By Bria McKamey
Staff Writer
Seventeen Bryan students from a variety of disciplines displayed their knowledge at the fourth Undergraduate Research Conference.
The conference, which was held on Friday, covered six sessions involving many different subjects: collaborative, interdisciplinary, history, business and communication studies, English and cultural studies and science.
Assistant Professor of European History and Italian Culture Salvatore Musumeci helped moderate the conference and said that this was the most competitive year of the conference thus far. There were a restricted number of presentation times, but the conference board received many worthy abstracts, he said.
“The committee debated for a good deal of time during the selection process and we are very happy with the quality and diversity of presentations. In addition, we are very excited as this year we have our first collaborative project [Ashton Alexander and Ryan Wolf] as well as a presentation by a student from our AGS program [John M. Thompson],” said Musumeci.
The scheduled speaker, Dr. Samuel Joeckel, was unable to attend.
However, Dr. Ken Turner, professor of Bible, graciously stepped in and spoke on the topic “All Truth is God’s Truth”.
“As God’s image bearers, we exist for a purpose greater than ourselves. We’ve been given a mandate of dominion that includes a responsible pursuit and acquisition of knowledge in all disciplines. We can have confidence that there is objective truth and knowledge, that we can know things correctly,” said Turner.
Some members of the conference committee will not be returning in the fall, said Musumeci.
“This is a bittersweet year, but we are pleased with how many students showed a continued interest in the conference as well as the amount of faculty and staff support that was exhibited this year,” he said.
