The 10th annual Student Research and Creative Arts Symposium is set to start at 11 a.m. on Monday, April 6, in the McAfee Memorial Library. The last session will be at 2 p.m. on Thursday in the McCoy Meetin’ House. The symposium features all types of work from the different disciplines offered by the university.

According to Lolly Ockerstrom, associate professor of English and one of the organizers of the event, it is a chance for students to share in the academic process.

“The purpose of the symposium is to encourage and celebrate undergraduate and graduate research in a wide range of topics, across a variety of disciplines,” said Ockerstrom. “It shows the fun side of academics.”

Ockerstrom said the format of the student symposium mimics that of a higher level academic conference. Concurrent sessions are also being utilized to give more students the opportunity to share their work.

“Sometimes it’s hard to choose what to go to,” said Ockerstrom. “You see three great papers you want to hear all of three of them but you can only go to one session at a time.”

All different fields of academia are covered in the symposium from essay presentations in English to the performance of Brahms by the music department. The performances from the music department start at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8, in the Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel.

Graduate work will also be featured in the symposium. According to Ockerstrom, the presenters of graduate level research have been researching their topic for years. The symposium serves as an outlet for these students to share their research processes and pitfalls with students potentially looking to enter graduate-level academics or anybody wanting to know more about the academic research process.

Poster boards have also become a popular way to present information in the symposium. The students who made the different displays for the symposium will be in the McAfee Memorial library on Monday, April 6.

Alayna Howard, a sophomore majoring in secondary education, discussed the process for the research. According to Howard, papers and projects researched and completed for classes can be submitted to the symposium.

“The essay I’m presenting is about the different cars that me and my family have had throughout the years,” said Howard. “It is one of the essays I did for my English class.”

Haley Weatherford, a sophomore majoring in business administration and marketing, is doing a poster board related to Alan Turing.

“Alan Turing was something I’m really passionate about,” said Weatherford. “Not a lot of people know who he was as a person. People identify more with his accomplishments more than he who he was as a person, which is what I researched.”

Weatherford goes on to explain her research process. It consisted of two and a half weeks of looking up academics sources and performing real world tests of the general population’s knowledge of Turing. These tests included showing people pictures of him and his inventions asking if they know anything about them.

“Only two out of the 10 people I used for the test knew who Turing was,” said Weatherford.

Although the deadline for submission has passed, students are still working hard to better their projects.

“Through this process students learn about themselves,” said Ockerstrom. “They learn their own limitations. It’s a real learning experience. It really opens their eyes to academics. Students are still tweaking or fixing things on their projects to get them ready.”