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Entrepreneurial Engineering
Packed halls in Bradley Hall could only mean one thing—the annual Student Scholarship Exposition, where students from within and across disciplines present posters displaying their undergraduate and graduate research. Also, in the Neumiller Lecture Hall, Dr. Kurt Field, interim associate provost for research, hosted several speakers presenting topics as diverse as documentary, iPhone game development, and chemical synthesis of potential drugs.
Dr. Anika Bissahoyo, Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs and Interim Director of OTEFD, and Kim Willis.
Four levels of the building displayed different areas of study. Presentations could be overheard and the passersby freely read boards and engaged with the students. Filled with presenters, mentors, family, and friends, the halls echoed with “an active learning experience.” The exposition brought people together from a wide array of backgrounds and departments to talk about the arts, humanities, business, education, health, technologies, and the sciences.
According to Kim Willis, assistant director of the Office for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development (OTEFD) and this year’s exposition organizer, “Each year, almost 200 students engage in research, creative activities, or other forms of scholarship.” Willis also believes a “vital” function of the expo is its ability to connect students and faculty, which she calls “an active learning experience that will serve students extremely well in their chosen careers.”
A successful University-wide program that brings together students with their mentors at BU is the Special Emphasis program, a funding source for undergraduate and graduate projects. Since its inception five years ago, this program, which highlights student-
faculty collaboration, has funded 112 projects. This encouragement and support of student-faculty collaboration has yielded many prestigious awards and publications. Fourteen of the 78 projects presented at this year’s expo were funded by the Special Emphasis program.
Students and guests alike enjoying the expo's many displays
In the expo this year, 39 graduate students participated in 17 projects in various departments. Several graduate students participated in the oral presentations hosted by Dr. Field. One of these presentations was that of Kiran Kumar Vallabhaneni, Vaishnavi Alagirisamy Venugopal, and Lakshmi Girija Rao Talagadadeevi, graduate students in the Computer Science and Information Systems Department. The project aimed to update the university’s message system into an “Interactive Voice Response System,” where callers are given more options and the system is voice-activated. In the halls, another project gathering crowds was by Art Department’s graduate students Jacqueline Willis, Theran Van Ostrand, Richard Welsh, Carly Morrison, and Kyle Skidmore. Their project titled Iron Casting with a 10" Cupola was also presented at the National Cast Iron Conference last March. However, all in all, graduate students from the Physical Therapy program were best represented with 19 graduate students collaborating on a total of nine projects.
To read up on all the projects, visit the OTEFD website at www.bradley.edu/otefd/expo/index09.html and click on the “Students Scholarly Projects” link.