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  Chess Across Global Cultures

  Ruth Eckhart and Christian Gordon

  Part of a course project on intercultural communication, which can be expressed and studied in myriad ways. The students of CMM 316.01 investigated various forms of cultural expression by comparing and contrasting the ways a particular form is used by multiple cultural groups. Specifically, each group researched and presented about the ways food, music, festivals, rituals, dance, clothing, and other artifacts communicate cultural identity in at least two different cultures.

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  Civil Resistance Works

  Kyra Hughes, Garrett Kemper, Sierra Rummel

  UD alum Erica Chenoweth, now Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, has collected data demonstrating that movements of nonviolent civil resistance are effective. This poster will explain her findings and illustrate her points with reference to the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement led by Leymah Gbowee.

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  College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Showcase: The Fitz Center for Leadership in Community

  Abigail Shahady, Alexis Taylor, Destiny O'Neal, Madeline McEldowney, Kathryn Riddle, Grace Hungerford, Nicholas Beltran, James Lambert, Abishek Eagala

  The Fitz Center for Leadership in Community addresses community identified challenges by cultivating reciprocal, collaborative, and inclusive partnerships and learning environments to catalyze a more healthy, just, and equitable future for the Dayton region. The Fitz Center will be presenting its five student programs through Pecha Kucha presentations. As the the audience learns about the Health Equity Fellows, Educational Equity Programs, Dayton Civic Scholars, Ethics and Leadership, and the River Stewards, they will also see how our students learn to be reciprocal and responsive partners, partner with communities to move forward shared goals, and become leaders in ways that shape their future vocations and continue their impact.

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  College Recreation: Club Sport Develops Skills in Leadership

  Mia Parise

  Leadership is something which appears in every aspect of our lives whether we realize it or not. Everyone has been part of a team in some way. The way we elect or see leaders is often assumed or a controversial topic. The program proposed will analyze existing leadership training programs focused on club sports that already exist and further discuss how they can be improved and implemented in the future. It will allow young adults to learn how to formally define a leader in order to set their organization up for success. This program needs to be included at this event to inform club sports participants and professionals on how to properly train the leaders of tomorrow.

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  Communication Optimization in Tiny Federated Learning

  Rahul Theresaraj

  Tiny Federated Learning is a combination of Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) and the Federated Learning (FL) approach. TinyML is a field of study that involves machine learning and embedded systems that can be run on small, low-powered devices, and Federated learning is an emerging approach used to train a decentralized machine learning model across multiple edge devices. Tiny Federated Learning is a federated learning approach on tiny edge devices with low latency, low power, and low computational cost. This approach is helpful in many ways. The edge device can learn new things every day and updates itself to do the tasks better.TFL trains a shared Machine learning model in Embedded devices like microcontrollers while keeping the training data locally without sharing it with the Server. TFL suffers from the problem of transmitting the data from the edge devices to the server as edge devices have limited computational power.To solve this problem, we design an approach for reducing the transmission cost between edge devices and the server. More specifically, we build a model by pruning approach to reduce the model computational cost and find effective means of communication of data from the trained data to the Server. We focus on sending only the instance of newly learned model update to the server rather than sending the whole model update to the server. The Proposed approach reduces the uplink transmission cost. Our Overall objective is to build a model that can perform better and learn better on an embedded device and also sends updates to the server by reducing computational and transmission cost.

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  Community Health- The North Dayton Area

