Ninety-five presentations are online for the Celebration of Student Scholarship, as the daylong event moved to an online presentation.
Spring usually has Memorial Auditorium – and many other buildings – buzzing with students presenting their posters and research throughout the daylong Celebration of Student Scholarship. This spring, with students away from campus, the COSS committee was determined to still have students’ work highlighted and asked for online presentations. Amid unusual circumstances living and learning remotely, students showed how much they cared about sharing their research with a large turnout for the online event.
Dr. Krys Strand, director of Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (URSCA), says she’s glad the students had this venue and, even though they couldn’t interact with alumni and other guests, it did give them new exposure.
“Each year, several alumni attend COSS sessions and are featured in department and program sessions,” Strand says. “Students have the opportunity to enhance their COSS experience by networking with alumni and other guests. A silver lining of the online format this year is that many more alumni, friends, and family will be able to hear students present their work.”
Some of the topics covered in the online sessions included ageism, coffee farming, ethnography, and bees. Ashley John ’21 has a particular affinity for the buzzing insects. Her research project was getting a Bee Campus USA designation for Concordia, which has done extensive work on pollinator gardens as part of ongoing sustainability efforts. She also wanted to do her part to help pollinators.
“I wanted to make sure that when I graduate from Concordia, I leave something positive behind,” John says. “I'm a firm believer in smaller actions contributing to greater change, and I think this project allowed me to make that positive impact in my own nature-loving kind of way.”
John’s research paid off. Concordia was accepted as an affiliate, which will help keep the college on track for remaining environmentally friendly for pollinators.
There have been more than 3,600 viewers of the COSS videos so far. COSS online runs through May 1 and can be viewed on the COSS CordMN YouTube channel.