On Saturday, Dec. 2, Rowan University’s Ric Edelman College of Communication and Creative Arts held its Fall Research Showcase in the Enyon Ballroom, its first showcase of the school year.

Students and faculty were given the opportunity to display their research, whether it was a class assignment, or to preach on something they were passionate about.  

With over 40 exhibits, there were many topics on display, from topics that are growing in relevance in today’s world such as the development of AI technology and the effects of social media, to animation and its development process throughout history.

One of the topics on display was climate change and Sebastion Benson and Daniel Nunez’s booth targeted how many variables go into individual opinions on climate change.

“All of those factors we did research on show that there’s different levels of opinions regarding people’s education, class, race, where they live geographically, and our research showed that depending on those factors, you can have a very different set of opinions about climate change,” Benson said.

Cameron Main and Fauve Haney went into a growing double-edged topic that’s especially relevant in a college student’s life, ChatGPT, for their Introduction to Public Relations and Advertising class.

“We wanted to figure out if there was a certain number of students that used ChatGPT in their classroom in higher education, to discover if there’s a trend, and see their stress levels,” Main said.

While you’d expect that students in challenging courses with heavy workloads would be more likely to rely on technology like ChatGPT, the opposite.

“We did find out that those who have a higher workload have a lower chance of being stressed, while those who have a light workload and still use ChatGPT have a higher chance of being stressed,” Main said.

Another growing concern is the effects of social media on the mind. Madison Davidson and Deena Dinetz’s booth focused on the impact it has on mental health, with a focus on body image. 

“Our overall consensus was that most people’s self-esteem and mental health were affected by influencers,” Dinetz said.

Their survey found that people’s perception of body image had been influenced by social media, with 71% of men agreeing and 65% of women agreeing. 

“It’s very prevalent in our lives and influencer culture, and we wanted to see if other people felt the same way, and if it was true,” said Dinetz. 

Emily Nolan and Grace Fillenwarth, faculty members of the Department of Writing Arts, took on a passion project for their exhibit. They did a case study exploring the process of entrepreneurial sales communication. 

“We did a case study on Lumin-Air, which is a filtration company that would be put into public transport and school buses. We were interested in entrepreneurial communication beyond the pitch,” Nolan said.

The “pitch” is an important area of entrepreneurial communication where entrepreneurs employ rhetorical strategies to seek funding for their work. These strategies are common on shows like Shark Tank.

“We realize that we are a little bit narrow in our focus in the classroom, and we get caught up in teaching a certain genre especially where people think you have to do a big presentation. We were really just curious about what else we need to do to prepare students to be entrepreneurs, in terms of teaching them how to communicate,” Fillenwarth said.

Sanford Tweedie, Dean of the Ric Edelman College for Communication and Creative Arts, had high praise for all of the amazing work being done in the fall semester, which led to the fall showcase’s birth altogether.

“So we have the showcase in the spring, and we realized that there’s a lot of work in the fall that didn’t get recognized, so we thought we’d put together a showcase at the end of the fall semester to see all of the good work that the students are doing,” said Tweedie. 

It’s safe to say that there is no limit to the minds we have here at Rowan University, where learning and research have no timetables, and the pursuit of knowledge through curiosity is limitless.

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