  India Richardson, Ashton Hanna, Katerina Von Fahnestock

  In a conducted windshield survey for the north downtown Dayton area, many safety issues have been identified. Our defined problem is “Safety Hazards for Children as evidenced by a lack of safety measures to the north downtown Dayton area such as glass and trash on the streets and sidewalks, lack of protection barriers (for example fencing around schools), and ineffective zoning for those who attend or are near the middle school.” There are a lack of safety measures and resources available to the community that reside in the north downtown Dayton area as we surveyed this area and took note that it is unsanitary and unsafe for residents to walk, and not safe for children at all. There is also a lack of protection barriers and ineffective zoning for children who attend nearby middle school as there is minimal outdoor space including only a parking lot, and no green space for children to run and play, as well as no fencing around the school perimeter. The school is surrounded by north downtown Dayton streets which are very close to the sidewalks that surround the school. Children walking near the school are at risk for being hit by cars, falling off the uneven pavement, or tripping into the street from the trash that is on the sidewalks. A care plan to reduce the amount of safety concerns surrounding our community was created. Some of the interventions created include the creation of fencing around school areas for an additional safety barrier for the children who attend the school, fixing pavements, volunteer trash collection, properly marked construction zones, and the creation of fences and green spaces in the North Dayton area.

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  Community nutrition assessment, intervention and evaluation: Engaging with various community partners in Harrison Township

  Amelia Deerwester, Emma Klinger, Anna Madachy, Madeline Dodenhoff, Khala Powell, Maria Vilsack, Nicole Palmieri, Meghan McCabe, Erin Prendergast, Lori Rakes, Anna White, Sarah McDonnell, Anna Carragher, Ian McDonald, Travis Manring, Jenna Brus, Katherine Borst, Matthew Stubenfoll, Kassidy McGlone, Caitlin Sheehan, Brooklynn Kaylor-Owens, Benjamin Russell Ronald Jones

  Five group of students in the community nutrition course engaged with three community partners within or near Harrison Township: Northridge Schools, the Wesley Center and New City Church. Each group completed a community nutrition needs assessment to identify a nutrition problem within the target population and assets within the community. Secondly, they developed and implemented a nutrition intervention to address the identified problem. Lastly, they evaluated the intervention using process, impact and outcome-based measures. For this presentation, each group will present their findings and discuss the development and implementation of the nutrition intervention.

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  Compact atto-joule-per-bit bus-coupled photonic crystal nanobeam switches

  Jianhao Shen

  Over the past decade, the benefits of photonics over electronics such as ability to achieve high bandwidth, high interconnectivity and low latency, together with the high maturity of silicon photonics foundries has spurred robust applications in optical transceivers and in classical and quantum computing. In both application areas, silicon microring resonators (MRRs) using carrier depletion effects in p-n junctions represent the most compact optical switches manufacturable at high volume with 5.2fJ/bit power consumption. Matrix computation approaches as well wavelength-division-multiplexed modulators require several MRRs in series coupled to the silicon waveguide optical bus. Such architectures are potentially limited to ~30 by the limited free-spectral range (FSR) of an individual MRR. However, with ever increasing data volumes, there is a need to process larger matrices and/or modulate more wavelengths in the telecom bands along a single silicon bus channel. Photonic crystal (PC) dielectric structures confine an optical mode to sub-micron mode volumes and have shown the potential to reach 0.1fJ switching energies. Research till date on PC devices have centered on either inline one-dimensional PC nanobeam structures or on two-dimensional PC waveguide coupled microcavity configurations. In this paper, through detailed electrical and optical simulations, we demonstrate the feasibility to achieve compact switches with 1dB insertion loss, 5dB extinction and ~260aJ/bit switching energies in the bus-coupled 1D photonic crystal nanobeam platform. Resonance linewidths < 0.1nm and FSR > 300nm enable energy efficient computing of larger matrices with ~200 resonators in series separated by ~0.5nm wavelength over the entire C+L bands. Device architectures will be presented.

