Interested in attending or volunteering? Email ohio.honors.conference@gmail.com to learn more. The event will take place in the Living Learning Center on March 23 and 24, 2026.
“Mind’s Eye: Research, Imagination, and Point of View”
Multidisciplinary Honors Conference
March 23-24, 2026
March 23-24, 2026
Multidisciplinary Honors Conference
About the Conference
Honors at Ohio University is hosting our third annual conference for honors students’ work in progress. Submissions for presentation proposals are now open! The deadline to submit proposals is Tuesday, February 24, 2026.
So much great work is created through a process. That process might involve questioning, discovering, retooling, and navigating challenges. This conference celebrates the journey of creative, research, and community engagement.
We welcome presentations on research projects, community engagement, and creative activities that are either complete or works in progress, meaning that we welcome presentations on work at various stages, from those just starting out and looking for feedback to those with conclusions and results they want to share. These projects may be, for example, a research study on water quality, an exploration of how you are preparing for a musical performance, or reflections on your leadership of a student group.
We welcome presentations lasting 7-10 minutes using PowerPoint or similar formats.
The Big Picture
Our theme this year is mind’s eye—research, imagination, and point of view. The “mind's eye" represents the power of research to help us see beyond what is immediately visible, using imagination, perspective, and critical inquiry to explore new ideas and possibilities. Each presentation should address how your project or leadership/community engagement experience has cultivated intellectual growth, self-awareness, and/or a new way in which you understand or perceive the world. Your presentation should also share the methods you're using or thinking about using to pursue your research or engagement, and any challenges you have encountered or anticipate encountering along the way.
Your presentation should also share the methods you're using or thinking about using to explore these issues, and any challenges you have encountered or anticipate encountering along the way.
A Celebration of Multidisciplinary Connections
This conference also celebrates multidisciplinary connections. We welcome undergraduate students of all years, fields, and majors. We especially encourage first-year honors students to attend and/or present works in progress at this conference as a way to connect with other students, faculty, and staff who share your interests.
Presentations will be grouped into panels on related topics across disciplines. Presenters will also have the opportunity to hone their presentation skills in advance of the conference through preparatory workshops.
Submit a Proposal to Present
To apply: submit your proposal to ohio.honors.conference@gmail.com by February 24, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. EST. Subject: CFP Submission (Last name)
We welcome presentations lasting 7-10 minutes using PowerPoint or similar formats. We will host a virtual workshop to help presenters craft their presentations prior to the conference.
Please attach a Word document with your maximum 250-500-word proposal, including:
- Your name, major(s), minor(s), and year (e.g., first year, sophomore, junior, senior)
- Project title and any project mentors
- Main question(s) the project endeavors to answer
- An explanation of your project’s context, or the social, scientific, environmental, cultural, and/or political backgrounds that make your project’s goals and questions meaningful to a general audience of your undergraduate peers
- Tools, methods, and resources you are using or plan to use to approach answers
- Challenges anticipated or already faced
- If applicable, conclusions and results, even if partial
- Your anticipated availability between 1 and 8 p.m. on March 23 and 24, 2026.
Past Awardees
Learn more about past awardees and their projects by clicking on the year.
