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Building on existing literature of the effects of sleep behaviors on academic performance, I examine undergraduate university students’ sleep behaviors including quality of sleep, duration of sleep, and stress as influences on academic achievement, measured by students’ self-reported grade point averages (GPA) and their score on their most recent exams. Data was gathered from 369 undergraduate students for analysis of self-reported GPA and 439 undergraduate university students for analysis of exam score. Findings of bivariate and multivariate regression analyses suggest quality of sleep and duration of sleep are not significant influences of academic achievement on either measure (self-reported GPA or score on most recent exam). Findings do suggest a significant negative impact of stress on the second measure of academic achievement (most recent exam score). Taken together, results do not support either hypothesis, thereby indicating other influences may affect academic performance of undergraduate students

Ceitidh (Katie) MacDonald is currently an IPFW senior majoring in Political Science, International Relations, Pre-Med and History. After a 20 year military career, Ms. MacDonald decided to further her academic studies as a precursor to a law program with hopes of a new career in Immigration and Veteran laws as well as Constitutional and International law

Matthew F. Danielson will be graduating this spring with degrees in Political Science and English with a concentration in writing. His senior project in Political Science explored the diversity of Indiana’s political culture, and his senior English project, which is also his senior Honors project, uses the literary theory of New Historicism to examine the Merrie Melody cartoons of 1952. He is a current recipient of the Withers Scholarship and is in the process of applying to law schools

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We developed a service learning capstone course: PSY 392 Peer Mentoring and Leadership. Whereas service learning courses typically provide service to an organization external to the campus, here advanced psychology majors serve as support resources/peer mentors for first-year students during their summer orientation experience, and then throughout their first semester

It is well established that favorable intergroup contact experiences reduce prejudice. We were interested in identifying personality variables that might lead some people to seek out favorable intergroup contact experiences and others to avoid them. Broadly, this process is called situational selection. Our main proposition is that the personality traits of openness, agreeableness, and authoritarianism influence the extent to which people seek out and enter into favorable intergroup contact situations, which, in turn, lead to favorable intergroup attitudes. The specific outgroups we examined for this study were Muslims, refugees, immigrants, the military, and Christian fundamentalists. To test our predictions, we asked 293 participants to complete measures of personality, intergroup contact experiences, and intergroup attitudes. Our main hypothesis was supported. Intergroup attitudes were significantly affected by the personality traits of openness, agreeableness, and authoritarianism, and these relationships were mediated by contact experiences. However, the strength of the relationships was also dependent on which outgroup was being evaluated. These results have implications for contact theory, which has generally neglected the potential role of personality. In addition, our results reveal a potential mechanism (intergroup contact) that may help explain why certain personality traits are associated with intergroup attitudes.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1028/thumbnail.jp

This project will be based on deaf culture and the awareness to the accessibilities and rights they have and the worldviews that are put on them. Because there are more than one million deaf people in the world, this is a topic that needs to be discussed and presented. I also want to inform people that may not know how to approach a deaf person and assist that person.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1035/thumbnail.jp

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Andrew Hakes is a history major in his last year at IPFW. His focus in history is conflict and revolution during the Cold War, with a leaning towards Latin America. He recently studied abroad in Argentina and conducted research over the legacy of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. He is currently working on his Honors Project—an examination of the impact of the EZLN (Zapatistas) throughout the Americas. He has presented at the history conference twice before over the topics of Babi Yar and the relationship of the Cuban and US governments after the Cuban Revolution. Currently he is considering post-graduate education and looking at his options

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Abstract Background The Future of Nursing Report (2010), and National League for Nursing (NLN) (2011) reveal an expectation that nursing programs integrate strategies for academic progression from beginner to advanced nursing. Improving nursing curricula rely on integrating teaching and learning principles that reflect a student-centered approach supported by evidence (Ironside u26 Hayden-Miles, 2012). An idea to facilitate students to “think like a nurse” as described by Tanner (2006), is to provide deeper learning experiences for students by transforming students’ reflections about their clinical and simulation experiences into unfolding case studies that can be used in the classroom. Purpose The purpose of this research project is to determine ways to integrate unfolding case scenarios that reflect students’ clinical and simulation experiences throughout the nursing curriculum. Methods Unfolding case studies that evolve in complexity from beginner to advanced expertise in nursing courses include an actual patient situation leveled in complexity from beginning to advanced content. The patient situations are video recorded and guiding questions are provided in class to stimulate students’ small group discussions about the patient situations. Students who attend each clinical class and view the video and participate in the discussion of the unfolding case study will be invited to participate in focus group sessions to share their perceptions of growth and learning related to the case study content. The focus group sessions will be audio recorded for approximately 60 minutes. Field notes will be recorded to add clarity and insight to communication shared by the students. This study captures a new holistic inter-professional approach to end of life care where an Advanced Care Planning team is included in one of the higher level course case study scenarios. Triangulation using test question analyses for this study is intended to validate if there will be studentsu27 deeper understanding of the complexity the patient’s situation. Test questions related to content in the case studies will be taken from the comprehensive exam for each of the clinical courses. The comprehensive exam test questions reveal validity and reliability according to a test item analysis report. Results and Conclusions The unfolding case studies implementation and data collection are in process this spring semester. The focus groups will provide interaction that not only will include the studentsu27 actual words, but also non-verbal communication that may enhance exchanging of perceptions. Test question results will reveal studentsu27 knowledge, comprehension, application, and analysis of the content

