Digital Commons Network^™

An Analysis Of Soil Moisture Under Different Atmospheric Conditions, Justin Peabody

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This project presents analysis of data from a field research site at the Loyola University Retreat and Ecology Campus. Data was collected from soil moisture  sensors installed in onsite pots. This project provides preliminary assessment of quantitative relationships between soil moisture, atmospheric temperature, and precipitation, as well as preliminary indications of water absorption rates by uncovered soil. Funding was recently obtained from the Alvin J. Baum Foundation to install soil cover materials, temperature sensors and precipitation gauges onsite, allowing for more accurate assessment of relationships and comparison of rainwater absorption rates between various ground surfaces on the Lakeshore Campus.

Flex Lab Noise Minimization, Zyanne Fulcher, Nathan Carandang, Maddux Chan

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This presentation describes the process of minimizing noise in the Flex Lab. Built in 2018, the Flex Lab is a large open space divided into three classrooms with two study areas in between. Its open design allows noise to travel easily, often distracting students and educators. During the Fall 2026 semester, our group of five collected data on noise levels and developed and tested solutions. Based on our findings, we designed a two-way AV system to reduce noise disruption and support student learning. This project strengthened our teamwork and enhanced our problem-solving skills.

Let's Talk About Age, Baby!, Kathryn Ravasio, Hector Mendoza

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

The Longevity Gap refers to the intriguing difference in life expectancy between males and females. In C. elegans, XX chromosome animals live longer than those with XO chromosomes. This study examines if XOL-1, the protein that acts as the master regulator of sex determination, is involved in this difference in aging.

Β-Glucosidase B Mutant P41l Characterization And Analysis, Amal Naqvi, Caroline Machola

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This study characterized the β-glucosidase B (BglB) mutant P41L within the Design2Data (D2D) framework. We hypothesized that substituting proline with leucine at position 41, a non-active-site residue, would maintain catalytic efficiency (kcat/Km) but decrease thermal stability (T50) relative to wild-type (WT) BglB. Foldit modeling, plasmid sequencing, expression in E. Coli, and affinity purification were used to validate the construct. Kinetic parameters with p-nitrophenyl-β-D-glucopyranoside and T50 values across 30–50 °C were obtained via plate-reader assays and D2D fits. P41L displayed higher catalytic efficiency and a T50 comparable to WT, refuting our hypothesis and suggesting an efficiency-enhancing, stability-neutral mutation.

The Impact Of Adverse Childhood Experiences (Aces) On The Development Of Reckless Behavior In Adulthood, Cheyenne Harvey

GS4 Student Scholars Symposium

Current literature suggests that there is a correlation between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and behaviors in adulthood (e.g., substance use, crime). Research also shows that childhood trauma can lead to increased risk-taking or reckless behavior later in life. A study by Assini-Meytin et al. (2021) found that having a higher number of ACEs is linked to more risky behaviors in adulthood. These risky behaviors are often ways to deal with emotional problems caused by early stress. Anda et al. (2006) points out that these experiences can cause lasting changes in brain development, especially in areas that handle impulse control. The …

Gamification As A Strategy For Interprofessional Learning, Chisom S. Enebechi, Aislinn M. Dorko

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Background: A Community-based, student-led clinic provides free health services to underserved areas, bringing together students from allied health disciplines to promote interprofessional collaboration and health promotion. Previous orientation sessions were lecture-based with a team-building activity providing limited opportunities for active learning. To address this, a gamified orientation activity was developed using realistic, scenario-based cases designed to exemplify common community health situations. Purpose: This quality improvement project aims to evaluate whether gamification improves students' perceived ability to communicate, collaborate, and understand roles and responsibilities when delivering team-based care. Methods: The project was guided by Bandura's Social Learning Theory and implemented using …

Crystal Science Is Not Fast Science, Seiya Katada, Campbell Casper, Lane J. Waller

Research & Creative Achievement Day

The science of crystal growth is a slow process by which material is dissolved in a medium and particles slowly deposit on the surface of a seed crystal in an ordered arrangement to form a larger crystal. Three different solutions were attempted to create the best Alum seed crystal. After seed crystals were tied or glued to a string, it was hung in a solution with dissolved Alum. Three different concentrations of growth media were used to determine the effect and how to grow the best crystal. Observations were periodically made, crystals were weighed, and additional powder was added to …

The Relationship Between Emotional Dysregulation, Self-Esteem, And Body Dissatisfaction, Daisy D. Trader

