Naomi Oconnor /The Carolinian

Jayda Brunson
    Staff Writer

Every year, UNCG’s Lloyd International Honors College sponsors the Honors Symposium to allow undergraduate students at UNCG and other local colleges to speak in an academic conference. The event involves concurrent sessions and prompts each student speaker to present a ten-minute paper or presentation regarding his or her undergraduate research.

This writer attended the conference, “Psychology: The Brain is Wider than the Sky,” moderated by faculty member Amanda McDole. This session included four student speakers who generally covered topics dealing with attitudes, relationships and mental illnesses.

The first student presenter was UNCG senior psychology major, Aaron Frazier. His presentation, “Analysis of Self-Reference Word Usage of Individuals with Depression Pre- Versus Post- Treatment,” addressed the idea that individuals who were once depressed and are no longer qualifying for treatment, don’t engage in self-reference words.

Limitations that Frazier ran into during the completion of this project were the sample size, the fact that he was only able to use thirty full sets of data and that there wasn’t a lot of information on the topic to compare the data to.

Frazier conducted this project with the usage of mp3 files from a past study to sample and determine the daily experiences of individuals assessed over days, weeks and months.

The next speaker in this session was senior psychology major at Fayetteville State University, Chiquanna R. Anderson. Her presentation was titled “Attitudes towards Foster Care.”

Anderson sampled 100 people with questions regarding foster care. One question listed on her sample sheet was “youth in foster care are aggressive” with a 1 to 5 scale for people to answer with, 5 meaning to agree strongly and 1 to strongly disagree.

The sample determined that 35 percent of people disagreed, while 35 percent of people were neutral. Her presentation also included stereotypes pertaining to fostering children, one of them being “grandparents/relatives are incapable of having foster children.” She was able to gather that Florida State University summer school students had a more positive attitude towards the idea of foster care than was initially assumed.

The third speaker in this session was UNCG junior Psychology major, Chekayla Jones, who spoke about “The Relationship between Eating Disorders and Higher Education Setting among African American Women.”

Jones’ purpose for her research was based on her experience with an eating disorder, as well as wanting to bring attention to how one’s surroundings affect racial identity and eating habits.

Jones planned to sample her data with 400 African American women, 200 from a predominantly white university, and 200 from a historically black college university. The age range she set for the data is between 18 and 23 years.  Some limitations that she underwent through this process were the media influence on body language along with the geographic location of her data. This is a study that Chekayla Jones hopes to analyze further.

The last presenter of this session was UNCG senior Psychology and Dance major, Domonique Edwards, which explored her interests in education and development. Her analysis was titled, “Teacher-Child Relationships in Low-Income African American Children Participating in Head Start.”

Her research was based on an interest to investigate what tools African American students need to be successful in school.  Her plan samples 330 children and 21 teachers with multiple tests that measure children’s’ cognitive abilities.

Another session that took place at the symposium was titled, “The Dream and the Hope: Exploring African American Studies,” moderated by faculty member, Dr. April Ruffin-Adams.  This session mainly discussed black history and how far African Americans have come, as opposed to how African Americans are portrayed in today’s world.

The first speaker in this session was Kiana Daniel, who spoke on “The Taking Back of Black Hairitage.” The idea of this presentation was that when black individuals are around good friends of their race, they are comfortable showing off the attributes that make them unique, such as their hairstyle; but when around different cultures, they are more likely to change themselves to fit in.

Daniel emphasized that hair is a big influence on African American women’s identities.

The next student presenter was senior political science major, Mona Zahir, of Winston-Salem State University, whose presentation was titled, “Black Women for Sale.”

Her presentation intended to bring awareness to the issue of black women being used as a commodity for capital gain in music videos, reality shows and anywhere public due to their unique features.

In order to put a stop to this, Zahir feels that people should stop tuning into shows that objectify black women, and take a stand against magazines that lighten the natural melanin of black women.

Each student participant in this year’s Honors Symposium worked hard to ensure that both the audience and themselves were able to learn something new.