This article looks at the renegotiation of Chinese masculinities by analyzing the gendered performances of participants of a popular TV dating show If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao). As symptomatic media texts, the reality TV show points to the quandaries of evolving gender politics faced by singletons of China’s one-child generation within the country’s neoliberal restructuring. The textual evidence shows that male participants follow the rule of a market economic hierarchy and uphold the hegemonic ideal of versatile, successful, and upper-middle-class manhood, which hinges on the patriarchal, heteronormative model of love and marriage. Paradoxically, this disempowering ideal is reinforced by female participants in their relational reconstruction of masculinities. The article argues that the Chinese state media not only discipline masculinities but also naturalize a regressive gender mandate in alignment with neoliberal values and the state’s pursuit of capitalist economic development. Consequently, the multiple, hybridized versions of masculinities emerging in media discourse and popular parlance complicate the cultural repertoire of gender relations yet without challenging deeply entrenched structural gender inequality

Current beer brands fall short in offering packaging and branding that is visually appealing to women. To solve this, I want to create a unique Beer Brand for Women using visual design that is different than many of the current brands on the market. My goal is to see if I can create packaging and promotional materials that will address the different buying habits of women. Through my studies and research at IPFW I have learned that men and women have different ideas on what is visually appealing. This research and study prompted me to explore this topic. To prove this idea, I created all the branding, marketing and advertising material required for a new brand of beer. This new company will produce and package beer with designs implemented to appeal to the female market. I used colors and designs that were specifically created to visually appeal to my target audience. The proposed impact that my project will have is an increase in beer sales to women, and possibly a different way that other companies package and market to women.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1043/thumbnail.jp

Cyanobacteria are photosynthesizing organisms that live in environments open to solar ultraviolet radiation. In order to survive in these environments, some cyanobacteria produce sunscreen pigments. For these organisms, sunscreen pigments such as scytonemin intercept photons before they can harm cellular machinery, DNA, or produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are toxic to the cells. The specific aims of this project were to determine how the presence of scytonemin in the cyanobacterium Nostoc punctiforme contributes to fitness under oxidative stress and to provide insight into the molecular response to oxidative stress with and without the protection of scytonemin. To assess the physiological response, cells were first induced to produce scytonemin with long-wavelength UVA radiation. Then they were stressed with methylene blue for 30 min to induce production of ROS and evaluated for antioxidant enzyme activity. A control group without scytonemin and methylene blue stress were similarly evaluated. The gene expression response to oxidative stress was also measured with quantitative-PCR (qPCR) by targeting basic metabolic genes such as psbA (photosynthesis), rbcL (carbon-fixation), and nifH (nitrogen- fixation). In addition, the expression response of genes which encode for antioxidant enzymes such as katE and cat (catalase) and superoxide dismutase (sodA), were also measured. For the antioxidant enzyme activity analysis, cells with scytonemin produced less antioxidant activity than those without scytonemin, regardless of the presence or absence of oxidative stress. In the evaluation of the gene expression response, the results were more variable. Gene expression of nifH was upregulated in cells with scytonemin and oxidative stress, while the expression of rbcL was downregulated under similar conditions. In cells with scytonemin, expression of cat and katE were upregulated, while sodA was downregulated. Interestingly scytonemin appeared to suppress the antioxidant enzyme activity response while increasing the transcriptional response of catalase enzymes. This discrepancy could be explained by the fact that gene expression occurs before the translational or enzymatic response. Since the cells were only stressed for 30 min it is possible that the corresponding functional proteins were not active at the time of cell harvesting. Future studies will involve a temporal analysis of this response in order to better understand the contributions of scytonemin in coping with oxidative stress in N. punctiforme.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1002/thumbnail.jp

