Texas Border Business
By Veronica Salinas
The South Texas College Department of Psychological Science hosted its third annual Emerging Scientist Symposium to foster and promote psychological science, scientific thinking, literacy and inquiry/research skills among emerging student researchers.
Students delivered original presentations in a professional environment, promoting the exchange of ideas and contributing to a richer experience for all involved.
Participants included St. Paul Lutheran School fourth and fifth graders, dual credit students from Mozart Early College High School, Valley View High School, Sharyland High School and STC traditional students.
Liza Veliz, Psychological Science department chair and one of the event organizers, said the event is meant for students from all grade levels to get involved and showcase their research.
“We wanted to invite the community to be involved, so we decided to design the symposium in a way that elementary school kids, middle school kids, dual credit students and traditional students can showcase their work,” she said.
Veliz emphasized the event was designed to introduce students to research methods and provide them with research experience needed for success at four-year universities.
“It was important to introduce students to research methods at a foundational level and gain research experience they may need when they transfer to a four-year university. Psychology programs want students with research experience and we did not want our students to fall behind, so we are trying to fill the gap.”
Anna Mirafuentes, a dual credit student from Valley View High School, did her project on how pop music affects adolescents and spent two weeks conducting research.
“My teacher recommended some books from the STC Library about how pop music affects people’s moods,” said Mirafuentes. “From there, I researched deeper into pop genres and found out a lot of interesting information on my topic.”
All the students involved went through the research process and used the scientific method to conduct their research for these projects.
The elementary students began creating their projects in January on Science and History topics and were able to present them to attendees.
Carolyn Sanchez, fifth grade teacher at St. Paul Lutheran School said the event allows the students to showcase their hard work and help them develop essential communication skills.
“It gives them the opportunity to encompass three months of work and study and come out into the community and showcase and highlight what they have worked on in that period of time,” said Sanchez. “It gives them those skills of interacting with people they’re unfamiliar with and gain soft skills such as eye contact, body posture and fluency of speech. This gives them greater exposure of how this is going to be a step toward their future.”
The event included a panel discussion from STC faculty from various departments about how psychology is connected to everyday life, as well as presentations from the department’s Psych Lab and Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.
“We want to bring awareness to how psychology is everywhere, a lot of the projects and proposals show how psychology intersects with other disciplines,” said Veliz.
For more information on STC’s Psychology Department, visit southtexascollege.edu.
