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OU Students Present At International Research Symposium
By: Eleni Lazares
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Walter Rotunda, on the campus of Ohio University, was filled with graduate and a few undergraduate students as they prepared to present original research at the International Research Symposium Friday.
The International Research Symposium (ISU) is an annual event targeted to align the International Student Union with the mission and diversity objective of the university.
OU students are given the chance to interact with their peers and other researchers at the event.
According to Mohamad Al-Issa, ISU president, there are three purposes to the symposium: it gives the international students and the domestic students a chance to be a part of a research symposium, it serves as an outlet for international students to show their research and their work, and third, it puts ISU on the map.
One participant, Jascene Dunkley focused her research on entertainment education in Jamaica. Dunkley drew on data analysis about famous education authors from the communication and developmental fields.
“I looked at how a lady named Elaine Perkins used radio soap operas to get messages about family planning out to a large audience. It’s important because the use of entertainment education is something that has been successful over the years and my project is looking at the work she did and how effective it was,” Dunkley said. “I found this was very successful and her soap opera actually reached 40 percent of the target audience at the time, which is huge especially since it was produced in the 80’s."
Dunkley thinks this research is relevant because in a new wave of media, media outlets can reach a larger target audience and be more flexible.
Amanda Schreckengost focused her research on her mission to recruit international students.
“I’ve been studying cross-cultural interactions between domestic and international students. Our idea is if a student rates their cultural competence and studies abroad, then their cultural competence should increase. On certain scales, we also found some scales decrease,” Schreckengost said.
The symposium winners were decided by a panel of five judges. The judges consider the following criteria in their selection: the noteworthiness of the research and its validity, the benefit the research has for the community, and the clarity of the researcher's findings.
Awards were given to the two best graduate and undergraduate research projects, and the winners receive the ISU Best International Research Award as well as a Kindle.