Research & Creative Achievement Day

The research literature suggests that body dissatisfaction may have a relationship with eating disorders (Costantini et al., 2026). Thus, an examination of factors related to body dissatisfaction (BD) could be a helpful avenue for better understanding eating disorders. Research suggests that low self-esteem (SE) and emotional dysregulation (ED) may be relevant factors in this relationship (Brytek-Matera et al., 2021). The current study aimed to examine these relationships to better understand disordered eating in adults. Research suggests that low self-esteem is correlated with body dissatisfaction (Abdoli et al., 2025). For example, Stapleton et al. (2017) found that self-esteem significantly predicted body …

Does Positive Or Negative Informal Social Media Impact Internalized Stigma Around Mental Health In College Aged Adults, Katrina G. Wicker

Research & Creative Achievement Day

The purpose of this research study was to look at how positive and negative informal social media impacts internalized stigma towards mental health in college aged adults. I hope to find some relation showing that the more positive a social media video is the less it negatively impacts someone's internalized stigma around mental health. Internalized stigma is how someone thinks and feels about mental health that ends up influencing how they behave when it comes to mental health. I want this research to show that social media is having an impact on those internalized stigmas, and that if we want …

Morphological Identification Of Echinostomas Found Within Dabbler And Diving Ducks, Sammy Schneider, Emma Harms, Miana Risser, Madison Becker

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Most ducks can be separated into two categories, dabblers or divers, depending on their feeding guild. Dabbler ducks are surface feeders and consume vegetation while diver ducks feed below the surface and consume aquatic animals. The Echinostoma species present in ducks may vary depending on their feeding guild. Three species of ducks from various regions of Wisconsin were donated by hunters for examination of endoparasites, particularly those from the genus Echinostoma. The sites of collection included Trempealeau, Marionette, and Onalaska. One species of dabbler duck, Gadwall (Mareca strepera), and two species of diver ducks, Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) and Canvasback …

Synthesis Of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles For The Degradation Of Rhodamine B Dye, Kezia J. Lemke, Leighton D. Stouffer, Elijah J. Murray, Catherine S. Braaten

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Rhodamine B dye is a harmful contaminant in wastewater, so methods were developed to synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles that could catalyze the photodegradation of rhodamine B in water. Iron oxide nanoparticles were synthesized through the co-precipitation method and using FeCl2 as a source of Fe2+ ions. The nanoparticles were then characterized through IR spectroscopy and adsorption testing. Finally, a control solution of rhodamine B and an experimental rhodamine B solution with nanoparticles were exposed to UV light in a photo cabinet to analyze the degradation of rhodamine B over time using UV-Vis spectroscopy. IR spectroscopy showed that an iron oxide …

The Evolution Of Accounting: Historical Bookkeeping And Double Entry, Linda N. Moua

Research & Creative Achievement Day

In present-day accounting, technology  has transformed the efficiency and effectiveness of transaction recording.  Microsoft Excel has become a standard tool since its launch in the 1980s and has  quickly replaced handwritten work. This research aims to analyze the origins  of accounting, specifically in bookkeeping and double-entry, and how it has  proven to be the language of business from the beginning. This research will  initially look at stone tablets from the Mesopotamian Era and into the  development of double entry, with how its evolved origins are still similar  and different today. Other than the history of bookkeeping and double entry,  there …

A Feminist Analysis Of Greta Gerwig’S Little Women And Lady Bird, Tamara J. Hughes

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Following recent attention being given to gender values seen within popular culture, more scholars are taking the time to consider the role that films play in communicating these values. Given this attention, this analysis hopes to look at feminist themes within two films written and produced by Greta Gerwig (Little Women and Lady Bird). I propose to use a communication analysis using perspectives of both feminist criticism and fantasy theme analysis to uncover and understand the use of themes throughout the two films. This analysis hopes to gain understanding of the communication methods that Greta Gerwig imposes in her films …

Forgotten Heroes: The Legacy Of World War Ii Nurses, Emma M. Boots, Anna M. Kunau, Rachel B. Smith, Ella G. Stewart

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Our research project honors Gudrun Stenoien. Stenoien was a nurse in the 26th General Hospital Unit of the United States during World War II. During the war, Stenoien, affectionately known as "Goodie," documented her experiences through photographs and letters home. From North Africa to Italy, Goodie served as a Second Lieutenant nurse for the Army from 1942 to 1944. By reading her letters and analyzing documents, we have learned about the legacy Gudrun Stenoien left in her nursing career. Goodie's detailed collection of photographs and letters was generously donated to Winona State University, inspiring research into her journey. Her story …

Analyzing Accessibility Issue Detection Differences Between Wave And Google Lighthouse Using A Controlled Wcag Violation Webpage, Saabiriin M. Abdi

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Automated accessibility evaluation tools, such as WAVE and Google Lighthouse are widely used to assess compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). However, prior studies indicate that these tools often disagree, vary in the success criteria they support, and differ in the type of issues they detect. Because most evaluations were conducted on real websites, where the precise number of accessibility violations is unknown. Without a ground-truth baseline, it is impossible to measure false negatives, false positives, or the accuracy of detection.

This project addresses that gap by creating a controlled HTML webpage containing 40 intentional WCAG 2.1 Level …

Do You Have A Dog?: Investigating How Teacher Self-Disclosures Affect Student Perceptions, Kylie B. Nelson

Research & Creative Achievement Day

One of the most common questions a student might ask a professor is, do you have a dog? Self-disclosures from college professors have become commonplace in a classroom, but as perceptions and norms shift, teacher self-disclosure has yet to be understood in a modern context. The purpose of this study is to understand how teacher self-disclosure affects students’ perceptions. Using a survey research design, this study aims to test associations between appropriate self-disclosure and student satisfaction. Effects of frequency, negativity, and relevance of self-disclosure aim to be correlated with student affect for the class and professor. Results are expected to …

N-Bromosuccinimide Bromination Of 2-Heptene: Determination Of All Allylic Bromide Products, Natalie L. Olsen

Research & Creative Achievement Day

The main goal of this research was to demonstrate the occurrence of allylic rearrangement in the reaction of N-bromosuccinimide (NBS) with 2-heptene. Thus, we aimed to demonstrate using 1H NMR and HPLC that (E)-2-bromo-3-heptene (E-2-3) and (E)-4-bromo-2-heptene (E-4-2) are formed in roughly equal amounts. This is important because several references claim that allylic rearrangement does not occur to a significant extent in this reaction. The reaction was run using 2.1mL (15 mmol) of 2-heptene, 1.84 g of NBS (10 mmol), and 0.008g of benzoyl peroxide (0.03 mmol), in cyclohexane (9.4 mL) under reflux. 1H NMR of the product mixture clearly …

The Living History Project: Documenting Winona State's Legacy, Holly A. Foss, Kenneth Goroztieta, Aubree G. Hansen

Research & Creative Achievement Day

This table will showcase the work of the Living History Project at Winona State University which preserves the history of WSU by documenting the careers of people who have impacted the university for the better.  The table will display three short documentary films produced by students during the Fall 2025 semester, running on a monitor with headphones on a continuous loop. The films feature Tom Sawyer (former football coach), Jo Stejskal (former Dean of Nursing), and Jim Bromeland (former Professor of Political Science).  Alongside the films, the table will include a display of photography from premieres over the past 20 …

Comparing Dissection Vs Literature Data Of Cestodes In Ducks, Sophia B. Cross

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Cestodes are a class of parasites that are often found in vertebrate animals, specifically ducks. Research conducted by Winona State University students showed that cestodes were the most prevalent type of parasites found within ducks. However, outside research provides controversy as to whether this is actually true. Ducks were dissected by Winona State students over the past seven years, and their internal organs were carefully inspected under a light microscope. Ducks were donated by hunters, mostly harvested along the Mississippi River, from Buffalo City, WI to Winona, MN. Parasites were obtained, stored, and labelled from each duck. A dichotomous key …

Impact Of News Sentiment Analysis On The Performance Of Stock Trading Models, Nindl

Research & Creative Achievement Day

This study investigated how news sentiment analysis improves stock price prediction accuracy. Two Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks were created using PyTorch, a baseline model without sentiment analysis trained using 22 technical features, and another model with sentiment analysis scores from Alpha Vantage’s sentiment analysis API. The historical data gathered spans from 2018-2025 and it covers a total of seven securities at 20-minute intervals. There are three volatile stocks (Tesla, NVIDIA, AMC), three stable stocks (Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble), and a single S&P 500 index (SPY). The models were run in the same testing environment that …

Self-Esteem, Self-Control, And Self-Acceptance As Predictors Of Grit And Resilience, Ava N. Krolnik

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Introduction: The debate between whether grit and resilience are the same thing or different concepts has long been discussed. While they may have different definitions, many claim that they measure the same thing while others claim that they are indeed separate ideas. During this debate, many studies have found that self-control, self-esteem, and self-acceptance are all positively correlated with both grit and resilience. Despite these positive correlations, it is unclear which of these self-factors is the strongest predictor of grit and resilience and if they are the same for both. The current study aims to delve deeper into these connections …

Psychology Internship 2026; Rise Family And Children's Center, Star D. Brown

Research & Creative Achievement Day

This will be a posterboard presentation on a completed internship though Winona State University. The internship was with the RISE program at The Family and Children's Center in Winona. The posterboard will cover curriculum made and lessons taught. The lessons will be there for guests to view and ask questions about. The posterboard will also cover changes brought to the program and the impact those changes had.

