Every spring, UNC Greensboro graduate students present work at the Graduate Research and Creativity Expo.
This large public Graduate School event is an opportunity for close to 100 UNCG master’s and doctoral students to share their scholarship with a broad audience, including about 30 community members who come to campus to serve as judges for the competition. Through the expo, the greater UNCG community sees the diverse array of innovative research that graduate students have undertaken.
This year, as campus facilities are closed during the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, the Graduate School created a virtual space where graduate students could post video presentations to share their research, the Showcase of Scholarship.
Instead of an intensive round of judging with winners in several categories, every student who participated by uploading a presentation received a cash prize.
“The Graduate School is incredibly proud of the way that our students quickly pivoted to the online event and brought the stories, excitement, and passion for their scholarship to life in this virtual setting,” said Associate Dean of the Graduate School Greg Bell.
The presentations are organized into four categories: Arts, Humanities, and Professional Programs; Health Sciences; Natural, Physical, and Mathematical Sciences; and Social Sciences.
Projects show a diverse array of research topics such as:
• In honey bees, does host lifestyle, genetics, or bacterial warfare impact the composition of the gut microbiome?
• The Politics of Norplant: Contraceptive Technology, Feminism, and Social Policy in the 1990s
• Explorations of creative projects undertaken to complete MFA programs in dance and creative writing
• Biomechanics, Birth Control, and Biochemistry: Examining a Risk Factor for ACL Injury Using a Three-Pronged Approach
• Federal Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): Experiences in Rural Appalachian North Carolina
• The role of habitual fluid intake on health and wellness
• Understanding the consequences of invasive grass species
• (Physical) Skin to (Virtual) Skin: Understanding Gamers’ Virtual Apparel-Related Purchasing
Story by Susan Kirby-Smith, University Communications
Photography by Jiyoung Park, University Communications
