Your Professor’s Time to Shine at the Faculty Showcase

Kristina Smith

The annual Faculty Showcase marks a change of pace for the student-faculty roles. For the last three years, the library showcase has been a chance for professors to display their work while students offer their appraisals.

This year’s Faculty Showcase drew a diverse cast of professors to display their current research and studies. Students visiting the library had a chance peek at the Golden Door, ask “Ain’t She a Woman?” of Women in Politics, and explore mind-boggling concepts of space.

2019 marks the third year of the showcase, but many who attended were excited to discover something new. Students learned about classes outside their majors, and a consistent theme among faculty involved learning about the projects of peers outside their own curriculum.

Nutrition major Tyson Smoot was drawn to the “Ain’t She A Woman?” psychology display and the nutrition display, and he was able to recount what he learned from Dr. Hicks-Roof’s nutrition toolkit.

“She has an interesting one with healthy living. If a physician has a patient they can download this and give it to their patient if they have any kind of health issues so they can go home with it.” Smoot said.

In the area of arts and design, students could watch a video called Golden Door. The video is a collaboration piece by Professors Goloborotko and Cruz, and they combined their skills of printmaking and graphic animation to create a video for a Walt Whitman festival.

Goloborotko has attended the showcase each year, and she likes that students get to see what their professors do when they’re not teaching.

“I think it’s very important for them to be inspired about how our research moves parallel to what we teach and even beyond,” Goloborotko said.

Stephanie Race, the spearhead of the showcase event and Head of Research and Outreach at the library, has always been happy to see students benefit from the experience.

“I think a lot of students, they’re in their world, they see their faculty, and they come to an event like this and they discover the different disciplines and how they connect with each other,” Race said, “A faculty member, Dr. Hallett, had written a book on Angola Prison Seminary, and he had it at the first showcase we did. He talked to a student, and one of the students he chatted with actually ended up enrolling in his class.”

So while students who visited the event were able to broaden their horizons, any who missed it can visit the library website that exhibits the showcase year by year. Check out the gallery below to see what your teachers are up to.

 

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