Milligan hosts RISE Above Research Conference online

Published 1:58 pm Wednesday, April 15, 2020

MILLIGAN COLLEGE — Milligan College students will present research virtually this year for the college’s seventh annual RISE Above Research Conference on Thursday, April 23.

The RISE Above Research Conference is a culminating event for undergraduate and graduate students engaged in faculty-mentored research. Presentations will showcase scholarly and creative research from many disciplines and majors.

“Research skills are critical for students preparing for master’s and doctorate-level work, therefore we have ensured our students have the opportunity to present their research this year,” said Dr. Joy Drinnon, professor of psychology and director of undergraduate research at Milligan. “This conference is a showcase of what our students have learned through mentored research with faculty, and every year, I enjoy seeing the culmination of our students’ hard work when they present their final projects.”

The theme for this year’s conference is “ReVision,” and students were encouraged to revision an old topic or pursue an innovative new design. Over 25 research projects will be presented through Zoom, and topics include: how AI can help predict the spread of COVID-19; how personality impacts leadership; one way to reimagine the public education system; and engineering water purification systems for rural communities in Sneedville, Tenn., and Turkana County, Kenya.

In the absence of this year’s March Madness college basketball tournament and the beloved tradition of filling out a bracket, senior business major Seth Nicol, of Loganville, Ga., used a cross-sectional regression model to predict a theoretical winner.

“This study used regular season data on all of the teams from the previous three March Madness tournaments to find which factors most heavily contribute to winning tournament games,” shared Nicol. “With those factors in mind, I ran the current season’s data through a cross-sectional regression model to pick a theoretical champion.”

Drinnon and Dr. Ted Thomas, professor of humanities, history and German, will present a lecture, titled “Much Casual Death: Lessons from a Course on Genocide in the Age of Covid-19.” The two faculty members co-taught a course on genocide last fall, and their lecture will share insights on what this global pandemic might mean for conflict and the risk of genocide around the world.

For more information on the RISE Above Research conference, visit milligan.edu/research.