Reprinted with permission of the News-Register. • By Starla Pointer, May 21, 2018
Linfield College students displayed their projects, from paintings to performances to research in partnership with professors, Friday at the school’s annual symposium, “A Celebration of Scholarship and Creative Achievement.”
“Our students worked really hard on these projects, and this is a chance for them to interact with the community,” said Travis McGuire, director of social media at Linfield, who invited Yamhill County residents to the daylong event.
Biology professor Chris Gaiser, who moved to open the symposium to all disciplines, said he enjoyed seeing the variety of work on display.
More than that, he said, he appreciated how the event gave students an opportunity to show their work and explain it to people from other areas of the college as well as the public.
“It enables them to understand the broader scope,” he said, noting that’s an important aspect of a liberal arts college such as Linfield.
For many of the presenters, it was the culmination of four years of study.
The seniors will graduate Sunday, May 27.
For non-seniors, the symposium marked the end of a chapter of creativity or research. Some will continue partnering with professors over the summer and next year; others will move to new projects.
As fellow students, professors and community members visited the symposium, presenters spoke about their projects and mounted displays with charts and graphs, photos or, in some cases, models.
Theater projects featured miniature sets or costumes.
Other projects were interactive: Junior Trevor Gourley and senior Natalie Hight asked passersby to solve puzzles in order to choose the progress of a storybook in “Cryptology: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story.”
Research projects ranged from “Cozine Restoration Project” to “Community Engagement Through Academic Museums” to “Exploring Yeasts in Brick House Vineyards.”
Senior Isaac Williams studied a topic that interested him and drew on what he’s learned in economics: Factors drawing crowds to National Football League stadiums.
“I’m interested in economics because that’s how my mind works,” he said.
“I like the logic of economics, and I’m always doing a cost/benefit analysis.”
Williams hypothesized that new stadiums, winning performances and affordable tickets all increase attendance. In addition, he suspected stadiums needed good food and numerous other activities to keep fans interested.
“It’s becoming a lot more than the game, it’s the game experience,” he said.
Williams, who lives in San Diego, California, said he concluded that owners “shouldn’t welcome other franchises” into their areas, because other teams compete for the same spectators. Owners should “focus on product and player development,” he said.
His analysis of the fun-to-cost ratio was inconclusive, he said — not statistically significant.
The major draw, though, was having a new stadium. “That brings a lot of hype,” he said. “People want to see the new place; it’s the wow factor.”
After he receives his degree in economics and finance, he hopes to work in the world of professional sports.
Biochemistry major Shae Reece, a senior from Keizer, presented a project entitled, “Identification of Protein Interactions for the Mitochondrial Transcription Factor TFAM and Mutants.”
Using a yeast hybrid, she said, she cut genes and inserted information, then grew the genes in rapidly multiplying bacteria. She analyzed the bacteria to see how the manipulated genes affected growth.
Reece said the process of manipulating cells could be applicable in the fight against Alzeheimer’s disease.
“If we can identify the interactions, we may be able to block or reactivate cells” that cause or inhibit memory loss, she said.
Reece has been interested in genetics since high school. She chose biochemistry as her major at Linfield to prepare her for some type of career in the field of genetics, such as research.
After graduating, she hopes to attend graduate school in genetics, neuroscience or genetic counseling. She’ll miss Linfield, and especially her mentor professor, Megan Bestwick, but she’s eager for future studies.
Another student, math major William Shannon, applied his research to an area that interests many people: the stock market.
“Big Data and the Stock Market: Distilling Data to Improve Stock Market Returns” used Google Trends word searches to predict changes in markets.
He hypothesized that searches by ordinary people — not trading experts — would show their doubts about particular types of stocks. “A lot of searches precedes a downturn in the price,” he said he discovered.
Shannon said he examined certain areas, such as energy, rather than the market as a whole in order to have a more narrow focus for the research.
He used Google Trends searches from weekdays only, because the markets are closed on weekends.
“We took a model and tried to make more success,” he said. “We didn’t find the golden bullet, but we found one tool to help make informed decisions about which stocks to buy.”
Shannon, a junior from Battle Ground, Washington, started his research during the summer. It was interesting to work on a “problem that didn’t have an answer,” he said.
He will engage in a second research project this summer in another of his major areas: physics. After graduating in 2019, he may to study civil engineering, he said.
