Student Spotlight
2019
Brittany Rininger, Caitlyn Sullivan and Ayesha Ferozpuri presented their research with Dr. Laurie Hunter at the Association for Psychological Science conference in Washington D.C., in May. In honor of their emotion recognition task, they titled this photo "We got our emotions going on!"
2018
Margaret Byers presented "Thinking Out Loud: Critical Thinking in Groups" at the International Leadership Association Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Nathan Harter.
Abigail Stocker and Hernando Monsalve presented "Perception and Purpose: Tutoring Writing and Other Disciplines" at the International Writing Centers Association: The Citizen Center 2018 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Nicole Emmelhainz.
Sophie Newhouse presented "Do Dysphoric Teens React to Stress? An Analysis of Electrodermal Activity (EDA) During Peer Interaction" at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) in Quebec, Canada. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Lindsey Stone.
Dr. Leslie Rollins and alumna Elizabeth Cloude (2016) have published “Development of mnemonic discrimination during childhood” in the journal Learning & Memory. Their research showed prolonged development of the ability to create distinct memory representations. Elizabeth was a 2015 Summer Scholar and is now a Ph.D. student in the Applied Cognition and Human Factors Program at NC State.
Casey O'Neill's laboratory research has been accepted for publication in the journal "Electrophoresis". Casey is from Williamsburg (Biochemistry 2018) and worked with Dr. Todd Gruber during the school year and through the Summer Scholar's program.
Brooke Sanders presented with Prof. Denise Gilman at the Comparative Drama Conference in April held at Rollins College in Florida on "Creating the Online Science Play Catalogue: An Interdisciplinary Digital Scholarship Database Resource of Science Plays and Performance."
Senior math major Spirit Karcher (2018, Fredericksburg, VA) was awarded the second place prize for best undergraduate presentation at the MD-DC-VA Sectional Meeting of the Mathematical Association of America. Her presentation was entitled "Prime Factors and Divisibility of Sums of Powers of Fibonacci Numbers." Following graduation, Spirit will be attending graduate school at Florida State University. Along with Spirit, five other CNU students participated in conference activities. The conference was held on April 13-14 at Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Jessica Kelly.
Students from Christopher Newport University took second place in the Data Analytics Competition organized by the University of Pittsburgh and sponsored by Dick's Sporting Goods. Picture (l-r): Max Katcher, Brandon Bell, Kaitlyn Neitz, and David Negrin. The faculty mentor is Dr. Dmitriy Shaltayev.
Melissa Lindenmuth (Business Management and Economics, 2019) attended the Southeast Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting during Feb 21 - 23, 2018 to present her research on a comparison of Dow Jones Industrial Average Firms and High-Tech firms. She evaluated their financial and operational performance, focusing more on quantitative data, rather than qualitative data like most existing research. Her research paper has been selected for the Student Paper Competition. In addition, a $100 Travel Stipend was awarded to her paper. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Sangdo (Sam) Choi.
Casey Hall (Philosophy, Classics, 2019) blew the audience away at the recent professional philosophy & classics conference, "Nature and the Divine in Ancient Greek Thought," which was held in Tampa, Florida, March 2-4. The conference organizers invited submissions from undergraduate students as well as professional scholars; however Casey was the only undergraduate who received the honor of having his paper, "The Natural Limitation of Divinity in On the Sacred Disease" accepted for presentation on the basis of peer review. At the conference, attendees were quite surprised to find out that an undergraduate could write such an intellectually insightful paper and present it with professional aplomb. Dr. Betsy Jelinek, the faculty mentor, attended the conference as well, and once the other attendees realized that she was Casey's mentor, many of them pulled her aside during the conference and said "Wow, Casey did a great job! What an advanced student!" Most of the other presenters were well-known scholars in the field, so it is especially impressive that Casey's paper was received so positively.
Rachel Young presented "The Effects of Priming and Source on the Believability and Recognition of Media Headlines" at the Southeastern Psychological Association Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, March 5-9, 2018. The project is authored by Rachel Young, Hannah Brown, Lauran Vuxta, Jjodi Cleaver, Briana Bouldin, Taylor Thomas, Fernanda Pena, Stephanie LeRoy, Laura Hunt. and Dr. Jeffery Gibbons, the faculty advisor.
A paper co-authored by Elizabeth Cloude (Psychology, 2016) has been published: Rollins, L., & Gibbons, J., A., *Cloude, E. B. (2018). Affective change greater for unpleasant than pleasant events in autobiographical memory of children and adults: A retrospective study. Cognitive Development, 47, 46-52. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.03.002. Dr. Leslie Rollins is the faculty mentor and lead author.
Scottie Scott (Psychology 2018), Carol Thompson (Psychology 2018) and Ashley McHenry (Psychology 2020) presented their research, "College Students' Perception & Experiences with Colorism," at the Eastern Psychological Association Conference in Philadelphia, PA, March 3. Their faculty advisors are Dr. Shelia Greenlee and Dr. Dorothy Doolittle. Casimir Olko (Music, 2018) traveled to the Ali Akbhar School of Music in San Rafael, CA, where he took an advanced tabla class taught by Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, worked in the school's archive, and interviewed and recorded teachers. Dr. Danielle Ward-Griffin is his faculty mentor.
Isaac Woods (Mathematics, 2018) from Salem, VA, has published Chaotic Dynamics in a Family of Set-valued Functions in the Minnesota Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics. The full paper can be found online at https://mjum.math.umn.edu/index.php/mjum/article/view/64. His faculty mentor is Dr. James Kelly.
Isabelle Clough (Psychology and Sociology, 2018, from Crownsville, MD), Ayesha Ferozpuri (Psychology, Neuroscience, 2019, from Arlington, VA), and Robert "Harris" Franken (Psychology, 2018, from Arlington, VA) presented their poster (coauthored by Isabelle Clough, Laralin Roland, Ayesha Ferozpuri, Robert "Harris" Franken, Caitlyn Sullivan, and Megan MacLane) at the Eastern Psychological Association conference in Philadelphia, PA, in March 2018. The project, "Psychopathy Traits Predict Selective Attention," was mentored by Dr. Laurie S. Hunter.
Katrina Napora (Environmental Biology, 2020) from Broadway, Virginia, presented The Effects of Hydrology Treatments on Peatland Soil Respiration at the Society for Ecological Restoration's "Restoration for Resilience" conference at Simon Fraser University Vancouver, British Columbia, in February 2018; her faculty mentor is Dr. Rob Atkinson. The trip was supported by the Research LENS Travel Fund and the Calling All Captains crowdfunding initiative.
Danielle Caldwell (Harp Performance, 2021) from Richmond, Virginia, was part of an ensemble that gave the world premiere of Evan Meier's VARIATIONS ON AN ANTIQUE theme at the Camac International Harp Festival. She was also one of a select group of students to perform in a masterclass with the world-renowned French harpist Isabelle Moretti. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Anastasia Pike.