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  Comparing Amount of Mechanical Work and Metabolic Cost between Two Kettlebell Swing Protocols

  Daniel Vencel

  The kettlebell swing has been touted as having both cardiovascular-driven metabolic and strength benefits which several studies have investigated. However, to the authors’ knowledge, none have researched the work economy of the exercise by capturing both mechanical work and metabolic cost. Here, we implement a commonly studied kettlebell swing protocol consisting of short intervals of 20 reps and 30 seconds of rest and compare it to longer intervals of 60 reps followed by 90 seconds of rest. Work-rest ratio was 1:1 for both protocols based on a consistent cadence (short: 36.75 ± 2.12 vs. long: 37.08 ± 1.66 reps/min). Total volume was the same. A group of 6 young adults, familiar with the kettlebell swing, performed both protocols separated by 20 minutes of rest. To calculate total mechanical work performed (J/kg), we used the Noraxon motion capture system. Oxygen consumption (VO2) and other metabolic variables were captured using a metabolic cart (Parvo). We hypothesized that longer intervals might challenge form due to muscle fatigue, thereby changing economy despite matched work-rest ratios and total volume. Contrary to our hypothesis, there is no statistical significance in total mechanical work (short: 1043 ± 261 J/kg vs long: 1159 ± 334 J/kg, paired t-test: p = 0.49) between the two protocols. Similarly, total VO2 (short: 121 ± 14 vs long: 126 ± 15 vs long: mL/kg; paired t-test: p = 0.62) was not significantly different and the total work economy, total VO2 divided by total work, was also not significantly different (short: 0.122 ± 0.031 ml/J vs long: 0.118 ± 0.043 ml/J; paired t-test: p = 0.34). These findings suggest protocols of the same work-rest ratios for the kettlebell swing elicit similar work even with different duration intervals.

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  Competition Versus Choice: Evolution Along a Narrow Path in Drosophila β2 Tubulin

  Olivia Parson

  The Drosophila melanogaster β2 protein (Dmβ2) has sustained a long evolutionary stasis for the last 60 million years. Even small changes to the protein’s primary amino acid sequence render it non-functional, suggesting its stasis may be due to stringency in the structure/function relationship. This project seeks to understand what has prevented Dmβ2 from evolving, with the two main hypotheses being that Dmβ2 either exists as an ideal protein configuration that competitively bests all alternates or that Dmβ2 is the only possible configuration that will support spermatogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster. In order to test these hypotheses, the ability of other proteins to rescue β2 function must be assessed. Previous work done to test β2 function used the major, non sperm-generator tubulin (β1) as a backbone to test the function of candidate sperm-generating residues. While sperm-generating residues were identified, none were sufficient to rescue fertility in a Dmβ2 null background. This project represents a different approach to analyzing the evolutionary stasis of Dmβ2 by testing the ability of a known sperm-generating ortholog from Glossina morsitans (commonly known as the tsetse fly) to rescue fertility. This sequence is 96% identical to Dmβ2 and is of particular interest because it is the closest relative to Drosophila melanogaster that possesses a variation in β2 sequence. When expressed in a Dmβ2 null background, the tsetse fly β2 (Gmβ2) generates long-tailed, fertile sperm when examined by light microscopy on testis samples and fertility tests between transgenic males and virgin wild-type females. This evidence supports the first of the two hypotheses outlined above, that β2 alternates exist but Dmβ2 is competitively superior. This shows the potential for β2 to participate in the process of evolution, potentially through allelic effects on sperm-tail length, which plays an important role in the retention of sperm in the female reproductive tract. Comparative analyses of outgroups, such as the human β2 ortholog (Hsβ3), will provide further information necessary to assess the roles of generic aspects of β2 such as motility versus more lineage-specific properties such as sperm tail length in the process of spermatogenesis.

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  Connecting Compositions of Gustav Holst: Folk Songs and The Planets

  Rachel Dalrymple

  Gustav Holst, a British composer from the early 1900’s, is most well-known for writing “The Planets,” an orchestral suite with movements for each of the planets and their corresponding astrological personalities. A significant portion of Holst’s lesser-known compositions were based on British folk songs. In my thesis, I am exploring the connections between Holst’s folk song-based pieces and “The Planets” in terms of the compositional devices of meter, tonality, orchestration, and melody. These compositional devices are threads that connect both types of pieces together and define Holst’s characteristic style.

