Striking out on their own

Proactive students forego academic credit in pursuit of new knowledge

Student Scholars Symposium serves as showplace for students’ independent research.

Whether it is continuing an interest discovered through an internship, indulging a curious nature after a fascinating class, preparing for a future career field or simply craving to know more, each school year Lipscomb students go above and beyond their required coursework to actively learn

Through independent studies that earn minimal college credit or simply as an extracurricular project with a faculty mentor, students are carrying out research in the sciences, education, the arts and more, on their own time.

In April, these proactive students, along with hundreds of others who carry out research through coursework, thesis and dissertation work, internships or in Lipscomb’s pharmaceutical science labs, are afforded the opportunity to present their results at the Student Scholars Symposium, before an audience of their peers.

The 2023 Student Scholars Symposium featured 308 students presenting on topics as diverse as the history of tattoo art to rocket engineering, from poetry to cybersecurity.

Conducting a project from starting hypothesis to ending conference presentation is an experience that many students not only value for their career prospects, but also feel is empowering and thought-provoking, said Dr. Florah Mhlanga, symposium director and senior associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Here are just a few of the knowledgebuilding projects included in this year’s

Finding home in children’s literature

Some students are fueled to carry out a research project by a passion to better the world in a particular way, such as the trio of sophomores: Ella Saakian, law, justice and society major; Emma Salvitti, family science major with a focus on mental health professions; and Camden Fain, communications major.

Saakian so enjoyed her internship with Lipscomb University’s Camp Explore: Reading and Writing in Nashville, a summer literacy enrichment camp for students at Nashville’s J.E. Moss Elementary School, that when school started again she approached the camp’s director Dr. Jeanne Fain about designing a research project focused on children’s literature.

Saakian gathered the team who became the first undergraduates that Jeanne Fain, director of the master’s level English language learning program in the College of Education, had ever worked with. As Saakian and Salvitti both have immigrant roots, and drawing inspiration from the theme of the upcoming International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) conference, the students and Jeanne Fain chose to do an analysis of color in pictures in selected children’s literature about immigration journeys with the aim to assist teachers in providing inclusivity within book selection in an elementary language arts curriculum.

Using an established academic framework to analyze children’s literature through color, perspective and positioning of words to the characters, Salvitti looked at each of the eight books to see how they supported the concept of “home” as more than a physical place. Saakian looked at how the books portrayed acclimating to a new environment, and Camden Fain looked at the process of the immigrants’ journey.

“I have a passion for creating more understanding of diverse cultures,” said Salvitti, who said the process of the study has given her an even broader awareness of multiculturalism in the United States.

Jeanne Fain said the trio’s work is not only at a level that is publishable, but that it will also likely spark continued research efforts on her part to create a convenient tool that teachers can use to assess how culturally inclusive a particular book may be as they are developing their lesson plans.

“This group of researchers thoughtfully used their skills as visual learners to conduct a carefully thought out visual analysis of immigration picture books. Their skills were leveraged to conduct a critical content analysis of the books in this project,” she said. “I think it’s easy to underestimate the phenomenal research skills that undergraduates possess. This project taught me to facilitate the research process with a specific framework and step back while watching them figure out how to approach their learning.”

In addition to the Student Scholars Symposium, these students’ work has been accepted to be presented at the highly selective IRSCL 2023 Congress: Ecologies of Childhood conference in August at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with Stanford University.

Learning in harmony

Caleb Taylor is a senior piano major from College Grove, Tennessee, who wants to go on to be a surgeon. Wesley Butler is a junior commercial music major who wants to be a songwriter. In the day-to-day process of collegiate music study, these two students wouldn’t interact very much.

But in the fall semester, the pair were teamed up for their final project in their Music Theory II class: to analyze the orchestral work, Vessel of Joy, composed by Lipscomb Assistant Professor and Director of Instrumental Studies Dr. Ben Blasko. They both loved the process and liked working together, as they each brought a different perspective to the goal.

Their instructor, Dr. Jenny Snodgrass, academic director and professor in the School of Music, saw how much they liked the project and suggested that they take a deeper dive into the piece in the spring through an independent study with her. She asked them: “Do you want to take this to the next level?”

They did. The pair worked weekly, oneon-one in Snodgrass’ office throughout the spring semester to break down the three-anda-half-minute piece into sections, to analyze each section by chords, formal sections, cadences and themes.

“The cadence points, which are like commas in the music, can have different connotations and can make the audience feel differently, depending on where they are placed,” said Butler. “We defined the themes developed through each instrument and looked at different cadence timing and modulations.”

After conducting their analysis of the piece, the students were able to discuss their thoughts with Blasko, the composer, and determine how accurate their analysis was compared to his intentions while composing the piece.

Taylor had played Vessel of Joy in the student Wind Ensemble, but after analyzing the piece through the independent study, playing the piece was “a much more enriching experience because now I hear so many new things in the piece,” he said.

“I think about music much more analytically now,” said Butler, who has applied much of what she learned to her songwriting process. “Now I am able to look at works I create from a much more theoretical perspective. I’ve always focused on lyricism in songwriting, but now I think more about the melody and chords while writing.”

