Eastern Student Cherie Green of Putnam Presents Research Poster at CREATE Conference

2016 May 3

More than 250 talented students at Eastern Connecticut State University presented research and creative work at the university's second annual CREATE conference this past April. CREATE stands for Celebrating Research Excellence and Artistic Talent at Eastern, and is the university's premier, academic year-end showcase. At the culminating event, students of all majors presented professional posters, live music, dance performances, artwork, photography, documentaries and panel discussions.

Cherie Green '16 of Putnam, who majors in English, presented a research poster at the event. Green's research, conducted alongside three other classmates, was titled "Impact Concussions Have on Football Athletes."

"Several football players experience concussions frequently when they step foot onto the field," said the students in a joint statement. "There isstill so much we have not learned about concussions and their detrimental effect on our body and brain after repeated hard hits to the head. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a disease that develops over time when a person has experienced several concussions while playing a contact sport. CTE can develop in athletes involved in hard contact sports such as boxing or football. Our poster presentation will outline a unit of study, designed for secondary students, that explores the issue of CTE using an interdisciplinary, problem?based learning pedagogy. This topic is interesting and relevant to high school ninth or tenth graders because at this age students are able to comprehend the content and are becoming increasingly involved in sports, or they may know other students or family members who are involved in football. The interdisciplinary approach being used is unusual in secondary schools and requires students to synthesize ideas from various subject areas and explore connections among them to address a contemporary problem in sports. Students undertaking this unit of study learn about the background of concussions and the history of the equipment used in football. Students in math class could construct statistics of concussions and create graphs and figures to express the data. In English class, students read a piece of literature that describes the incident of a young athlete undergoing a concussion. Students will also learn different vocabulary terms and do research."

Remarking on the variety of presentations, Professor Dickson Cunningham, conference co-chair, said, "CREATE encapsulates the essence of the liberal arts in one afternoon. It is an intellectual smorgasbord."

Speaking to the value of CREATE, Eastern President Elsa Nunez said, "It takes a very strong and dedicated student to produce this quality of work, and it's important for other students to see this output." Praising the faculty, she added, "It takes a committed and skillful mentor to guide students to the work that is on display. Mentorship is such an integral part of undergraduate research."

During the one-day conference, the Student Center crawled with artistic and scholarly activity. Students in professional attire addressed their peers, faculty and family. In the cafe, ensembles performed; in the theatre, student-produced documentaries were shown; in the Betty R. Tipton Room, aisles of posters depicting scientific research were displayed; across the hall, a gallery-worth of paintings lined the walls; and on the ground floor, panel discussions and oral presentations about the humanities took place.

In celebration of students' exemplary research, experiential learning and creative activity, CREATE serves to reinforce high-impact practices such as mentored research; increases the number of students presenting their work in a professional forum; raises public awareness of Eastern's liberal arts mission and student accomplishments; and contributes to the intellectual richness of the campus community.