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  Conservation of testis protein structure and function revealed in a swapping experiment of human testis tubulin in the fly D. melanogaster

  Rihanna Domingos

  Drosophilid spermtails are the peacock feathers of the world of sperm by virtue of their incredible length, from 2mm in Drosophila melanogaster to over 5cm in D. bifurca. D. melanogaster use a specialized, testis-specific B2 tubulin isoform to generate the microtubule scaffolding of their spermtail axoneme. Structure/function tests show B2 does not tolerate change, even small alterations in its amino acid sequence render it non-functional. This sensitivity is reflected in its evolutionary stasis, the Drosophilid B2 protein has not evolved at a single amino acid in 60 million years. There are two hypotheses for its stasis, either 1) the DmB2 protein is an ideal configuration that has outcompeted variants over the past 60 million years, or 2) it is the only configuration able to support the Drosophilid sperm by evolving into a corner it cannot evolve out of that is resistant to evolutionary change and templates long axonemes. This is tested by assessing the ability of the Homo sapiens sperm-generating beta tubulin protein HsB3 to replace Drosophila B2 in transgenic Drosophila flies. HsB3 is capable of generating sperm, despite being only 90% identical to Drosophila B2. Conversely, a chimeric B1-B2 tubulin over 97% identical to Drosophila B2 cannot. Comparing the 3D protein structures reveals testis tubulins have conserved protein domains and function, indicating convergence on testis-supporting isoforms across deep evolutionary time.

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  Contesting Human Rights Coherence: Neoliberalism as an Epoch of Brutality

  David Quick

  The end of the Cold War solidified modern human rights’ dependency on neoliberalism. Neoliberal capitalism fosters universal commodification, hyper-individualism, and a standard of excess. A consequence of these developments is that some persons of marginalized populations turn to crime as a means of achieving basic human rights. To particularize, the realization of the self as a rights-holding subject emerges from the brutalization and subsequent de-realization of the other. Furthermore, justifications of such actions may be coherent within the modern human rights discourse. This thesis is contextualized by the historical dynamics and present-day observations of El Salvador, which I take to represent broader global trends in the development of human rights into a discourse of apparently coherent brutality. Given this contradiction, I compare the peril and potential of reclaiming human rights as a popular discourse.

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  Creating a Secure Cloud

  Caleb Cecil

  The next wave of computing is moving to the cloud. The cloud offers reliable, scalable, and cheap ways for companies to upgrade their business. It has revolutionized how we interact with each other today and is becoming an integral part of our everyday lives. However, when companies move to the cloud, they must set up their cloud architecture or data transmission securely. This leads to huge security risks in which sensitive data could be released. This project outlines the different threats and vulnerabilities that the cloud faces. It also surveys the current solutions to cloud security. Finally, a generalized model and considerations are discussed when creating cloud architecture. This model will be used in a case study to validate the efficacy of this cloud architecture.

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  Creating Effective Formative Physics Assessments to Guide Instructional Practices

  Gretchen Obergefell

  Since the 1970s, quality instruction and assessments within the field of physics have become a highly researched area in physics education research (PER). These assessments help identify common misconceptions that continue to plague the field of physics for years. Some of the most experienced students and teachers in physics have misconceptions and pass them along to classmates and students. The research goal is to design an assessment relating to the circuits unit of a conceptual physics course that can diagnose a student's prior knowledge and track progress after introducing the unit. The assessment consists of two parts: a pre-test and a post-test. Students take the pre-test during the class before the circuits unit. The test assesses students’ prior knowledge of electrical circuits. The same assessment is administered during the next class meeting after the circuits unit concludes as a post-test to measure how instruction affected student understanding. The research was conducted in a conceptual physics lab class with a population of 8 students. The population consisted of mainly non-science majors who have taken the corresponding lecture course, or are concurrently enrolled in the lecture course with the lab. Results showed that students improved their ability to define key characteristics of simple, series, and parallel circuits. Data also illustrated that students struggled to use Kirchhoff’s Loop and Junction Rules. Information gathered from this research demonstrates that quality formative assessments provide helpful feedback to guide instructors on how to teach students best. Low stakes formative assessments can be used as formative instructional practices to highlight prior knowledge and misconceptions of students. Teachers can then respond to these misconceptions and attempt to correct them during instruction.

