Saint Xavier University will be sending three of its honors students to the 2014 Clement S. Stacy Memorial Undergraduate Research Conference at Purdue Calumet. The conference is focused on presentations regarding liberal arts topics and will be held on April 8.
The students who have been chosen to attend had to first gain approval to attend the conference, because of limitations on the total number of presenters allowed to speak at the conference. The chosen three students are senior communication and criminal justice major Catlyn Hicks, senior sociology and philosophy major Evan Batty, and senior philosophy major Genevieve Buthod.
Each of these students are presenting their research from their respective fields of study, amongst a crowd of fellow students and faculty members from universities across the Midwest. Honors Program Assistant Director and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Judith Hiltner explained how this conference serves as an excellent opportunity for the students participating. Some of the benefits for presenting at the conference, as pointed out by Dr. Hiltner, include the opportunity for students to have their work critiqued by experts from outside the university and allow for students to network with experts within their field of study.
Buthod also believes that the conference will allow her to network with others and help gain gain feedback on her topic. Specifically, Buthod is presenting her thesis on philosophy and how it is meant to be practiced as an action in today’s world, instead of how it is normally presented as a contemplative process.
This opportunity for Buthod to present her thesis and get published is critical in her mind for success down the road. She expressed her view that it is of paramount importance that students allow themselves to build an academic reputation for themselves at conferences such as this one, in order to better set themselves up for an opportunity to attend a prestigious graduate school.
Honor student Batty will be at the conference giving a presentation on, “a model of the division of labor through the relationship of society’s developing moral character and production, applies this model to the current economic system in the US, and argues for practical adjustments that can take place under our system of Capitalism to direct production towards more environmentally sustainable modes.” This model that Batty has been working on has taken him close to a year to get complete, but he describes the work as something he is passionate about. It is also this passion for his area of study that has gotten Batty excited to meet others at the conference who share similar academic interests as him.
Overall, it takes honors students about an entire year to fully complete the work on their topics for presentation. The process as explained by Dr. Hiltner begins at an honors student’s second half of their junior year when they begin with a general idea of a topic in their field. They then find a faculty mentor who helps them develop an idea for their senior project. By the end of their junior year, honors students give a proposal on their planned topics and begin research that very summer going into their senior year. Through their senior year the honors students use their research to fully formulate their senior projects and have them completed by early April of their senior year.
The entire process is a testament to the passion and work ethic of the students within Saint Xavier University’s honors program, and the conference at Purdue Calumet serves as an avenue for these students to share with the academic community the work they have done in their field’s of study.
Any student or faculty interested in viewing some of Saint Xavier University’s best minds present their research should make the trip to Purdue Calumet, an event that is sure to be an enlightening experience for many attending.
Jake Alleruzzo
News Correspondent
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