- The 18th annual Undergraduate Research Conference, which gives undergraduate students a chance to present their research and scholarship, was held on April 18–19 at Texas State University by the Honors College and IDEA Center.
- During the conference, over 80 undergraduate students from several disciplines showcased their research through poster and panel sessions.
- The recipients of the Scott Emerson Health Innovation Award for Stress Co-Regulation Among Romantically Involved Couples in Virtual Reality this year are junior psychology student Faith Swanson and graduate teaching assistant Taylor Himes, who co-presented the program. Their mentors include Chris Agnew, a professor at Purdue University’s Department of Psychological Sciences, and Rhonda Balzarini, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the psychology department at TXST.
- According to Swanson, “the mechanism that occurs between romantic partners is stress co-regulation.” “Their neurological systems and physiological reactions will coordinate when they go through a difficult situation together, which can reduce stress. It has previously been assumed by this process that physical proximity is necessary for this to occur.
- This is significant because long-distance relationships are growing in popularity as the globe becomes more interconnected and technology advances quickly. The question of whether this co-regulatory mechanism can operate in these newly developed virtual settings hasn’t truly been researched yet. In this study, we investigated whether virtual reality (VR) technology can lead to stress co-regulation.
The general category poster presentation honors went to the following student research projects:
- First Place: Efforts for Change: Learning Assistants’ Perceptions of Supports and Barriers to Instructional Change, Hannah Castro, Tyler Atkinson, and Kylie Hedge Advisors, Eleanor Close and Alice Olmstead, Ph.D., Department of Physics.
- Second Place: Ivan Ojeda-Ruiz, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics; Advisor: Abdullah Ibn Kamal and Michala Gardner; Comparative Analysis of Speaker Diarization Techniques utilizing Different Clustering Methods on CNN-Based Speaker Segmentation for Enhanced Precision and Recognition.
- Third Place: Taylor Himes and Faith Swanson, Stress Co-Regulation Among Romantically Involved Couples in Virtual Reality; Department of Psychology Advisors: Rhonda Balzarini, Ph.D., and Chris Agnew.
- Honorable Mention: Nico Schüler, Ph.D., School of Music Advisor; Kayla Jones, The Advertising Evolution of Beyoncé’s Albums.
- Trinity Taylor, The Sarah Baartman Effect: The Black Body Under the Westernized Gaze, Department of History, advisor Casey D. Nichols, Ph.D., received an honorable mention.
- Honorable Mention: Valentina Glajar, Ph.D., Advisor, Department of World Languages and Literatures; Carol-Ann Veretto, Texasdeutsch.
