Eight Communications students from Penn State McKeesport participated in the 11th annual Undergraduate Research Exhibition hosted by the Schreyer Honors College and the Office of Undergraduate Education on April 4 - 6 at University Park. The students, all members of Dr. Kathleen Taylor Brown's Communication 494, Research Projects class, spent the Spring, 2006 semester working on their projects for undergraduate credit.
Students Leslie Dezorzi, Jason Farino, Lauren McCaffrey, Patrick McIntyre, Benjamin Olcott, Jeffrey Sabo, Kellie Sackett, and Shawn Zetkulic worked under Dr. Taylor-Brown's direction to formulate their hypotheses and research their findings.
Student topics included the Assessment of Online Course Work on Critical Thinking: A Focus on Discussion Boards, and a Review of the Literature of Deceptive Advertising: Is Military Recruiting Deceptively Targeting Lower Income High School Students.
The exhibition was open to all Penn State Undergraduate students. Student works were presented to faculty, business and industry leaders and the general public during the Performance Exhibition held Wednesday, April 5, at Alumni Hall. The presentations included two elements, visual and oral. The foundation of each exhibit was a poster containing text and graphics that gave an overview of each project so that the basis of the research was displayed and easily communicated. The oral part of the presentation included discussion and defense of their research by the students in attendance.
The 2006 Undergraduate Research Exhibition allowed the Penn State McKeesport students and their peers to celebrate research and interact with students university-wide from dissimilar fields of study. Participants had the opportunity to showcase and present their work while sharing and exploring their research methods. It was the second year that Dr. Brown's students participated in the event.