Lindsay Meyer Presents at Buena Vista University's Thirteenth Annual Scholars Day

2017 May 1

Buena Vista University's (BVU) thirteenth annual Scholars Day was held Saturday, April 29. The event provided students from all disciplines an opportunity to present their best original research, academic posters, artistic creations and performances to their peers, professors and the public.

This year's Scholars Day event featured 63 presentations from 120 students, exploring topics from literature and business to science and history.

Lindsay Meyer, a senior environmental science major from Deerfield , was one of the students who participated. Meyer's presentation was titled "Invasive Species: How much do you know?," and the project's abstract is as follows:

Many invasive species can cause economic or environmental harm as well as harm to human health. For our research project we wanted to find out how much people in the Storm Lake area really knew about invasive species. In order to do this we created a survey to send out to students at Buena Vista University and to the residents of Storm Lake. Our research and survey covered six different invasive species, whether or not people knew these species were invasive, and how dangerous people thought the species were to the ecosystem. Our survey will be sent out to Buena Vista University students and faculty, and we will have a day set for members of the Storm Lake community to come to campus to take the survey. We hope to get at least 100 surveys completed between these two populations of people. From our survey results we expect to find that the members of campus and the community will be familiar with some, but not all, of the species, as well as that they do not know how much of an impact the species has on its surrounding environment.

The keynote speaker for the event was Adrienne B. Haynes, a 2010 BVU graduate, who is an attorney and business woman who specializes in helping entrepreneurs develop sustainable infrastructure and business practices. Haynes is the managing partner of SEED Law, a business law firm, and owner of SEED Collective, a consultancy. She is the founder of the nonprofit, the Construction Business Institute, and is active in both the Multicultural Business Coalition and Black Female Attorneys network. Haynes is also a member of the BVU National Alumni Association Board of Directors.

"This is a special event because it gives students' a real-life platform where they can showcase their success beyond exams and grades," said Dr. Steven Mills, assistant professor of Spanish and chair of the events committee who organized the event. "With a Scholars Day presentation, students take their hard work and form it into a new medium or method for discussion. They become experts on their topic and then stand in front of peers and become teachers about what they have done and how it adds to the greater corpus of knowledge in their field."

This year marked the first time Scholars Day and the annual Student Recognition Dinner - which was held later that evening - were combined.

"For the first time, those who presented as part of Scholars Day received an invitation to the dinner and were recognized alongside all the others receiving honors and awards for academic excellence," added Mills. "They deserved to be a part of the celebration of hard work and dedication."