A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: July 10 All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be e-mailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Nick Young, photographer; Heather Darrow, special contributor; Luai Bseiso, special contributor.
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Research event cultivates new ideas
Variety was the spice of the Cultivating Scholars event April 21 at the Preston Ridge Campus.
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Collin student Nada Al-Ghussain, of Frisco, investigates one of the presentations at the Cultivating Scholars event titled “How Barbies Affect Our Culture” at the Preston Ridge Campus. | Students from a variety of disciplines including psychology, biology, history, math, political science and humanities presented dozens of projects ranging from human sexuality to environmental studies. This year’s theme was “Cultivating a Sense of Wonder.”
Psychology students Jennifer Whytlaw, Nicole McCartney, Alex Acalms and Josh Cross presented a study on how individuals’ judgments can be influenced by word choice. For example, the group showed students a video clip of a vehicle accident and surveyed the students using the words “bump” and “crash.”
Humanities student Betsy Giron’s presentation table featured a number of photos from ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Mesopatomian and other civilizations. Her project investigated the ideas behind these civilizations’ sexual natures. Giron not only found out about ancient ideas of love and sex, but also how they compared to each other and how past ideas influenced modern points of view. Byproducts of her research included insight into the roles of women in these cultures and how love has traversed from civilizations thousands of years ago to the modern world.
“It was interesting to me to compare ancient cultures,” Giron said. “I did not know how gods and goddesses played a role in sex and love.
“It is important to understand where we come from and to understand the roles in society and where they came from.”
Cultivating Scholars culminated in a presentation by keynote speaker Jim Snack from The HUMOR Project based in Saratoga Springs, New York. Snack combines magic and humor to provoke creativity and change.
Snack quoted the foremost researcher of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, to connect his presentation with the event. “Einstein said, ‘It’s the sense of wonder that is at the heart of all scientific research,’” Snack said. “It is about transferring that imagination to conceptualizing the unknown. It’s about creating a sense of wonder.”
Snack speaks to a number of associations, corporations and even the federal government using magic as a vehicle to evoke this sense of wonder. And it’s this imagination, creativity and wonder that combines all the disciplines despite one’s predisposition to certain areas of study.
“It is a mistake to separate the arts and science,” he said. “Scientists like Einstein were true artists. There are artists that are scientists and scientists that are artists.”
Snack spent the hour before his presentation mingling with the many students congregating around their presentation tables and easels and asking them questions. He said that the sense of wonder individuals bring can be traced to their specific duties in life. A scientist discovering new and better medicines can evoke a sense of wonder in him, and so can a mechanic rebuilding a transmission.
“If you make me say ‘Wow,’ you have a created a sense of wonder. It transcends my ordinary reality. To me, that’s magic,” he said.
The students participating in the Cultivating Scholars event not only got to show off their semester’s work, but also gain valuable undergraduate research experience.
Al Vandivort, Gabi Estes and Michelle Barr, psychology students, surveyed Collin students about gender and advertising. Although not entirely conclusive because of the small sample size, the trio found that men and women tend to notice advertising that is sexual in nature. Also, they found that men deemed the women in advertising as unattainable.
“It was neat to get responses and get the opinions of the students,” Estes said. “It is good to know that what we learn in class affects people in real life.”
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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