By Jenna Beresheim Staff Writer
An entire day of classes was canceled for Western students in recognition of the 10th annual Academic Excellence Showcase.
Students were heavily encouraged to participate in the event by their professors, including the canceling of class, or the requirement of small slips handed out during presentations to show attendance. Certain classes require that students see presentations related to the typical course material, while others encourage branching out to view whatever catches the student’s eye.
“I’m nervous and honored,” stated Caitlin Masterson, a fourth-year ASL studies major who presented “Battle of the Sexes: Gender’s effect on ASL learners.”
Masterson said, “I became curious why there were so few men in ASL classes. I did a bunch of research to try and figure out if gender played a role in our ability to learn languages.”
Both the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and the Program for Undergraduate Research Experiences hosted this year’s Showcase.
The event is typically structured by areas of focus, such as music, computer science and philosophy. This allowed for students to pick areas of focus and attend many presentations in a row without running around campus frantically between presentations.
Presentations took shape in poster board productions, spoken presentations, and replicated performances of dance numbers and plays.
Brenda Puhlman and Sarah Pettigrew presented one of the spoken presentations in tandem. Their presentation was titled “The Adventures of Two SSP’s: Seabeck to Oklahoma” and discussed their personal experiences working with Deafblind individuals in that area.
“I had a phenomenal overall experience with Academic Excellence Showcase,” said Puhlman, a third-year in the ASL/English interpreting program. “It was an awesome opportunity to share my experiences and to share about a culture that not many people are familiar with.”
There was even an entire showing of the play “Frankie’s Flights of Fancy” for students to partake in for free. After the production, the cast members stuck around to answer any questions or take comments from the crowd as feedback.
Ultimately, it was another successful year for students to showcase the work that made them stand out from the rest.
