Introducing Research Days

Kean University Students Conduct Research Days

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On April 27, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Research Days Undergraduate Poste Symposium took place in the Harwood Arena. Students were able to come by to support our undergraduate researchers. 

Alexis Balkissoon, Staff Writer

Research days took place on Tuesday, April 26 and Wednesday, April 27. Throughout both days, students at Kean University provided the community with research topics of their choosing and educated them in depthly about what they had researched.

Over 200 research students provided additional information about topics that may vary from Covid-19, the Holocaust, documantaries, pollution, homicide rates, etc. 

Research days was held in the STEM building and Hardwood Arena. Here, students portrayed amazing data sets and knowledge as undergraduate and graduate students gathered additional information from these research topics. 

Throughout the week of Research days, on Monday, April 25, keynote speakers Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi, Harvard and Princeton University students presented a live stream at the Little Theatre. Both students advocated for racial literacy curricula which has allowed them to formally create racial literacy textbooks that are used by all grades K-12. 

On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 virtual oral presentations took place where presenters pre-recorded three minute long videos and uploaded them to the research day website discussing their research topic and how exactly they came about the idea. 

Additionally, an award ceremony was held on Tuesday in the Little Theatre which presented Faculty Research mentor of the year, Undergraduate and Graduate researcher of the year, Cover design awards, and 3MT awards.

Researchers were also able to present physically throughout the STEM Auditorium, Little Theatre and the North Avenue Academic Building. 

Researcher Priscila Penafiel a junior and psychology major from the Office of African American Studies created a research database about Femicide in Colombia. 

Penafiel spoke upon how Colombia has had a corrupt government impacting the downfall of the economy, as well as the low poverty of the country, villages within Colombia having little to no money to survive off of and how that unfortunately does lead to higher crime rates. 

Throughout Penafiel’s research she described in her presentation poster Men’s “masculine pride” and how this has an effect in Femicide in Colombia. 

Senior, Patricia Ann Sison and freshmen Heather Gonzalez, psychology majors along with Sarah Coykendall, and Adara Goldberg from the Holocaust Research Center provided a topic about Residual Trauma and Its Aftereffects on Holocaust Survivors. 

Sison began to explain the upbringing of this topic. Sison interned with the Holocaust center and gathered additional information that pretained to this topic. Furthermore, all researchers provided examples of the Stanford Prison Experiment and explained the effects that took on the experimentees. 

Isabel R. DeSanno a senior and forensic psychology major and Richard P. Conti conducted a research topic about The Effect of Murder Documentaries on Sentencing in Criminal Cases. DeSanno and Conti conducted a research that discussed murder documentaries and compares it to see if they have any sort of effect on murder cases in the court room. DeSanno also discussed how the legal system functioned and whether or not these effects would lead to higher sentences or lower sentences based on her research and experiment. 

Wednesday, April 27, the last day of research days was when the presenters stood in person all throughout Hardwood Arena (Undergraduate) and the STEM Atrium (Graduate) to present their research analysis. 

Every student did an amazing job conducting their research experiments and presenting them formally. Being able to accomplish another year of Research Days is definitely a proud feeling in itself.