April 11, 2017
By Rachael Stewart
Dominican University hosted its annual Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Investigations (URSCI) Exposition and Global Learning Symposium in Parmer Hall on April 5, where students presented their research projects that took over a year of extensive work and studies to develop.
Professor David Perry, who co-directs URSCI, said: “There’s a lot of hours of collecting all the applications and proofing them and communicating with people and creating a schedule and creating a better schedule when we make mistakes in the first schedule, so it’s many many hours of work from a lot of administrators and faculty putting this together, but of course the real many hours of work are by the students who, for each one of the projects represents, 10, 50, hundreds of hours of work.”
URSCI is one of the most anticipated events on campus, gaining excitement from students and professors alike.
Not only are the students who spent countless hours researching and developing work excited to show their presentations to the public, but their fellow students are equally as excited to support them. Freshman Gina Baran was looking forward to attending URSCI said, “I went for the Italian and Spanish poster presentations and I really liked it. I thought it was very interesting.”
Perry also shared his thoughts on the sense of accomplishment students get from URSCI. “Showcasing your work, making it visible to people, having that kind of deadline and making it a public performance, you do better work when you’re doing it for someone else and you feel a sense of accomplishment and pride, and it kind of means more by the end when you get to show it to someone,” Perry said.
Senior Adam Janusz, who presented his work at URSCI also shared his thoughts on the experience. Janusz said: “I chose to take part in URSCI partly because I received the Excel scholarship for my student teaching experience in the fall. Also, I had already been studying and researching some of my interests relating to education, meaning making, brain evolution, and play. It arose at a great point in time that I was able to combine these studies and present their conclusion at URSCI.”
Students presented on subjects ranging from biology and scientific discovery, all the way to fashion and costume design adaptations from history.
Junior Sabrina Class, who is a graphic design major, reflects on her experience presenting at URSCI. Class said: “I feel like it went very well! I enjoyed the new experience, and it was important for me to represent my design and give the viewers/audience a better understanding of the meaning behind the designs I’ve created for Stella Veritatis.”
Senior Ania Derkacz, who spent over two years working on research involving obstacles that face student organizations and developing an organization of her own, the Polish Student Leaders Assembly (PSLA), shared her thoughts on the day. Derkacz said: “URSCI is a really special day at Dominican because not only do we get to present work we have done for months and years but we also get to see what others are interested in. That girl or guy sitting in your classes who you never talked to, or your friends, or people you see around, you see how devoted they are in the school work they do and it’s a really fascinating thing. URSCI was a great experience and I’m really glad I had the chance to be a part of it.”
The Symposium has been going on for almost ten years according to Perry, and has cultivated much enthusiasm from all different groups of people at the university. Parents, students, and faculty alike all come together to enjoy what Perry says would be a cumulative of tens of thousands of hours of work between students.
stewrach@my.dom.edu