Capital University dedicated Wednesday, April 16, to recognizing its students, faculty and staff for their collective contributions to the university and the academic community through its annual Honors Convocation and Symposium on Undergraduate Scholarship.
Honoring Scholarship and Service
The daylong celebration began with the annual Honors Convocation, a ceremony recognizing select students for their scholarship and leadership. Various awards also were given to faculty and staff members for their contributions to the campus community, including 25-year employee recognitions, new emeriti, the Stellhorn Award for service to Capital University, the Cotterman Award for student advising, and the Praestantia Award for excellence in teaching.
Celebrating Undergraduate Research
In the afternoon, more than 185 Capital University undergraduate students presented their research findings to their peers and faculty mentors at the 12th annual Symposium on Undergraduate Scholarship.
The scholarship symposium began with a keynote address Joseph R. Ferrari, professor of psychology and Vincent DePaul Distinguished Professor at DePaul University, in Chicago.
The author of more than 40 scholarly research articles and three professional texts on procrastination, Ferrari is an international researcher on the study of chronic procrastination and a popular public speaker on the topic at colleges and corporations.
In this presentation, he discussed categories of task delays investigated in the literature: arousal procrastination, where a person delays tasks because of a last-minute “thrill” expected from working close to a deadline; and avoidant procrastination, where an individual delays tasks because of fears and personal, psychological motives. Ferrari discussed topics including the developmental origins, excuse-making tendencies, impression management motives, and self-sabotaging tendencies of chronic procrastination.
The Undergraduate Scholarship Symposium is an annual celebration of the intellectual achievements of Capital students that provides them with a formal setting to discuss their research through oral and poster presentations. Each year, several students go on to present their research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
Read the abstracts of some of this year’s scholarly presentations.