COM Week Shows Off Student Research
LPH Honor Students Impress with Their Research Presentations
By Sarah Harris
The Lambda Pi Eta Communication Honor Society (LPH) kicked off COM Week on Monday, March 28, with its annual Research Forum, hosted by Dr. Emily Winderman. The forum featured the projects of several students from the honor society.
One of the presenters was Paige Duffy, a senior working in NC State’s Phonology Lab as a research assistant. In the lab – which is used to study speech and linguistics by means of articulation and acoustics – Duffy operates ultrasound imaging and recording technology to examine tongue images. The research, which inspects the “variations of the sound of the letter R,” will benefit speech therapists who must teach the letter’s sounds to patients.
The forum also featured Caroline Gabriel, a senior assisting Dr. Winderman on an exploration of the rhetoric surrounding back alley abortions. Gabriel described their research as an intersection of social justice, language and feminist discourse. According to her findings, the “back alley” term has been around since 1853, but no one has ever examined the phrase and its connotations. She hopes that their research will eventually make it into book form.
Other research subjects ranged from mental health on State’s campus and the awareness that students had of the university’s resources – with presentations from senior Grace Pittman and junior Caroline Taney — to students’ perceptions of recycling and messaging about it on campus with presentations from senior Zoe Wilson and junior Michaela Marley.
All the speakers discussed a common topic: the importance of undergraduate research. Students encouraged their peer audience to reach out to professors and find opportunities to get involved. “I’ve really enjoyed the challenge of it all,” said speaker Michaela Marley. “It really is a puzzle to try to get the right questions you want answered.”