Academic research will share the stage with the performing and visual arts at this year’s Scholarship and Creative Works Conference, with new features including a 24-Hour Play Festival, student gallery talks and a Nobel laureate keynote.
Adelphi’s 23rd annual Research Day, formally known as the Scholarship and Creative Works Conference, is expanding in both scope and size this year, encompassing more disciplines and presentations than ever before. On April 28, students, faculty, family, alumni and community members will gather at the Ruth S. Harley University Center to celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of hundreds of Adelphi students.
Along with a wide range of e-posters, exhibits and oral presentations from students in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, this year’s Research Day will introduce new events with a particular emphasis on the arts and creative projects, including a 24-Hour Play Festival from theater majors and thesis presentations from art majors.
This year’s conference also offers another exciting first: a keynote address delivered by a Nobel laureate, William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD, the Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, senior physician-scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Kaelin received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He also recently endowed a scholarship at Adelphi in honor of his mother, who graduated from Adelphi in 1954.
We spoke with Research Day co-chairs Karolina Lempert, PhD, assistant professor in the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, and Wei Liu, PhD, associate professor in the College of Nursing and Public Health, to learn more about the exciting new developments to the conference and Adelphi’s commitment to showcasing student-led research.
What are some of the new additions to Research Day this year, particularly those focused on the arts?
Dr. Lempert: For the 24-Hour Play Festival, theater students will write, direct and act in 10-minute plays based on abstracts of research that will be presented at the conference. They’ll receive the abstracts the day before the conference and will only have 24 hours to create and rehearse them before performing in the University Center (UC) ballroom from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. This will be a different kind of presentation and it definitely involves more of the arts, which has generally been less represented at the conference.
Dr. Liu: Another new addition is the Senior Art Gallery Presentations. David Pierce, assistant professor of art and art history, will have seven students present their graduating theses in the UC art gallery from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. While we’ve had students display their art in past conferences, this year, they’re going to be there so they can converse and discuss their work with attendees. We’re also going to have anthropology students from two different culture and society classes display photos from their midterm assignments.
Are these new events the result of an effort to incorporate more creative disciplines in Research Day?
Dr. Liu: Adelphi has always tried to promote interdisciplinary collaboration with the conference, but inevitably there are some departments that have less representation. We’re very lucky to have worked with Laura Mroz [associate director of executive communications], who played a critical role in conducting outreach to other departments.
Dr. Lempert: There’s a norm in the sciences of presenting posters at conferences, while arts students have other ways that they display their work. So I think changing that culture and showcasing arts and humanities may take some time, but this is the start of the effort. This year, we’ll have the biggest representation from those fields so far.
How is Adelphi engaging local high school students as part of the conference?
Dr. Liu: For the first time, we’ll be hosting a High School Research Competition for a chance to win a full-tuition scholarship to Adelphi. The admissions office, which is sponsoring the competition, is encouraging high school juniors from research classes to submit their abstracts to be presented on conference day. We’ll have judges at the conference who will review their work and select the winner.
How else will the Research Day conference be larger in scope this year?
Dr. Liu: We received approximately 350 abstract submissions—100 more than we usually receive. This marks increased submissions in every single category, including e-posters, oral presentations and computer science exhibits. While we used to host computer science and gaming exhibitions in the charter room on the second floor of the UC, this year, we’ll actually use a bigger space on the first floor to accommodate more participants.
Dr. Lempert: This is also the first year we expanded the event out to the entire UC—not just the second floor—and I think that it will only keep growing.
What are your plans for Research Day going forward?
Dr. Liu: If this year’s conference is a success and we receive positive feedback, we can do even more outreach and incorporate more disciplines next year. We’re also hoping to receive abstracts for new presentation types, such as humanities panel presentations and film presentations.
What do you hope students and attendees take away from Research Day?
Dr. Lempert: I hope the conference empowers students to do research of their own and to engage in their own creative work. I also hope it brings students closer together and helps them see that research is for everyone.
Dr. Liu: I really want students and faculty to take away the message that Adelphi promotes a strong community, and we encourage collaboration and inclusiveness. When we gather post-conference feedback from our presenters, we always hear that they appreciate people outside their own disciplines coming to see their posters or listen to their presentations. It’s just really encouraging, this knowledge-sharing among students and faculty across disciplines.