Published: March 22, 2022 by Dr. Lili Luo

The College of Professional and Global Education (CPGE) held its first Online Student Conference in February. The conference seeks to connect students across the college and promote student work. It aims to provide an opportunity for CPGE students to share their school or professional work, help students communicate and connect with each other, and ultimately foster a stronger sense of community among students.

Out of the 16 conference presentations, 15 came from iSchool students. Their presentations covered a wide range of topics ranging from diversity/inclusion to sustainability. Five students did such an excellent job in their presentations that they won the conference’s Outstanding Presentation Award. Let’s take a look at the five award-winning student presentations. 

Ashley Minnich’s presentation, ”Mental, Physical, and Social Benefits of Dance: A Client Project“, described a client project where the information request was for scientific and peer-reviewed scholarly literature published within the last 20 years about the mental, physical, and social benefits of dance for the organization to use in future marketing materials. The project was executed by conducting a reference interview with the client, evaluating potential databases for topic relevancy, developing a search strategy and evaluating results, presenting results to the client concisely for their evaluation, and mutually concluding that the information need was met.

Beatriz Martinez delivered a presentation titled “Garden Focus Library Programming: A Green Team Project“. This project emerged from INFO 282 Libraries Take the Lead on Sustainability. Beatriz worked on a library programming group project. The group developed a garden focused library program that comprises many different forms of activities and events aiming to promote sustainable gardening to all patron demographics.

Rosario Mireles’s presentation, “Generations of Regeneration“, was about a project also resulting from INFO 282 Libraries Take the Lead on Sustainability. This project proposed an action plan targeting community members of all ages (children to grandparents) and addressing the Three Pillars of Sustainability (Environment, Equity, Economic) through regular presentations and interactive workshops at a hypothetical library’s teaching garden. 

Katherine Hellman’s presentation, “Weeding is Fundamental! What Comes After Weeding?“, was once again an assignment from INFO 282 Libraries Take the Lead on Sustainability. This project assessed the environmental impact of weeding materials from library collections and offered three sustainable alternatives to sending books and periodicals to landfills.

Carlos Quevedo delivered a presentation titled “Emerging Needs in the Field of Video Game Preservation“. In this presentation, Carlos shared his experience doing research on Digital Media Preservation as it pertains to Video Games through his internship at AFI as well as his role as a Research Assistant to iSchool Professor Darra Hofman. His work enabled him to foresee the future work that needs to be done in order to make the preservation of Video Games a more fruitful endeavor in the future.

In addition to these award winning presentations, other student presentations at the CPGE Online Student Conference also represented the wonderful work our students have done. Congratulations to all the students who presented at the conference and shared their amazing work with the college community and beyond.