Academic Excellence Symposium

Schedule

1:00-1:20pm

2^nd Floor WEC: Refreshments and Posters
 

1:20-1:25pm

WEC 226: Welcome and Introduction
 

1:25-1:55pm

WEC 226: Keynote speaker Terrie Aamodt

Bio: Terrie Aamodt, professor emerita of history, taught English and history at Walla Walla University from 1979 to 2022. Specializing in the literature, art, and religious history of the American Civil War, she is the author of Righteous Armies, Holy Cause: Apocalyptic Imagery and the Civil War as well as the centennial history of Walla Walla University, Bold Venture. She was co-editor of Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, (Oxford University Press, 2014) and is currently completing a biography of Ellen White. Other ongoing research projects include a study of political satiric prints from the Jim Crow era and a history of a major American highway, U. S. Route 11, the topic for today’s lecture.

Lecture title: A Tale of Two Cities (and the Road That Connects Them)

Brief description: U. S. Route 11, one of the original United States highways planned in the early days of the automobile, opened in 1926.  It runs 1,645 miles from south to north, from East New Orleans to the Canadian border in upstate New York. Such a road is a spine, in this case knitting together the deep South and the far North and producing countless stories. This lecture describes two: one from Meridian, Mississippi in the 1930s, the other from Wytheville, Virginia, in the 1950s. They illustrate how economic privilege, regional pride, and race shape which stories get remembered and how they are told. Different as they are, these two stories are equally part of our collective American experience.

2:00-2:55pm

WEC 225, WEC 226: Paper presentation session 1
 

3:00-3:55pm

WEC 225, WEC 226: Paper presentation session 2

Session 1a (WEC 225)

Moderator: Dr. Benjamin Jackson
Theme: Trauma and Healing

Speakers and titles:

Molly Ahola - A Model of ECM-Mediated Wound Angiogenesis
Claire Haffner - Religious Trauma and Adventism: Experiences of Religion as a Source of Pain and Harm for SDA-Raised Young Adults
Joshua Price - Trauma in a Just World: Exploring the Relationship Between Traumatic Experiences at Different Ages and Belief in a Just World

Session 1b (WEC 226)

Moderator: Dr. Monique Roddy
Theme: Big Personalities

Speakers and titles:

Tonia Jeffery - Mary Edwards Walker: “a thing that nothing but the debased and depraved Yankee could produce”
Joanna Lasher - Choose your Character: An Examination of The Relationship Between Personality and Video Game Genre Preferences
Lauren Vizcarra and Caeden Rogers - Investigation into First-Date Expectation and their Effects on First-Date Enjoyment

Session 2a (WEC 225)

Moderator: Dr. Linda Crumley
Theme: Change in Context

Speakers and titles:

Ashly Barrosso Garcia - Service Learning through the Business world.
Elijah Haynal - A Cable Equation LACE Model for Octopus Rubescen
Lorelei Harbour and Megan Carreon - The “Why” Behind Early Marriages Within Religious Contexts

Session 2b (WEC 226)

Moderator: Dr. Hilary Dickerson
Theme: Struggle and Resilience

Speakers and titles:

Ashley Garner - Relationship Between ADHD Subtypes and Self-esteem
Aine Schmidt Weiss - Windshield Survey: Analysis of Nursing Needs in the Community of Bagley Downs
Lydia Thiel - African American in Maxville: Life and Oppression in a 1920s-30s Oregon Logging Town