OHIO students honored for presentations at Multidisciplinary Honors Conference

Ohio University undergraduate students presented outstanding projects on a wide range of topics at the second annual Multidisciplinary Honors Conference during the spring semester.

The conference invited undergraduate students of all years, fields and majors to give presentations on research projects, community engagement initiatives and creative activities.

“It’s so important for scholars, no matter their level and no matter their project, to tell the story of their research, engagement, or creative work. At the Multidisciplinary Honors Conference, students get the chance to practice that skill—to tell their stories to an audience from a wide range of interests and expertise,” Honors Tutorial College Dean Kristina Bross said. “Our student presenters were not only excellent scholars, but also excellent scholarly storytellers.”

The theme for this year’s conference was “The Big Picture,” and the presentations addressed the broader cultural, environmental, political, scientific or social contexts of the projects.

Hosted by Honors at Ohio University, the annual conference celebrates the journey of creative, research, and community engagement. 

“One of the major benefits of honors programs is that we bring motivated students across many majors together to exchange big ideas, wrestle with shared problems, and discuss how the tools of our respective fields can help us solve them,” said Chris Lewis, who co-organized the conference. “The quality of presentations this year was excellent, and I commend every student who took this opportunity to translate the work they do in their specific fields for a broad and multidisciplinary audience.” 

Image

More than 50 OHIO students from a wide variety of majors and colleges gave presentations related to the following themes:

• Land, Place, and Space within the Arts
• Land Histories and Futures in Ohio
• Community Expression and Support in Appalachian Ohio
• Knowledge and Identity across Cultural Contexts
• Examining Existence on Different Scales across STEM Fields
• Community and Family Care across Disciplines
• The Evolution of Honors Education and Experiences at Ohio University
• Community Care in Appalachian Ohio and Beyond
• Data, Narratives, and Our Ways of Knowing
• Health Research across Disciplines
• Neuroscience for Social Good across Disciplines
• Impacts of Representation and Misrepresentation across Cultures

OHIO award winners

Several students received awards for their outstanding presentations at the Multidisciplinary Honors Conference. The award winners included:

Kieran Bakunas: Best Presentation by a First-Year Student for the presentation, "A Weed Is but an Unloved Flower: Using Art to Make Activism More Accessible"

Elizabeth Savitski: Best Presentation by a Second-Year Student for the presentation, "Window Pain: A Survey of Avian Window Collisions on Ohio University's Athens Campus"

Octavia Hogue: Best Presentation by a Third-Year Student for the presentation, "Temperature Regulation of Virulence in Staphylococcus aureus"

Nora Anderson: Best Presentation by a Fourth-Year Student for the presentation, "Investigating the Role of Supercoiling on Gene Expression in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus"