By Sarah Vistocco '13
As the spring semester drew to a close, Siena College recognized the academic success and hard work of its students with the annual Celebration of Academic Excellence. Throughout the day, students were inducted into various academic honor societies and some were recognized with awards for leadership and involvement.
“Academic Celebration is a reminder of our academic mission and also the success of our students,” said Joseph Fitzgerald, assistant to vice president of academic affairs. “This is our way of saying ‘well done’ to all of our students.”
Many students also shared the results of their research and class projects during a forum open to the entire Siena College community.
As part of her research methods class, Kathryn Hagen ’14 studied the effects of gender and military status on college students’ perceptions of post-traumatic stress disorder. Instead of simply completing the class, Hagen participated in the conference to display the results of her research and prepare her for future endeavors. “I want to present at psychological conferences, so I thought this would be good practice,” said Hagen.
Sociology major Lindsey Knowlden ’13 based her capstone project on her experiences abroad and volunteer work in the Capital Region. Knowlden spent six weeks in India last summer working in a foster home. That experience transferred into her volunteer work at the Parsons Child and Family Center in Albany where she also worked with foster children. Knowlden used her experiences in India to create a handbook designed to teach the children at Parsons about cultural diversity and the value of community involvement through service. “At the end [the Parsons children] actually asked if they could do a service project because they wanted to communicate with the children in India,” said Knowlden.
Some students also presented capstone work that was used by the public. Jessica Reinhardt ’13 was part of a team that created software for the Conference of the Northeast Region of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, which was held at Siena last month. Conference Chair and Associate Professor of Computer Science Darren Lim, Ph.D. asked the students to develop the software. Reinhardt and other students in her software engineering class split into teams to create a system for Lim to schedule the conference and online users to register or submit work. The students worked on the software all year. The diversity in their final creations is a testament to their creative and technological abilities. “It was cool to see how each group did it differently because [the groups] did not collaborate together at all,” said Reinhardt.
The Celebration of Academic Excellence is also a point of pride for the people who have helped students develop their skills. “Our students do amazing work all the time. This just gives us the opportunity to showcase that,” said Peter Ellard, Ph.D., associate vice president for academic affairs.
