The 2016 Research Colloquium was held on Thursday, April 7^th on the PSU campus in the Overman Student Center. This year was our largest colloquium event which included 170 student participants; who gave 40 Oral Presentations and 103 Poster Presentations. The PSU Research Colloquium is an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students to showcase the research and creative works projects they have been working on throughout the year. Awards were presented at the 2016 Graduate School and Research Awards Banquet held on April 25, 2016. An award was given for every five entries to graduate and undergraduate students for oral and poster presentation in the following categories:

Category A - Primarily Science and Technology:
Undergraduate Poster 1st Place: Ashlyn Conner; 2nd Place: Kalee Woody; 3rd Place (5 posters tied): Shoukath Sulthana; Tyler Shelby; Kyle Schwenker; Gage Rogers; Tayita Abudu and Megan Peters
Undergraduate Oral 1st Place: Elysia Kim, Alexandra Perez, Austin Regier, Kevin Meier, Kyle Sooter and Tony Weiss
Graduate Poster 1st Place: Rachel Bechtold; 2nd Place: James Daniel; 3rd Place: Jyothi Kallu; 4th Place: Zhuo Wang
Graduate Oral 1st Place: Jyothi Kallu; 2nd Place: Michael Giffin

Category B - Primarily Business, Education, and Humanities :
Undergraduate Poster 1st Place: Haley Mona; 2nd Place: Megan Thurston and Jasmyn Turner; 3rd Place (2 groups tied): Andrea Hucke and Trevor Clarke, and Anicia Lindsey-Robinson, Maebry Woods and Richard Robinson
Undergraduate Oral 1st Place: Viet Nguyen; 2nd Place: Rachel Magathan and Lucas Tuckel
Graduate Poster 1st Place: Heather Caldwell
Graduate Oral 1st Place: Sacha DeGraffenreid-Yates

Category C - Topical Literature Review Poster:
Undergraduate Poster 1st Place: Tim Morrison, Keanan Smith and Peter Villa
Undergraduate Oral 1st Place: Brianna Harris, Luis Calderon, Lauren Downing. Lauryn Hastert, Jared Jennings, Ithaca Marlier, Shandara Richardson, Aaron Skapik, Leslie Van Loenen, Sarah Walden, Brittney Walton, and Nanxuan Zeng; 2nd Place: Austin VanBecelaere and Lindsey Viets
Graduate Oral 1st Place: Desiree King

Category D - Topical Literature Review Poster:
Undergraduate Poster 1st Place: Christina Platt; 2nd Place: Taira Williams; 3rd Place: Jeremiah Reece
Graduate Poster 1st Place: Zoraida Price, Linda Muffoletto, Alexis McKinnon and Stephanie Spitz; 2nd Place: Trina Larery; 3rd Place: Cara Russell

The Midwest Quarterly/Graduate Studies Best Essay Award:
Blake Lindsey

Faculty Awards

PSU recognizes outstanding faculty members who have a broad range of scholarship activities including academic advising, basic research, applied research, creative works, and publications and presentations on teaching and learning methods to name a few. We recognize that many of our faculty are active in scholarship and provide opportunities for students to get involved with research. Many of them provide research opportunities for students outside of their course load and they make time in their busy schedules to mentor student research projects and advise students in their program areas. We truly appreciate the dedication of so many Pitt State faculty, their scholarly activity and the relationships they build mentoring and advising students. In order to recognize faculty who are engaged in outstanding mentoring of students conducting research, the Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award, Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator, and Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award were presented at the PSU Graduate School and Research Awards Banquet on April 25, 2016.
The nominees for the Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award were Dr. Casie Hermansson, English and Modern Languages; Dr. Cynthia Huffman, Mathematics; and Dr. Santimukul Santra, Chemistry. The nominees for the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor were Dr. James Greene, English and Modern Languages; Dr. Ram Gupta, Chemistry; Dr. Anil Lal, Economics, Finance and Banking; and Dr. Bruce Warner, Psychology and Counseling. The nominees for Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator were Dr. John Iley, Technology and Workforce Learning; Dr. Paul McCallum, English and Modern Languages; Dr. William Shirley, Chemistry; and Dr. Donald Ward, Psychology and Counseling. Thank you to all the faculty who conduct scholarly activity that enriches the campus for our students.