Exploring Boolean Dependency Mapping For Rust Crates Aimed At Embedded Systems, Hamilton A. Ferris

Research & Creative Achievement Day

Rust Crates are concise, safe ways to abstract compilation units in the Rust programming language. Each crate can be compiled individually, or some may depend on others (i.e. function `bar` may depend on crate `foo`). However, there is no standard way to compile Rust crates in a `no_std` configuration, which targets the compilation at embedded systems. Existing research into this topic mostly focuses on developer opinion. Sharma et al. (2025) discovered that only 68% of developers thought that Rust crate support was sufficient. In addition, 92% of developers surveyed also used C for embedded systems, and 64% of them claimed …

Progress Towards The Synthesis Of Trans-4-Bromo-2-Heptene, Ava L. Dillon

Research & Creative Achievement Day

trans-4-Bromo-2-heptene (1) is a simple compound that, despite two reports to the contrary, has never been synthesized in pure form. Nevertheless, it could be a useful starting material for organic synthesis. The compound presents a significant synthetic challenge due to a propensity to undergo allylic rearrangement to form a mixture of allylic bromides. Therefore, the goal of this research was to synthesize 1 with a multistep synthesis. Step 1 was to produce hept-2-yn-4-ol (2) via a Grignard synthesis by combining butanal and propynyl magnesium bromide with the triple bond acting as a masking group for the alkene. The alcohol was …

The Intersection Of Text And Theory: Drawing Lines Between Derrida, Barthes, Pynchon, And Calvino, Katherine Bechter

Liberty University Research Week

My research synthesizes major theories of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes to explore Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. These novels consider meaning, reading, translation, and intertextuality from a postmodern perspective, and the theorists posit complementary concepts on these subjects. Using their theories as guideposts, my analysis emerges as an investigation of postmodern tenets in practice. Understanding the way theory functions in these novels invites scholars to access clandestine textual meanings sheltered beneath the surface of playful narrative. In contemporary scholarship, postmodern theorists, such as Barthes and Derrida, certainly …

M.E. Bradford And American Conservatism, Avery White

Liberty University Research Week

M.E. Bradford was a professor of English at the University of Dallas who contributed significant intellectual work to the American conservative movement in the 1960s-1990s. His training in rhetoric and upbringing in the American South gave him a unique perspective on the founding documents of the United States and major events in American history like the Revolutionary War. Bradford focused on continuity arguing the rights and freedoms American enjoy are really extensions of the traditional rights of Englishmen the colonists enjoyed prior to independence. He analyzes the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution and finds a …

The 1778 Fort Pitt Treaty: U.S. Betrayal Of Lenni Lenape Sovereignty And The Start Of Broken Promises, Veronica Riddle

Liberty University Research Week

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Pre-War Cruiser Design And Doctrine On The Guadalcanal Campaign, Dawson Baber

Liberty University Research Week

The development of cruisers and their accompanying doctrine played a critical role in the hotly contested night engagements during the Guadalcanal Campaign of the Second World War. Upon entering the war, the US Navy’s doctrine focused on long range, open seas, decisive battles centered on a battleship battleline with cruisers serving as scouts or fleet screens/escorts. However, this research will focus on the Guadalcanal campaign, which saw close range, nighttime, defensive battles fought by vessels not designed for the task and men untrained for that type of combat. While the historiography surrounding the Guadalcanal campaign is vast, there are practically …

"The Real War": A Story Of Civil War Camp Life, Rebecca Felton

Liberty University Research Week

As Fred A. Shannon observes, “The drudgery and misery of warfare is the side of which the soldier sees the most, of which he complains in his generation, and which his children promptly forget.” When most people think of the American Civil War, they recall the agonies and ecstasies of battle, envisioning the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the glorious folly of Pickett’s Charge, and the ravages of Sherman’s March to the Sea. What gets left out of the history books is what the common soldier experienced more than anything else: camp life. This study highlights how Union and Confederate soldiers …

Experimental Investigation Of How Smartphone And Social Media Use Change Wellbeing, Emily Davis

Liberty University Research Week

As technology continues to advance, there are rising concerns around young adults’ usage patterns and developing methods to encourage healthy engagement. However, the current literature includes mixed results on the impact of smartphone and social media use on wellbeing making it difficult to determine what healthy usage looks like. This is thought to be due in part to variations in the operationalization of usage and a lack of understanding of their unique mechanisms of change. To address this gap, this study examines more closely the differentiating effects of social media use compared to smartphone use. The study utilized a randomized …