Both students said they wouldn’t have gotten to know each other, and as a commercial music major, Butler would not have had the opportunity to get to know Blasko, had it not been for the independent project that pulled all four musicians together.

In addition to presenting at the Lipscomb Student Scholars Symposium, Taylor and Butler will submit their work for the spring 2024 National Conference for Undergraduate Research.

Getting a clue through chemistry

In summer 2022, Anna Froemming, senior biochemistry major from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, worked all summer long as an intern at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s latent fingerprint unit, but those two months only sparked her interest in doing and learning more.

“I saw how they process evidence and the different techniques they use for hard surfaces versus paper, and the like,” said Froemming. “They are always looking at new ways to process evidence, and while I was there, a new article was published about processing fingerprints on thermal paper (the paper used for receipts). They asked me to experiment with it and see if I could get it to work.”

She did get it to work by combining zinc and nitric acid to produce nitrogen dioxide fumes. The print developed with a reddishbrown color. However, the print is only visible for a couple of minutes, Froemming said.

She left her internship wanting to know more and teamed up with Dr. Brian

Cavitt, professor of chemistry, who said: “When a student comes to a professor with a research question, professors need to do all they can to help,” Cavitt said.

The pair tested three ways to make the fingerprint image last longer on the thermal paper: immediately coating the print with a solution of paraffin wax, olive oil or PEG400 which is used in biological applications.

The PEG400 basically washed the print off, said Froemming. The olive oil worked better but left spots on the print, and the paraffin wax worked best, defining the print better and making it visible for up to a week, with some slight fading.

Froemming said she is looking forward to making a difference in the world by helping to solve crime. She pursued additional experiments this past spring because “I just feel passionate about it. I’m not looking to receive anything from it, but I just want to know a way to fix those prints.

“I think this project taught me how to have a broader perspective and to implement things I have learned in class,” she said. “In class, we learn how metals and acids interact to create new compounds, but seeing it in a real-world application has been really cool. We had to come up with the guide and procedure to do the experiment, so I felt like I was doing something real, not just an assignment.”

Ensuring a firm foundation

Aaron Hardy, senior civil engineering major from Parkersburg, West Virginia, was also interested in attempting a chemistry experiment, even though it went beyond the scope of his civil engineering materials class.

After a class contest to design a new formula for concrete to make it as strong as possible, Hardy developed a curiosity about what science “grounded” the building codes and best practices for civil engineers. He was curious to see if he could expand on the current guidance for what materials can mix with cement but keep the strength of the concrete.

“In engineering we are setting the limits of what we can do according to the design code, so I wondered how those limits in the building code were set in the first place,” said Hardy.

As a former intern for the Nebraska Department of Transportation, Hardy knew that a common way to test the strength of cement is to stack up blocks of concrete and measure when their strength begins to degrade, he said. But Hardy wanted to see what was going on at the chemical level. He hadn’t been interested in chemistry in high school, but after seeing how the field related directly to his chosen profession of civil engineering, chemistry made more sense to him, he said.

Dr. Todd Lynn, chair of civil engineering, facilitated a team-up with Cavitt to test how the chemicals in three different materials—fly ash, blast furnace slag and fumed silica—react with calcium hydroxide, a byproduct of Portland cement, to create calcium silicate hydrate.

With a doctorate in polymer science and engineering himself, Cavitt was all too happy to help. “In our current society, science has to be multidisciplinary to advance,” said Cavitt. “Using chemistry to answer an engineering question was just natural.”

Hardy chose the three materials, in part, because they are more environmentally sustainable as they are waste by-products and would be more economical than what is used now. Also, the three materials, termed pozzolans, strengthen Portland cement when added in an appropriate amount. How much hydroxide is present after mixing the materials is reflective of how strong the concrete mixture is; more calcium hydroxide indicates a weaker concrete.

“I’m always asking, how can we make this research as usable as possible and as applicable to people in the professional world as possible,” said Hardy.

At the Student Scholars Symposium, Hardy presented his final results indicating that calcium hydroxide production limits the amount of pozzolan that can replace Portland cement, but civil engineers can use an acid-base titration to determine the optimum amount of replacement pozzolan regardless of the type of pozzolan.

“We can now optimize the use of specific, regional pozzolans in Portland cement to make a better, sustainable building material,” said Cavitt.

Spice it up with nutrition analysis

As a nutrition and dietetics major, Tessa Vander Kamp (’23) was focused on her journey to become a registered dietitian. She found that conducting her own research project was a great way to prepare for the next step, she said.

Through an independent research study with Dr. Tracy Noerper, director of the nutrition master’s program, Vander Kamp learned a great deal about community nutrition services for senior populations, the value of communication, how the research process works at the graduate level and how to pursue external funding for nutrition research.

Vander Kamp and Noerper came together this past school year to implement an idea Noerper had been kicking around to examine the spice and herb content of food in congregate meals prepared for seniors.

