By: Chloe Gamber, Head Academic Writer
This upcoming week is Academic Excellence day and there is a large variety of exciting events to go to! Academic Excellence day will have presentations from students, Honor Society inductions along with other special events such as music performances and art exhibits! The celebration will be held this Thursday, April 28, 2022. Here is a video featuring some great clips of what you could attend:
“The Academic Excellence Celebration (AEC) is a day-long academic extravaganza. Student presenters will share their work publicly in one of three formats: posters, F2F (face to face) or virtual presentations and prerecorded (from graduate students). The AEC is one of the bookends of the academic year (the other being Commencement), which provides a chance for Bearcats to show what they’ve learned in a specific class, major or graduate program. McKendree faculty and staff are superbly proud of each presenter, and we wish them all the best.” Dr. Alan Alewine, Associate Provost.
The following are some words from some students who will be presenting during Academic Excellence day.
Oscar Bossart: ”I will be sharing an essay that I wrote about my friend for an English class and a presentation on RNA therapeutics for a Chemistry class.”
Chloe Knight: “Michael Doerr and I will be presenting our MHA Capstone Practicum Project on Vaccine Confidence. McKendree University received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and American Association of Colleges of Nursing to address COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence. Our role was to create a media presence and promote a virtual escape room on vaccine confidence to our McKendree University student population.
Breanna Sampo: “I am presenting a poster in the library 8:30-9:45 [a.m.] on the research I conducted with Dr. Boysen on how faculty interpret[ed] research and we found that they have initial bias which they use to evaluate the quality of the research.”
Jason Hurley: “My honors thesis is a research project about Artificial Intelligence, but I decided to take a non-conventional approach. Instead of writing a paper about Artificial Intelligence, I decided to create a website containing the information that is formatted in a way to make it both easy to follow and easy to learn. My hope is that this project can serve as a central point of information about Artificial Intelligence to allow people to learn about this fascinating subject in a manner that is not so daunting. The issue with Artificial Intelligence education is that it requires quite a bit of technological knowledge. I hope to combat this with this website, creating a resource for students that is easy to pick up and gain a fundamental understanding of this fascinating and transformative field.
I look forward to Academic Excellence day because of all the different projects across different disciplines. Academic Excellence day allows students to learn and grow from different ideas and projects. The day allows us to build our community and knowledge to inspire new ideas. Good luck everyone!”
Her Influence is one of the events showcased on the @mckac Instagram, along with many more events and previous accomplishments of academic teams and students. When it comes to the arts the art exhibits will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the McKendree University Gallery of Art, located on the McKendree campus at 305 Stanton Street. More information with links to specific events and contacts about Academic Excellence day can be found at the following link:
https://www.mckendree.edu/offices/provost/academic-excellence-day.php#:~:text=The%202022%20Academic%20Excellence%20Celebration,work%20to%20the%20McKendree%20community.
The Specific times for individual presentations are also provided here:
