Students show off their research chops during Wellspring Symposium

by Chuck Gordon

As Wingate students presented the findings of their research projects from the fall semester in the Ethel K. Smith Library on Tuesday evening, Wellspring Symposium coordinator Dr. Terese Lund beamed from the sidelines. She always enjoys seeing her former students confidently stand in front of strangers and drop some knowledge.

"To see them grow from a nervous sophomore to a confident senior is just the best," says Lund, associate professor of psychology and director of undergraduate research.

Students and faculty members packed the library to learn about the paradox of probability, the concentration of Vitamin A in baby formula, the efficacy of blood-flow resistance training, and a variety of other topics during the poster-presentation portion of the Tuesday session. The line to get into the Flag Room of the library flowed into the main lobby.

In total, 70 students are participating in the two-day event, which concludes today with oral and poster presentations, also in the library. Presentations began at 3 p.m. The event is open to the public.

In one form or another - and in one name or another - the Wellspring Symposium has been going on for nearly two decades. It has grown considerably since starting life as the Creative and Investigative Research Partnership back in 2006, and it now includes graduate students, as well as undergrads who give presentations on the results of internships and other experiential-learning activities.

This is the second fall-semester edition of the Symposium, which had been a spring-only event until 2022, when an increase in participants necessitated a second edition of it every year. (The fall session was not held last year, as Wingate hosted a statewide research event.) The number of fall-semester participants doubled from fall 2022's 35. In spring of 2025, Lund expects about 125 students to present research.

"As the institution has grown and evolved, so has the Wellspring," she says.

The topics vary greatly. On Tuesday, Steevenson Bernard, a senior nursing student from Haiti, presented his findings from a literature review regarding interventions that could help patients with chronic kidney disease to manage their symptoms better.

For one thing, he says, healthcare providers' bedside manners can help lower their patients' stress levels, which would have a positive impact both emotionally and physically. Bernard will take that knowledge with him into a medical setting when he graduates.

"The main thing I got out of it was to talk to patients in a way that shows that you care about them," he says. "You want them to feel better, not only better physically but emotionally."

Lydia Radonavitch, a senior Honors College student from Wading River, N.Y., who is majoring in international business, became curious about the effect her musical selections were having on her training regimen as she prepared for the Wingate varsity soccer season each summer. As part of her Business 490 Honors Research class with Dr. Kristin Stowe, she decided to survey students on Wingate's campus to gain their perception of the boost music gives them when working out or playing sports.

Of the 93 students (just over half being student-athletes), the overwhelming majority thought that listening to music enhanced their workouts.

Like Radonavitch, most of the students are relatively new to research. She worked with Stowe and Dr. Bill Steffen, assistant professor of sport sciences, to come up with the topic and refine her survey questions and with Dr. Barry Cuffe, professor of business analytics, to analyze the data.

"In the beginning it was a little overwhelming getting all of the data and deciding which route I wanted to take," she says. "There were a lot of ideas in my head about what I should test. Once I narrowed it down and figured out where I was going with it, I liked it. It was interesting."

Stowe says that all of the skills the students have used to take their research efforts from conception to presentation are highly in demand in the job market.

"A lot of the things, like investigating a question, evaluating sources, analyzing information, presenting - those are popular job skills," she says.

Another of Stowe's Business 490 students, Honors College student Kevin Rusu, used a Reeves Summer Research project on the economy of Moldova as a jumping-off point for his research this semester. While doing research in the former Soviet country that lies just west of Ukraine, Rusu, a senior marketing major from Germany, witnessed corruption firsthand.

"Corruption has gone down but it's still pretty high, compared with Western European countries," says Rusu, whose parents fled Moldova in the 1990s. "You definitely feel it. I saw people bribing police officers."

By comparing Moldova to other former Soviet countries - and using Cuffe's regression model to crunch the numbers - Rusu determined that corruption and foreign direct investment had an effect on a country's per capita GDP (gross domestic product).

In the process, he learned some valuable lessons he'll take with him into the working world after graduation in May.

"At the beginning I was very overwhelmed, but actually managing your time and doing a little work every day is beneficial," he says. "That's the No. 1 thing I learned this summer."

And the learning didn't stop once students found their results: Repeating their findings to the dozens of attendees on Tuesday was itself part of their education.

"This is not just a showcase for students to share what they've learned but also an active part of the learning process," Lund says. "Being able to translate the work that they've done to a different audience in this unique format, it further consolidates what they've learned, and it helps them articulate why it matters to them. And they're often getting questions about what's next, so they're discerning how this is going to connect to their career goals in the future."

Learn moreabout the Wellspring Symposium.

Nov. 20, 2024

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