Hastings College students, faculty attend conferences, publish research

More than 10 Hastings College students and faculty have been accepted to attend or present at academic and professional conferences, and two have had papers accepted for publication in academic journals.

Department of History
Katherine Amyot, a history major from Hastings, Nebraska, presented “Sexual Psychopath Laws: A Case Study from 1948,” at the 91st Annual Conference of the Kansas Association of Historians in Overland Park, Kansas.

Brian Whetstone, a junior history major from Kearney, Nebraska, presented “From Objects to Objectivity: Uncovering Women’s History at Modern House Museums” at the 2017 National Council of Public History conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. That paper has also been accepted for publication in the Columbia Undergraduate Journal of History.

Laurel Teal, a history and political science major from Castle Rock, Colorado, and Nick Musgrave, a history and political science major from Parkersburg, West Virginia, presented papers at the 9th annual Symposium for History Undergraduate Research at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi. Teal’s paper was titled “Dead Microphones: the Republican Party’s Break from History at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland,” and Musgrave’s was titled “The Frenchman from County Clare: An Anomaly of National Identity in the Revolutionary Era.”

Department of Psychology
Melissa Burke, a psychology and health systems major from Denver, Colorado; Maddie Sharp, a psychology major from of Omaha, Nebraska; and Dr. Stephanie Furrer, professor of psychology, will present a research poster titled, “Walking on Sunshine! the Benefits of an Outdoor Study Break on Memory and Mood” at the Association for Psychological Science’s Annual Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. The research was supported by the Monticello Research Grant for Women.

Department of Teacher Education
Ann Auten, instructor of teacher education, and education majors Tahj Willingham of Denver, Colorado; Casey Molifua of Hastings, Nebraska; and Steven Dunham of Midwest City, Oklahoma, will attend the National Education Association Student Program Summer Leadership Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. The students will serve on a special committee that is developing strategies to recruit students of various ethnicities to the teaching profession.

Department of Biology
Dr. Amanda Solem, assistant professor of biology, had two academic journal articles published. “Using the Improvisational ‘Yes, and…’ Approach as a Review Technique in the Student-Centered Biology Classroom” was published in the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education in December of 2016, and “Impact of RNA structure on ZFP36L2 interaction with Luteinizing Hormone Receptor mRNA” was published in the RNA Society journal in April.

Hastings College is a private, four-year institution located in Hastings, Nebraska, that focuses on student academic and extracurricular achievement. With 64 majors and 15 pre-professional programs, Hastings College has been named among “Great Schools, Great Prices” by U.S. News & World Report and a “Best in the Midwest” by The Princeton Review. For more, go to hastings.edu.

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