Examples of Proposal Submissions
Name: Timothy Carroll
Title: Telling Stories: Narrative, Enforced Silence and Implications in a Social Framework
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Larry Schor
The narrative holds the capacity to provide the life-blood of our existence by both defining us within the context of our culture and history while providing purpose for our present and future. This research seeks to attend to this timeless and necessary act of telling one’s story. The narrative’s role in meaning making, the physiological aspects of the narrative as identified in the relationship of inhibition versus confrontation regarding individuals that have experienced traumatic events, and the consequences enforced-silence will be explored. Finally, I offer implications for this research in a social and therapeutic framework.
Name: Jonathan Gibson
Title: The Embodied Mind: Does your body know?
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Tobin Hart
This presentation will review recent findings related to body awareness or interoceptive awareness. Interoceptive awareness has been defined as sensitivity to stimuli originating inside the body. Research suggests a possible relationship between the degree of interoceptive awareness and cognitive function, decision making, empathy, intuition, and emotional regulation. In other words, it is believed that the information from the body and one’s awareness of that information leads the changes mentioned above.
Names: Austen Bingham and Jeff McCollum
Title: Carrollton, a City of Resources
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Jeannette Diaz-Laplante
The Carrollton Asset Mapping Project (CAMP) looks to provide the citizens and visitors of Carrollton with an interactive web page illustrating various resources. Informed by the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) Model, we have sought out to map various resources that Carrollton has to offer and organize them categorically (family resources, mental health resources, local food sources, thrifty living, etc). This presentation illustrates the process behind the project, the theories associated with the conception, and future goals.
Name: Nick Atlas
Title: The Fountain of Youth
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Neill Korobov
"The Fountain of Youth" is an ongoing investigation into both the concept of kundalini and kundalini-based phenomena. Kundalini is the Sanskrit/Yogic term most commonly used to describe a powerful, latent creative force inherent within or accessible through the individual. Little is known about this enigmatic energy which may unite mystic traditions and profound spiritual & paranormal experiences throughout human history. By way of auto-ethnographic phenomenology and a host of qualitative methods, "The Fountain of Youth" sets out to examine the role of kundalini in the actualization of human evolutionary potential.
The Disambiguation of Fear and Other Negative Affects in Psychology Literature Chase O’Gwin
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Christine Simmonds-Moore
There is a trend in psychology literature of authors using terms representative of distinct [negative] affects interchangeably. The objective of this research is to discover if individuals possess the ability to differentiate between some of those negative emotions—specifically fear, anxiety, and dread. The method will consist of issuing two surveys to students at UWG. The first survey, already complete, was designed to determine which situations are the most representative of the three affects listed. By taking the most representative situations as scored by the first survey, a second survey can be designed that would gauge how well subjects can distinguish between those situations representing the three affects listed.
Name: K. Nicole Hale Title: Creative Expression and Art Therapy: Autoethnography of a Healing Healer Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Kathy Skott-Myhre
Autoethnography is ethnographic inquiry that utilizes autobiographic materials as primary data. Differing from other self-narrative writings such as autobiography and memoir, autoethnography emphasizes cultural analysis of the researcher’s behaviors, thoughts, and experiences in relation to others in society. The presentation will outline this method along with similar qualitative approaches while also highlighting the presenter’s experiences of creative techniques and their role in healing at-risk youth in inpatient settings. Finally, the presentation outlines both personal experiences and struggles the author has tapped into while using creative expression as the primary advisor for research.
Name: Ron Hopkins
Title: Logic, Metaphor and Paradox in the Non-Mathematician’s Mathematical Reasoning
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Christine Simmonds-Moore
The cognitive science of mathematics concerns the nature of mathematical ideas. How we understand mathematical results is dependent upon our understanding of mathematical ideas. This presentation concerns three aspects of how the ‘non-mathematician’ (i.e, those who struggle with mathematical ideas) understands mathematics in terms of theory, concepts and practice. This presentation will consider concepts such as these through the lens of embodied cognition and the conceptual metaphor model for numerical ideas. Classical views of mathematical philosophy are considered alongside contemporary neural research into how our brains produce these ideas. Implications for future research are also discussed.
Name: Michael A. Frazier, LPC
Title: KwaZulu-Natal: A Conduit into the Experience of Letting Go and BE-ing Present
Sponsoring Faculty: Dr. Donadrian Rice
For the past two years I have experienced the honor of coming to know the children, people, land, and culture of the KwaZulu-Natal community through a service-based mission trip. I initially presumed that I traveled to help their community, when in fact, I became inspired (Hart), and experienced a fluid transformation with-in (Heidegger) Self (Freedman and Combs.) These experiences restructured my beingness-in-the-world as a person and therapist. These experiences transcended my perspective regarding vulnerability (Brown), gratitude (Brown), being present (Hanh), and acceptance (Kubler-Ross). I postulate that the previously mentioned attributes are essential while serving in the field of psychology.