The senior population, who obtains meals through community-based sites such as community centers, churches and senior centers, has not been studied much, nor have the most prevalently used seasonings in such meals, said Noerper. As the elderly begin to lose their taste, they tend to add salt to their meals. Noerper wanted to examine the relationships between use of spices, herbs and sodium in the original recipes to better understand if such meals could potentially be made healthier with less sodium but equivalent flavor using herbs and spices, she said.

Vander Kamp and Noerper contacted hundreds of sites nationwide that provide free meals to seniors through the federally funded Older Americans Act and requested recipes of all their meals served during a specified time period in May 2022. From the sites’ submissions the researchers created a comprehensive database of ingredients used in the recipes. To date, the pair have received about 300 recipes from seven states and nine locations.

The pair’s database could eventually help inform best practices for dietitians at these sites in the use of spices and herbs versus sodium. Preliminary recipe analysis indicates that a variety of herbs and spices are being incorporated in congregate meal recipes with black pepper, thyme and parsley being used most often.

In addition to winning an outstanding presenter honor at the Student Scholars Symposium, Noerper and Vander Kamp submitted the work for consideration for a professional award from the Foundation of the Academy of

Nutrition and Dietetics as well as to the McCormick Spice Institute to apply for funding for open-source publishing.

The path to becoming a scientist

Haley Lewis (’23), molecular biology graduate from Nashville, came to Lipscomb with a specific path she wanted to follow: research.

Inspired as a child by her grandmother’s battle with multiple myeloma, Lewis entered college knowing she wanted to pursue disease research, so she immediately began looking for opportunities. She learned about the College of Pharmacy’s Summer Research Program, involving primarily Pharm.D. students, and was accepted to enter the program as a freshman.

“I fell in love with how involved all the professors are and how really invested they are in students being involved in the research environment,” she said.

Lewis has worked for Dr. Scott Akers, executive director of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, for two and a half years to grow human kidney cells in the lab to study the specific proteins in those cells that identify a drug and help excrete it through the urine. Funded through a private research company called Inotiv, Lewis and Akers are developing methods to detect transporters that help eliminate a drug from the body.

“At Lipscomb, we are developing a standard process to evaluate any new drug developed in the market to understand how it is eliminated from the body, because the more we understand about how drugs are excreted, the better we can understand how to dose the drugs and prevent potential drug interaction with other medications,” said Akers.

Lewis never doubted she wanted to follow the path to a Ph.D., and Akers, who is often tapped as an investigator for various grant-funded projects at Vanderbilt University, had plenty of projects that offered firsthand experience with cell culture to give her an advantage on that journey.

“Being independent in my research and doing hands-on work on my own time is really important to my becoming a scientist one day. So I really wanted a project to do on my own. Part of the reason why I chose Lipscomb was because I knew it would provide research opportunities to me earlier than at a larger university,” said Lewis.

Her experience helped earn her a summer 2022 fellowship at Upstate Medical University where she worked on infectious disease research, looking at proteins in the lungs and their role in bacteriainduced pneumonia. She later presented that work at the St. Jude National Symposium on Undergraduate Research.

Lewis won an outstanding presenter honor at the 2023 Student Scholars Symposium for a presentation on her work at Upstate Medical as well as winning an outstanding poster honor in a previous year for her research at Lipscomb.

Always ask, “What is your why?”

On April 13, these undergraduates came together with 271 other undergraduate students and 28 graduate students, scattered throughout campus locales to share their research methods and results at the annual Student Scholars Symposium.

The event is intended to be empowering for students learning the value of research, said Mhlanga, and it is easy to see the confidence students have developed at the culminating awards ceremony where students gasp in delight upon hearing their names called, high-five their faculty mentors on the way to the podium, whoop and cheer as their classmates receive recognition.

Each year the event spurs students’ interest in research through a groundbreaking scholar as keynote speaker. This year’s event featured Lipscomb’s Provost Dr. Jennifer Shewmaker, who publishes regularly, including several books and multiple chapters and articles in the areas of media and child development and teaching and learning.

As a researcher herself who has mentored and advised countless students, Shewmaker encouraged the young scholars to think about, “What is your why?... How does this knowledge, how do these skills, how does this piece I’m creating, how does it make an impact?”

Also new this year was “Creating the 2023 Concrete Poetry Exhibition,” a panel discussion and gallery viewing that served as the culminating presentation for a collaboration between Associate Professor Dr. Jan Harris’ poetry students and Director of the School of Art & Design Rocky Horton’s art students.

Sixteen poetry and art students collaborated to select a poem and create an artwork that brings clarity and movement to the written word. Lipscomb President Dr. Candice McQueen moderated the panel discussion by the students on the process of creative collaboration and how they synthesized poems into artworks.

The concrete art panel embodied the spirits of creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration between students themselves and their faculty mentors that infuse the entire Student Scholars Symposium, said Mhlanga, and the point was not lost on President McQueen.

“This concept of collaboration makes you better,” she said, concluding the concrete art panel. “It can be harder… but it can really push you to be better. I love the way you’ve all described that concept in this unique opportunity, and I hope you’ll take more opportunities to do this.”

Learn more about the Student Scholars Symposium at lipscomb.edu/SSS2023