animals were in the enclosure, if they were placed with other species, pacing, if the animals had an area out-of-sight from zoo-goers and more. 

This was a great experience for Helterbridle and good preparation for what she may do after she graduates this spring. 

“I want to do something involving animals, whether that’s wild animals or captive animals,” she said.
”I just want to do something that’s going to benefit wildlife, you know, whether they’re in captivity or not. And, you know, even if that’s just educating people or, like, being hands on with them.”

Helterbridle’s data helps to inform people on how zoos can improve their enclosures, along with the benefits and drawbacks of public and private zoos. While the Celebration of Scholarship is a great experience for students to improve their research skills and study their chosen field, it does have its challenges. 

For Helterbridle, even getting to the zoos to collect data was a challenge. “Getting there was just difficult. I mean, I’m about like two hours away from Columbus, so that made it quite a drive. And just keeping track of things. I wasn’t really good at simplifying my data to begin with. So at the start, it was just very hard to keep track of what the animals were doing and when.”

Helterbridle was not alone in facing some difficulties, but those roadblocks are part of the research journey. Leila Lomashvili is a professor in the English and humanities department whose focus is on linguistics. She was the mentor of Annie Ucci, who presented on different dialects in the midland and southern United States. Lomashvili has seen students go through the process of preparing for Celebration of Scholarship, and she has observed what they go through. 

“So the hard part of this is willingness on the part of the student to present,” Lomashvili said. “Sometimes it’s excellent material and some students are shy or they have their own plans.
But the rewarding part is probably the best, because you see that, when they are presenting this data to a larger audience, people are learning quite a bit.” 

For Ucci, the process of presenting at Celebration of Scholarship gave her the opportunity to gain skills that will help her future endeavors. As an English generalist major with a minor in Spanish, she is interested in languages and dialects. 

When discussing what skill she gained from the process, Ucci said: “Research, for sure. I want to go to grad school, and I want to get a Ph.D. That’s going to be a lot of research, so I definitely learned research skills. In this process, also how to present to one another, which is definitely helpful.”

Some students were also rewarded monetarily for their efforts in the conference. Clarissa Watson and Brooklyn Rapp are psychology students who presented on religious upbringing and sexual insecurity on individuals assigned female at birth. They looked into the connection between authoritative religions and sexual shame, and researched topics like sexual insecurity, confidence, satisfaction and more. 

While working on the research step of the process, Watson said: “We also learned the importance of staying open-minded; even sources that did not directly answer our question often contributed meaningful support to our broader argument, which is particularly helpful when conducting such a novel experiment in psychology research.”

That open-mindedness and utilization of their sources led to Watson and Rapp receiving the Library Research Award from the Clark Memorial Library. The award looks for students that utilize good sources and research skills. According to Watson, they are the first psychology students in years to win the award, and their department is ecstatic about their accomplishment. In their application, they had to submit the references they used for their study and a short essay on their research methods. The Clark Memorial Library was looking for individuals who used high-quality research methods and tools. 

While Watson and Rapp did receive an award for their Celebration of Scholarship research, that does not mean that they did not have difficulties.

“Having two researchers, one from a Christian background but no longer religious, and the other raised non-religious but now Christian, allowed us to check each other’s biases,” Watson said.

With Watson and Rapp’s topic of authoritative religions and sexual insecurity in individuals assigned female at birth, there was bound to be issues with bias. However, they were able to problem-solve and bypass that issue with their partnership. This skill of overcoming obstacles is part of the process of a study and will benefit students in their careers and everyday lives. 

The annual Celebration of Scholarship at Shawnee State University is an amazing opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to present research studies related to their field and future careers. For mentor professors like Lomashvilli, seeing students through the process can be a rewarding experience. For the students, the steps and enormous undertaking of the project can be difficult with the deadlines, data collection, organization and more. However, this is a productive struggle because these students leave Shawnee with confidence and knowledge that they can handle difficult tasks.