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  Creating Inclusive Community: Understanding, Connecting, and Taking Action

  Logan Trzeciak, Tiernan Lindy, Sierra Cook, Angelic Edwards-Rojas, Alexia Siakwan-Adusei, Daunte Brown, Deja Richardson, Aila Carr-Chellman, Mikayla Petrovic

  Creating Inclusive Community involves students, faculty, and staff who enrolled in UDI 380 “Understanding, Respecting, and Connecting: Examining Privilege and Taking Action” and attended a diversity conference. The focus of the conference was to examine the challenging concepts of privilege and oppression and to develop strategies to create a more equitable world. Come hear the students experiences at the conference and discuss the skills and knowledge they gained to enhance the campus climate for inclusivity and diversity at the University of Dayton. Please join us for a lively discussion!

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  Creative Care: The Impact of Art Education on Elementary Students

  Reagan Finley

  Art exists in all corners of the world and takes many forms including music, drawing, painting, dancing, and singing. This literature review focuses on the impacts of art integration in elementary classrooms. Analysis of this topic is informed by a selection of studies, responses, and opinions from elementary classrooms across The United States.

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  CrisisNetwork for Remote Treatment to the SUD Communities in Dayton

  Parthkumar Dashrathbhai Patel, Upasana Nilesh Bhatt, Samhitha Gummadi, Monika Somu

  Objective:A Substance Use Disorder (SUD) is a mental illness that affects a person's brain and behavior and makes it difficult for them to regulate their use of drugs, alcohol, or other substances, whether they are legal or illicit. According to a report from the Ohio Department of Health, drug overdoses have surged by 372%. (From 1999 to 2010). Also, Co-occurring (mental health and substance use) diseases affect 8.9 million adults of which only 7.4% are being treated for both ailments and 55.8% of people receive no care at all. To the best of our knowledge, there are few interventions that have been successful in supporting substance use disorder patients. In this proposal, we seek to understand how best to create a crisis network (interventions) for communities seeking to support SUD patients during times of crisis and for patients who seek help for their SUD.Methods:In this course of study, we seek to understand how mHealth (mobile health) applications could support SUD patients during times of crisis. For testing this approach, we would like to create a mHealth application that works as an interface to help SUD patients in times of crisis by involving communities like friends, family members, and volunteer users (of the application) who are in the proximity of the patient. We train the volunteer users (especially communities like friends and family) in the app by creating well-thought training materials on how to give a detox to the patient in the moment of crisis and certify them based on an exam they go through after the training. We also train the SUD patients on how to use the app when they are intoxicated and need help. The patient’s side interface is going to be very simple as they are going to use it during a crisis. Later, we will deploy this app for a period of 4 months, we will do participant interviews during the entire period. In these participant interviews, patients and helpers are going to be interviewed about their experiences with the app, its limitations, and their expectations of it.Significance:The deployment of the mobile app can help us understand the efficacy of mHealth applications during times of crisis. It will also make us aware of any issues that might impede both patients and caregivers. Also, we can realize if these mHealth applications are giving enough help to the patients. This entire study will highlight aspects of SUD care and support during times of crisis that future researchers must pay attention to.

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  Critical Race Theory in the Classroom

  Joseph Husting

  Critical Race Theory (CRT) can be broadly defined as a sociocultural framework most often utilized in higher educational institutions that strive to recognize societal structures that promote and reinforce systemic racism in the United States with the goal of reworking said structures. In recent years, there has been a large amount of misinformation spread on CRT, primarily that CRT is harmful to a school child’s development and self-esteem. This project aims to examine what CRT actually looks like in the classroom, why it is important for learning, and how/why interest groups are looking to ban it.

