The 2016 Belmont Undergraduate Research Symposium, featuring presentations from approximately 100 Belmont students and 20 different departments, will be held Thursday.
Students will present their personal research on topics ranging from “The Power of Music Therapy” to “A Gilded Age, A Gilded Man: How P.T. Barnum Transformed the Circus in the Gilded Age” to “The Evaluation of Interferon-beta Levels in HPV-positive Cervical Cancer Cell Lines.”
Presentations will be 15 to 20 minutes long and are organized into sessions that span from noon to 7 p.m. Students and faculty are encouraged to attend any portion of the event.
“Go to the ones that interest you. Or the ones that you aren’t naturally interested in but think might intrigue you,” said Dr. Peter Kuryla, chair of the event. “Go see what your friends are up to.”
Students are also encouraged to attend a kick-off event the evening before.
At 5 p.m. on Wednesday in Wedgewood Academic Center 4094, Belmont will inaugurate the first Faculty Scholarship Award winner, Dr. Judy Bullington. Bullington serves as chair of the department of art and as a professor of art history, and will discuss, “Reframing Art History Scholarship: Discovery, Integration, and Technology.”
A reception and keynote address from historian Dr. Ronald Grigor Suny will conclude the symposium Thursday at 5 p.m. in WAC 4094. Suny’s address will highlight points from his recent book, “They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else: Explaining the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later.”
“He is an incredibly well known and prolific scholar both nationally and internationally,” said assistant to the dean Paul Spilburg, who serves as lead organizer for BURS. “He is from the University of Michigan, but he has appointments all over the world, primarily Russia. As a man of such stature, it’s an incredible honor to have him speak.”
Spilburg has done “the lion’s share of the work” in organizing BURS this year, said Kuryla. He has handled all the details from refreshments at the two receptions to the appointment of the keynote speakers. He and the rest of the committee, which is made up of faculty members from each department, deserve recognition for putting this important event together, Kuryla said.
Academic lecture convocation credit will be given at each keynote address and each full hour of session attendance up to two hours. To receive credit for session attendance, students must print the event-specific convocation form and have it signed at each presentation they attend.
The required convocation form and Thursday’s presentation schedule, including locations, can be found here.
This article was written by Sarah Harrison.