Student Research Symposium

The tear of the anterior cruciate ligament is one of the most common injuries in athletics. Female athletes more likely incur the ACL injury due to the difference in movement technique during physical activity and the anatomy difference between males and females. My project aims to discover the difference in numbers of ACL injuries between men and women’s soccer, lacrosse, and basketball players at Coker University. In my project I will be reviewing several research articles who have constructed the same comparison and will use this information to analyze the data provided from our athletes. I am curious to discover how Coker athlete’s ACL injury patterns compare to other research article’s data.

My project is a dance film about perfectionism and anxiety amongst dancers. Dancers face battles of perfectionism and anxiety everyday and each dancer deals with this differently. In my research I will learn how to help other dancers cope with this and will plan to inform others in my film that this is a real internal battle dancers have to take on.

My artwork brings attention to unnoticed labor. In my artwork, I amplify flooring patterns and markings that are often overlooked. Through the painting process, I isolate and transform floor patterns and marks. The patterned floor and marked tile becomes an object to be viewed instead of stepped on. The paintings become representations of time, place, and residue. The painted marks remind us of the things and actions that the flooring and wax has retained. My work is partially inspired by the artwork of the dynamic feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. My presentation will discuss her influence on the trajectory of my artwork.

The handling of a public relations crisis is a difficult job, and is something that even the professionals in the public relations field are still learning how to do. By using a specific crisis management framework, this project aims to find out exactly what causes companies to handle their crises well or poorly. The five different crises in this project are the BP oil spill, the Tylenol crisis, the KFC chicken crisis, the Starbucks crisis, and the Dominos crisis. Each crisis case in the analysis was considered to what extent that the eight steps in the framework published by the Institute of PR were followed. With public relations and crisis management being such a vital role within a company, this research will help people within this field understand how they can make their companies as strong as possible before and after a crisis happens.

I am working on my senior thesis research project that is investigating the connection between movement and emotion. Samuel Gladding says that the individual human body functions “as an instrument of consciousness and as a vehicle for meditating unknown forces releasing pent up emotions, and promoting individual transformation and communal inclusiveness.” I am curious about the way in which Authentic Movement, an expressive improvisational movement practice, can bring groups of participants to an internal place which shows realness in external representation. Through my research, I found that Authentic movement is a therapeutic form that was founded in order to be beneficial for clients who suffer from stress, lack of muscular strength, coordination, mobility and mood swings. My methods involved interviewing professionals in the field and potentially conducting sessions on my own. In this symposium I plan to present the results of my research cultivated during the academic 2020-2021 year.

For my Honors Thesis, I decided to study the relationship between obesity and food deserts in my hometown area of Darlington County. Using charity organization Carolina Kids and social media, I have been able collect data over the past couple of months from the parents of elementary-aged children and analyze the data using the program SPSS. My goal was to see if the two concepts appeared to have any correlation, based off of the data that I received.

By employing novel mRNA techniques and requiring a lower dosage, the Moderna vaccine is more efficiently stored, prepared, and administered than the Pfizer vaccine. The Moderna vaccine preparation uses standard refrigeration, fewer products, and has more straightforward administration steps. The vaccine is easier to supply for emergency relief worldwide and has fewer acute respiratory side effects. The vaccine is so rapidly created due to global cooperation in research, history on relative SARS-COV-1, funding, and decades of mRNA technology studies. However, with two vaccines that show so much promise and a 94-95% success rate, individuals still question it. The pandemic’s prolonging could occur not because we do not have a vaccine but because of the refusal rate.