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My project was created as a means to assist in the learning and understanding of reading music. The problems with learning to read standard music notation is that it involves different areas of the brain to work at the same time. Music reading activates the motor, visual, auditory areas in both hemispheres of the brain, along with the cerebellum. To deal with the problem, I have created a unique way of learning music that is designed to eliminate the dullness from standard music reading and inspire, inform, and motivate people to experience music in a completely different way. My business idea, ChromaClef is a beginner’s education program that teaches users how to read sheet music in a non-traditional way that is easy and exciting for everyone, no matter the musical background. ChromaClef combines color and music together in an aim to improve musical memory and understanding, proven by a process called synesthesia. Synesthesia is an unusual blending of senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality. In this case, every note (or letter) is associated with a different color. This is called Grapheme-color synesthesia. Those with this form of synesthesia have enhanced visual memory for stimuli. Why? Some researchers believe it is due to a cross-wiring in the brain where a number or letter stimulates an area of your visual cortex that simultaneously responds to color stimuli. Not only does this color-to-music combination work because it enhances memory and comprehension, but it stands apart from every music-learning method because of its anomalous way of doing so. This non-traditional way of self-teaching allows users to learn on their own time and at their own pace.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1044/thumbnail.jp

Modeling and Animation Creative Project I am presenting a Creative/ Research project of a short animation movie using the technique of computer graphics 3D animation based on the work of Nathan Greno and Bryan Howard, the top animators for the film Tangled. The main purpose of this creative project is how to take a personal idea and to transform it into an animation, with the similar animating technique of both Nathan Greno and Bryan Howard, and how I can create using the methods and captivating style that Nathan Greno and Bryan Howard use to tell a story. The goals of my project are to understand more on how to use computer graphics, how to create a character and to understand the visual effects that are necessary to make an animation look clean and interesting. The idea that came to mind was to take this certain animation style and turn it into a silent film. The main character would be a bullmastiff that helps children who have recently passed away. The children that the dog helps are considered lost. For the animation the bullmastiff finds children with no color. The dog then leads the child around to memorable places for the child to help regain his or her memory. As the child to starts to regain memory, color is added. Once the child fully remembers his or her child can pass to the other side. When that child goes away, the bullmastiff starts again with finding another colorless or lost child and starts again. The bullmastiff would take a dominate role to lead the children to regain their memories. This idea heavily depends on background music, as it would be a silent film. I want to learn more about the process of building a character in a CGI system. I would be looking up how to design a character with the style of the Disney animated film Tangled, which is CGI. The next thing that I would do would be to learn and research about some of the features to make a 3D film smooth and visually attractive. My last goal is how to do a storyboard. I would research how to communicate a simple or a complex idea from the animator narrative standpoint. The end result of this creative project will have an enormous impact in my future professional work as an animator, and to understand how to become a successful filmmaker in the animation industry.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1025/thumbnail.jp

In this project, I illustrate the interdisciplinarity of international, intercultural creative writing and history through the construction of my short story, “The Lord of Pandemonium.” I wrote it for my class in Writing Fiction, in which I developed my own writing process based on drafting, research and revision in a multidisciplinary approach. Although multidisciplinarity in storytelling offer refers to the use of multiple media resources (picture, video, audio) which complement the story, my approach explores the steps taken in order to create a story in an existing historical context, honing in from other subject areas in academia but maintaining a single dimension to storytelling in written words. My process includes research of the cultural and international context as well as the process of revision. The research I have done contributed to the composition of the reality in which the story takes place: the period of instability immediately preceding the Rwanda genocide. I went through academic articles and online research of news pieces, which offered accounts and analysis of the genocide. Together, these offered the basic structuring of the world I wrote in. I used the compiled data to construct not only a three-dimensional “map” or “scheme” of the world in which the story takes place, but also a historical context that explains why things were the way they were at a political, cultural and individual level. The second section of my process is based on revision, which prompted me to wonder how I could offer a different account of history. For revision I honed in on Diane Lefer’s essay “Breaking the ‘rules’ of story structure,” in which she argues in favor of the breaking of conventions in writing – how a story can be told in a new way. In other words, “how could I offer a different perspective to read this historical event?” Instead of weighing experiences against facts and trying to balance them out, I decided to expose facts through a narrative. Revision is about trying to get a fresh perspective on the story’s subject, so my story is about the people who do not show up in detail in history books or research. It is not factual in its character-driven plot, but every event that alters the character’s life and experiences is based on fact. Although I make use of history to bring life to the character, in my revision I honed in on individuality. How is an individual impacted by ethnic conflict, post-colonial society and which side does he take? How does that affect his perspective of the world and his personal relationships? As a person, how would this setting change the way a character sees the world? To me, that is a special kind of storytelling because I am focusing on the humanity behind history and on how people’s hands form and destroy their futures. That is what makes storytelling personal, relatable and even educational. Different perspectives, different opinions prompt learning and personal connections. My effort to try to reach for those who have not had their voices heard and trying to learn about an entirely different country is a form of creating and accepting dissent, new voices that contribute to political debate and reach people’s hearts. That public debate, which is essential for a functional democratic society, can be prompted by these revisions. I consider myself better for driving off the beaten path and deviating from our common historical knowledge. I think sharing this process can help other people learn, grow and see beyond the current, established and detached accounts of history and connect to the past in a more human wa