Faculty, staff and graduate and professional students from all specialties presented their research Thursday morning at the 2019 Academic Showcase and GPSA Research Exposition.

The Academic Showcase had a poster session that included over 260 boards with both creative and research work.

The GPSA Research Exposition was held at the same time and included a poster session and scholarship competition for graduate and professional students. The presenters were all vying for $9,600 in scholarships.

Alana Anderson, a doctoral student in the prevention science program, presented her work studying infant brain waves during free play with a parent and when they were watching a TV show. She used electroencephalography, which records electrical activity in the brain, and found that there are differences in an infant’s brain when they are doing each activity.

“This helps parents understand brain development and how they can encourage healthy development,” Anderson said.

Lynne Cooper, instructor in the Carson College of Business, presented the research behind a book she is working on about sororities. She said she wanted to create a fiction book that takes the reader behind the scenes of sorority recruitment.

“My daughter was going through recruitment at the University of Washington, and this became my super-mom research,” Cooper said.

Her work, titled “Potential New Member: Intentional Fiction Applied to Sorority Recruitment,” uses academic research, Panhellenic publications, popular media and social media accounts to create a fictional story with a variety of characters.

“Matching someone with a sorority has similar mechanics to matching doctors with residency programs,” Cooper said.

She said she wants her work to highlight the benefits of sorority life, including leadership and friendship.

Todd Butler, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, showed his work discussing whether nature should have rights of its own.

He looked at a footnote of a famous 1972 environmental judicial case that mentioned John Donne, a seventeenth-century poet and preacher. Donne believed in a common humanity, which Butler said means society needs to honor indigenous peoples whose belief systems states that nature should have legal status in the U.S.

“This is close to home because last month, people in Toledo, [Ohio], voted to give Lake Erie legal rights,” Butler said.