Casaundra Currin Participated in Buena Vista University's Eleventh Annual Scholars Day

2015 May 22

Buena Vista University's eleventh annual Scholars Day was held Friday, April 24. The event provided students from all disciplines an opportunity to present their best presentations, original research, academic posters, artistic creations and performances to their peers, professors and the public.

This year's Scholars Day event featured 43 presentations from 86 students, exploring topics from art and business to science and history.

Casaundra Currin, a sophomore exercise science-human performance major from Villisca, was one of the students who participated. Currin's presentation was titled The effect of caffeine and atrazine on ant tunnel length, and the project's abstract is as follows:

The purpose of this research was to see if an increase of caffeine or atrazine would change the effects of the rate, depth, and size of the ant’s (Hymenoptera Formicidae) tunnels. For this research we used three different ant farms, with about twenty ants in each. We collected our data for six days, and then we compared all the data, and ran it through a two sample t-test assuming unequal variances to see if there was a significant difference in tunnel length between the three farms. As a conclusion, our research let us see that the ant farm with the increase of atrazine was the most successful throughout our six days of collecting data.

The keynote speaker for the event was Jeff Anderson, Class of 2003, who is the executive director of communications for the Minnesota Vikings. Anderson is entering his thirteenth season with the Vikings and plays a lead role in the organization's external and strategic communications.

"For some Scholars Day is the culmination of their work at BVU, and for others it becomes the springboard that sends them into a field they had not previously anticipated," said Dr. Steven Mills, assistant professor of Spanish and chair of the events committee who organized the event. "Either way, those who participate find in it a valuable growing experience and a strong sense of accomplishment."

Photos from this year's and previous Scholars Day events, along with a video from this year's event, are available online at www.bvu.edu/scholarsday.