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  Cross-Cultural Educational Exchanges for Peace Through Common Humanity

  Katelyn Jutras

  How do human connections formed from cross-cultural educational exchanges promote peace and understanding? These personal connections can lead to deeper cultural understanding and awareness, which can lead to peace. Many cross-cultural educational exchanges such as Fulbright were created to promote peace and understanding. Cross-cultural educational exchanges now take on more forms due to increases in the ability to share knowledge which supplies more opportunities for conflict and misunderstanding or peace and understanding. Due to this, it is important to have students take part in cross-cultural educational experiences to create personal connections, so they can better understand cultural differences. This experience can create global citizens who are able to understand and navigate the barriers of culture. Through literature review and synthesis, human connection is shown to be vital in the creation of peace and understanding across cultures.

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  Cultural Significance of Clothing

  Ella Doyle and Charlie Corrigan

  Part of a course project on intercultural communication, which can be expressed and studied in myriad ways. The students of CMM 316.01 investigated various forms of cultural expression by comparing and contrasting the ways a particular form is used by multiple cultural groups. Specifically, each group researched and presented about the ways food, music, festivals, rituals, dance, clothing, and other artifacts communicate cultural identity in at least two different cultures.

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  Curating Rituals of Healing: A Digital Exhibit

  Anh Pham, Brian Schmidt, Rebekah Beamer, Colleen Duffy, Marissa Mark, Lindsey Coulter, Tori Miller, Amariá Jones

  Students in the English writing research seminar share their experiences conceptualizing, researching, composing and designing a digital exhibit to complement “Rituals of Healing,” an exhibit on display in the Rose Gallery. In collaboration with the Marian Library, students conducted archival research to explore material, historical and/or cultural characteristics of secular and religious practices associated with healing the mind, body, and spirit. One of the goals of the digital exhibit is to consider the ways multimodal experiences can be accessible to all persons with a range of abilities. In support of this goal, the panel offers American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation as well as other examples of accessibility.

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  Deep Learning Based Channel Prediction and CSI Feedback for Wireless Communication in High Mobility Environment

  Daidong Ying

  With the development of high speed train and vehicular network, improving the communications in the high mobility environment has become a urgent mission for the wireless mobile network. Nonetheless, Due to the high mobility of the user device, the channel between the base station and the user is fast changing. The user devices have to estimate the channel more frequently, which leads to high overhead in the communication process. Recently, Deep Learning has been introduced as a good solution to reduce the communication overhead of the Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) system. Many Deep Learning based schemes such as channel state information (CSI) prediction and CSI feedback are proposed. However, the existing schemes have two shortcomings. The first one is that the current CSI prediction schemes do not support the Orthogonal-Time-Frequency-Space (OTFS) multiplexing. The outstanding performance of OTFS in high mobility environment has been demonstrated by many researchers. The second shortcoming is that the existing CSI feedback schemes are not efficient enough for communications in high mobility environment. To tackle the issues, the objective of this proposed project is to reduce the communication overhead of MIMO-OTFS system and improve CSI feedback efficiency. Therefor, we propose to develop a Deep Learning based CSI prediction scheme for the MIMO-OTFS system and develop a low-complexity CSI feedback scheme.

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  Department of Music Honors Recital Auditions

  Marie Bliss, Amanda Bursch, Megan Carlson, Duncan Costello, Josie Gore, Trinity Hines-Anthony, Patrick Linegang, Declan Phelps, Anna Simmons, Anna Smith, Jason Swann, Luke de Villiers

  Twelve music students selected by the Department of Music faculty perform for a panel of outside judges, who will choose six finalists to perform on the Honors Recital at the end of the semester. Performances will include a variety of vocal and instrumental music.

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  Design across Culture

  Lauren Riley, Kat Brothers, and Bill Farmer

  Part of a course project on intercultural communication, which can be expressed and studied in myriad ways. The students of CMM 316.01 investigated various forms of cultural expression by comparing and contrasting the ways a particular form is used by multiple cultural groups. Specifically, each group researched and presented about the ways food, music, festivals, rituals, dance, clothing, and other artifacts communicate cultural identity in at least two different cultures.