Thank you to everyone who helped make the second annual GAC a resounding success! Our thanks to Dr. Tony Nunez and The Graduate School for an excellent morning workshop. The GAC attracted over 160 presenters representing colleges from across campus; aggregate demographic statistics will be available in a few weeks. Prize money totaling $3,700 was awarded to 15 participants (there were 15 instead of 16 prizes due to last minute cancellations); for information on how the winners were determined, please click on Showcase or Ongoing Research in the above navigation bar. Congratulations to the awards recipients, listed below in no particular order. 

Poster Presentations  

Emily S. Johnston and Jen C. Owen (Fisheries and Wildlife)
'Disease is for the Birds: Resistance, Tolerance, and Susceptibility in Passerines'

Erin N. Wakeling and John C. Fyfe (Genetics)
'Characterization of Motor Neuron Disease Progression in Cats'

Han Ei Chew (Telecommunications, Information Studies and Media)
'The Use of Online Social Networking by Rural Youth and its Effects on Community Involvement'

Zarraz M. Lee and Thomas M. Schmidt (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics)
'Bacterial Driven Carbon Sequestration Varies with Land Use'

Cate E. Bird and Amy R. Michael (Anthropology)
'A Preliminary Study of the Nature and Timing of Copper and Iron Discoloration on Bone'  

Oral Presentations  

Priya Balasubramanian (Pharmacology and Toxicology)
'High Fat Feeding Causes Alteration in Hypothalamo-Pituitary Gonadal (HPG) Axis and Estrus Cyclicity in Diet-Induced Obese Rats'

Eric Beasley (Sociology)
'Social Norms and Academic Dishonesty'

Jih-Hsuan Lin (Telecommunications, Informations Studies and Media)
'Do Video Games Exert Stronger Effects on Aggression? Media Modality and Identification on the Association of Violence and Aggression'

Steve Johnson (Linguistics and Languages)
'The Effect of Personality on NCS Vowel Production Among Men'

Z.D. Hayden, M. Ngouajio, and D.C. Brainard (Horticulture)
'Optimizing Component Species Proportions in a Cereal-Legume Cover Crop Mixture under Organic Management'

Christopher Latanich, Jessica Liao, Nadia Bassil, and Vishal Gupta (Human Medicine)
'At the Heart of the Matter: Do Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitors Have a Cardioprotective Effect?'

Carolyn Hayter (Counseling Education Psychology and Special Education)
'Social Skills Interventions for Asperger's Disorder: Where is the Evidence?'

Anthony Plummer, Jr. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
'Capacity Scavenging in Wireless Networks'

Hillary Shulman (Communications)
'Exploring Social Norms as a Group-Level Phenomenon: Do Political Social Norms Exist and Influence Participation on College Campuses?'

Glenn O'Neil (Geography)
'Quantifying Error in DEM-derived Surface Water flow-direction'        

The second annual GAC was held March 26th, 2010 on the first floor of the Communication Arts and Sciences Building.

The Graduate Academic Conference (GAC) is a forum for MSU graduate and professional students to present their academic work to the larger MSU community.  Organized and implemented by the MSU Council of Graduate Students (COGS) with the support of MSU colleges and stakeholders, the GAC provides a way for graduate and professional students from different disciplines to share ideas. 

The goals of the GAC are two-fold and are achieved in two slightly different formats.  First, already completed, quality research will be presented in poster and short oral presentation format in the Showcase Room of the conference.  The graduate student is challenged to translate what might be highly technical language into a description that is easily understood by the general public.  The GAC awards several monetary prizes that reflect the graduate student’s success at this translation.

Second, graduate and professional students with ongoing research in less formalized stages are invited to present posters or short oral presentations as well.  The Ongoing Research Room offers a forum for graduate and professional students to hone their presentation skills while receiving feedback on continuing research.  The GAC awards monetary prizes to the best presentations in this category.

All MSU graduate and professional students are welcome to apply.  The research to be presented must have been conducted by the graduate student while he/she was enrolled at MSU. Graduate and professional students may collaborate with others on a single entry.

Benefits of participating in the GAC:

• Increase professional skills in presentation and communication
• Share ideas with the MSU community
• Build curriculum vitae for future career
• Compete for monetary prizes