More Than 70 Students Present at CAFÉ Symposium, Doubling Previous Record
Nathanael Epps presenting “A Comparative Study of Heuristic Evaluation Functions for the Game of Checkers.” (Photo Gauri Mangala / The Gettysburgian)
By Gauri Mangala, Assistant News Editor
Gettysburg College held its annual Celebration of Academic First-Year Engagement, the CAFÉ Symposium, Wednesday. CAFÉ allows first-year students to present their research from their unique first-year seminars of the past semester.
Maureen Forrestal, Assistant Provost and Dean of Student Scholarly Engagement commented, “The goals of CAFE are to celebrate the best work done by first-year students in their seminars and the Phage course, to provide an opportunity for these students to learn how to create professional posters representative of that work, and to gain experience explaining their work to an audience who may or may not be familiar with the subject of their research or creative activity. In other words, the symposium introduces first-year students to what it’s like to participate in a professional conference.”
Topics ranged from “Skin Pigment Alteration in Nigeria and The United States” to “Is Facebook Helping or Hurting your Happiness?”
Students and faculty mingled and experienced each presentation.
Kelly Murphy ’21 presented “Exploration of Progressive Gender Roles in The Matrix and Fight Club” in which she examined “how the different male and female gender roles in the movies The Matrix and Fight Club compare in terms of their progressiveness and how they uphold or challenge existing gender roles in cinema.”
“It was really cool to [present] to professors and I also presented to President Riggs. It was really cool to present what I had done because it isn’t something I would ordinarily do,” Murphy said.
In its third year, CAFÉ’s participant rate more than doubled with almost 70 presenters.
“This is only the third year we’ve offered CAFÉ but it, by far, was the most successful thanks to the participation of the Class of 2021,” stated Dean Forrestal. “Almost all the students nominated by their faculty presented. With the weather being so terrible, we didn’t have as many faculty and administrators able to attend but our students came out to support their fellow students so the ballroom was incredibly busy for the full 90 minutes.”
Editor’s Note: Mangala was among the presenters at the event. A full event program is available here. (-B. Pontz)