2025 Awardees
- Best Presentation by a Student with Freshman Class Standing: Kieran Bakunas, "A Weed Is but an Unloved Flower: Using Art to Make Activism More Accessible"
- Best Presentation by a Student with Sophomore Class Standing: Elizabeth Savitski, "Window Pain: A Survey of Avian Window Collisions on Ohio University's Athens Campus"
- Best Presentation by a Student with Junior Class Standing: Octavia Hogue, "Temperature Regulation of Virulence in Staphylococcus aureus"
- Best Presentation by a Student with Senior Class Standing: Nora Anderson, "Investigating the Role of Supercoiling on Gene Expression in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus"
2024 Awardees
- Best Presentation by a Student with Senior Class Standing: Quinn Bennett, “CO2 Mineralization Reactor Design and Testing”
- Best Presentation by a Student with Junior Class Standing: Gabriel Morgan, “Decoding Infectious Disease in Appalachian Ohio”
- Best Presentation by a Student with Sophomore Class Standing: Anna Miller, “Understanding the role of Sirt5 in obesity-associated osteoarthritis development in the hip joint”
- Best Presentation by a Student with Freshman Class Standing: Matthew Doron, "Reimaging Renaissance: Three Elizabethan Comedies, One Forest”
2026 Conference Presentation Schedule
Living Learning Center, room 150
Monday, March 23
3:00 to 4:00 = Perception, Bias, and Success in Our Learning Environments
Olivia Osmun and Sarah Roop, “Exploring Honors Students’ Perceptions of Learning Environment”
Antonio Chicatelli, “Corpus analysis of foreign accent bias on Ratemyprofessors.com”
Eden Truax, “Lived Mathematics: Subverting Mathematical Subjectivity through Conversations and Posters”
Allison Nicoll, “Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies”
4:00 to 5:00 = Politics, History, and Activism
Emily Hall, “The Cradle of Nazism: A German Town’s Early Embrace of National Socialism”
Sophia Rooksberry, “AIDS in American Art: Lived and Derived”
Additional presenter TBA
5:00 to 6:00 = Place and Identity in Medicine and Education
Julia Peter, “Evaluating the Impact of ‘Counting My Nutrition’ on Appalachian Third Graders’ Nutrition Knowledge, Food Attitudes, and Dietary Intake: A Pilot Study”
Lily Herriott, “Sickness, Shame, and the Self: A Narrative Medicine-Minded Approach to Autobiographical Illness Narratives”
Lily Chongswatdi, “Heart of Logan”
Alyssa Gray, “The Role of Place in Shaping Educational Achievement”
6:00 to 7:00 = Responding to Disaster and Environmental Crises
Reeves Rogers, “Flight Control of a Pitch-decoupled Tilt-rotor Drone and Applications to Aerial Radiation Detection”
Alexandra Hopkins, “Flashpoint: A narrative inquiry of the East Palestine train derailment, three years later”
Ella Grey, “Scaling Circularity: Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing with Recycled Components”
Tuesday, March 24
3:00 to 4:00 = Urbanization, Infrastructure, People, and the Environment
Rose Mogford, “Unearthing Forgotten Histories: Exploring Cemetery Preservation as a Means of Mitigating Historical Erasure”
Sean Michael, “Turning off the Tap: Gentrification and Water Access in the Neoliberal City”
Cierra Willis, “Addressing Conservation through the Lens of Molecular Biology: Genetic Hybridization and Foraging Ecology of Eastern Coyotes”
Elizabeth Savitski, “What You Can Do to Save the Birds"
4:00 to 5:00 = Exploring Fundamental Questions in Chemistry and Physics
Jacqueline Kuroda, “Commissioning of a High-Purity Germanium Detector for Neutron Activation Analysis”
Leah Fraker, “Computational Biochemistry for Ligand-RNA Interactions”
Additional presenter TBA
5:00 to 6:00 = Health and Wellness in College-aged Students and Youth
Lauren Staigers, “Maltreatment and Aggression in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analytic and Systematic Review”
Annaliese Edman, “Auditory and Visual Processing Deficits Post mTBI in College Athletes Found Using Electrophysiological Measures”
Sarah Lawrence, “Running on Empty: Using Wearable IMUs to Quantify Gait Breakdown Over 50 Kilometers”
Conference planning committee: Tika Alidu Banuha, Demba Ceesay, Chris Lewis, and Latif Sabayike
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Register to Volunteer
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Questions?
If you have any questions, please email Chris Lewis at christopherlewis@ohio.edu and/or Tika Alidu Banuha at ta472624@ohio.edu. We look forward to reading your proposals and strongly encourage you to apply!