Week highlights student, faculty research

Andres Mendoza of Oxnard shares his psychology research during the 2016 Festival of Scholars.

Photo: Brian Stethem

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – April 5, 2017) The 11th Annual Festival of Scholars at California Lutheran University will showcase a range of work by undergraduate and graduate students and faculty from Monday, April 24, through Friday, April 28.

Research, creative work and projects that apply theory to real-life situations will be featured. Many of the about 200 scholarly projects reflect months or even years of focused work with faculty mentors.

Oscar Alvarado, a psychology major from El Monte, examined how gender affects perceptions of a job applicant. Erin Miles, a Camarillo resident earning a master’s degree in education, studied the effects of small cooperative groups on the self-efficacy of life science students. Miranda Hutt, a chemistry major from Santa Clarita, explored siderophores – small molecules that are secreted from bacteria to retrieve iron to help bacteria thrive.

A student panel from the Criminal Justice Department will share results of experiential learning projects. The panelists include Emily Legrand of Simi Valley and Amanda Juan of San Bernardino, who studied the effect of educational interventions and community policing on at-risk children as part of the Project Safe Passage project. 

The Latin American Culture Research Presentations session will showcase the works of students in Spanish 405 including Paulina Nunez, an Oxnard resident who examined the environmental significance of deforestation in Latin American countries.

English majors will deliver papers and presentations as part of their year-long senior capstone experience. For example, Ayla Afshar-Tavana of Woodland Hills researched rhetoric used by pharmaceutical companies in the United States to sell vaccines that is increasingly questioned by the public and Isabella Iliff of Pacific Palisades wrote about literary accounts of epilepsy by epileptic authors including Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles Dickens and Alfred Tennyson.

Faculty members with the Center for Equality and Justice will present their research on subjects related to social justice issues. Political science professor Jose Marichal is analyzing the social media networks of progressively oriented groups such as Flippable, OurRevolution and Indivisible that came about a result of the presidential election. Assistant professor of religion Rose Aslan studied the impact of Islamophobia on the ritual practice of Muslims in the U.S. 

Cal Lutheran’s Office for Experiential Learning, Research and Faculty Development is presenting the free festival. For a complete schedule of events, go to CalLutheran.edu/fos. For more information, call 805-493-3795.