By SAMI MCGUIRE
Student Writer
On Nov. 20, Northwestern Oklahoma State University students met to show-off their research findings at the tenth annual Ranger Research Day.
Ranger Research Day is held once a year, but it is a part of the much larger Oklahoma Research Day that has been held for the past 17 years. This upcoming Oklahoma Research Day will be held March 16, 2016 at Northeastern Oklahoma State University in Tahlequah.
According to Oklahoma Research Day’s website, the purpose of the event is to celebrate student and faculty research, creative and scholarly activities. Their mission is to “Promote cross-campus and cross-disciplinary research among all institutions of higher learning in the state of Oklahoma. The event seeks to encourage networking among researchers and interchange of ideas among those studying and researching in their respective academic disciplines.”
Ranger Research Day covered several different categories such as art and music, business, education, liberal arts, and math and science. The projects can either be presented in a conference paper or a poster. The winners of this year’s poster section went to “Water Immersion in First Stages of Labor” made by Carrie Schanbacher and Kelsie Fly in the math and science category. The winner of the liberal art’s category of the poster section went to “The United State: Nuclear Fear” made by Ralyssa Taylor.
In the conference paper section, first place went to “Lois Lane: A Depiction of the Cultural Evolution of Women” made by Charlie Wylie, in the liberal arts category. The conference papers and the posters are judged by four main things. First are the main idea, then the quality of the paper/poster, quality of the presentation and the quality of the research.
Chris Satterfield, a graduate student at Northwestern, is a chemistry bachelor degree holder who is working on a minor in biology. His project was “Common Intestinal Flora Identified in Domestic Mammals,” which fell under the math and science category in the biology portion. According to him he plans on going to the Oklahoma Research Day also.
Satterfield said that he recently got accepted to Kansas State University, where he will be pursuing a Ph. D. in chemistry. According to him the research day helps because KSU does a lot of research and presentations like this one. One day he hopes to become a professor because he believes “passing down knowledge is really important.”
Rachel Bailey, a nursing major, did her project over how dental hygiene affects a pregnancy. According to her “If a pregnant woman has gingivitis or any sort of periodontal [gum] disease she is more likely to have a preterm delivery.” According to her most of the research was done through Ebscohost. She said that the research will be helpful to her if she decides to become an OB/GYN nurse so that she could teach that to patients.
Sadik Malik, a junior pre-med major, came all the way to Northwestern from Ghana. He did his research over the affects of music on the human heart beat. He compared familiar music to unfamiliar music. He said he was surprised to find that familiar music causes a greater change in heart rate. Malik did most of his research first hand and hopes to be able to continue and expand his research.
Shawn Holliday, the associate dean of graduate studies, has been in change of Ranger Research Day since 2010. According to him many students for Northwestern plan on attending the Oklahoma Research Day. He said “It’s kind of important that students start participating because in 2017 and 2018 Northwestern will be hosting Oklahoma Research Day.”