Columbia State Community College recently hosted an Academic and Research Fair to display students’ research to promote opportunities for academic high impact practices participation among students and faculty.

The college-wide event was sponsored by the Columbia State Honors Program and organized by Columbia State faculty members Dr. Anna Duch, associate professor of history and coordinator of the Honors Program, and Dr. Elvira Eivazova, associate professor of biology and Tennessee Board of Regents ambassador for high impact practices in undergraduate research. Judges included faculty representatives from the Science, Technology and Math division as well as the Humanities and Social Sciences division.

“The goal of the Academic and Research Fair is to provide an intellectually stimulating experience for our students outside of the traditional classroom setting,” Eivazova said. “Inspired and guided by their faculty mentors, students conducted literature research on a range of topics of their choosing. Such scholarly activity helps to advance students’ critical thinking, creativity, research and writing skills in a non-traditional way. To recognize students’ creative efforts, monetary prizes were awarded to the top posters in each participating category. We are thrilled to observe a growing number of participants in the fair!”

The fair invited students to showcase their talent and creativity by presenting a research project in the form of a poster presentation. These presentations covered a wide range of topics in science, math, humanities, business and technology. The exhibition was held on both the Columbia and Williamson Campuses.

In the Science and Math category, Elinor Fix won third place with the project, “Drug Usage and Stress Among Adolescent Population;” Alyssa Helmick won second place with the project, “Bone Loss: The Effect of Microgravity on the Bones, Muscles and Connecting Nerves;” and Madalyn Falletti won first place with the project, “Snake Venom: Toxicity and Therapeutics.”

In the Humanities category, Olivia Loud won third place with the project, “The Princes in the Tower;” Cameron Cox won second place with the project, “Casual Theories on the Black Death” and “Meriwether Lewis: Murdered;” and Hannah Fritsch won first place with the project, “"Jerome.”

John Pickle won the Business and Technology category for leading his group project, “The U.S. Government Spent $6.273 Trillion in 2022,” along with his team of William Miles and Bryan Jacobs.