Hosted by UREP and the Steinbright Career Development Center, this session will help applicants demystify the PhD application process. We will explore how to decide whether a PhD is right for you, how to research schools, how the application process differs from applications to other kinds of degree programs, and how to set yourself up for success by planning ahead for the application process.

This workshop will cover the basics of effective communication, and help prepare students to present their work in both oral and poster presentations. Attendees will practice utilizing a narrative framework to communicate their scholarly work, and learn best practices for effectively creating and using visual aids across different types of presentations.

Before you pack up, let's unpack. As your first year comes to a close, you may be thinking about the many major decisions you'll need to make in the coming months and years regarding your education, career, and personal life. This workshop will help you identify important choices on the horizon and practice tools to think systematically about how you will answer them. We will also work through exercises to reflect deeply on your first year experience for relevant insight to inform your future choices.

The 2024 WUE Virtual Poster Session features students presentations on their mentored research, scholarship, and creative work. Drexel community members can sign in to leave comments and facilitate conversations with students about their work. The poster session will run through the entirety of the week, May 20-24.

Girlfails: From Page to Stage

AJ's Custom-Designed major, "Entertainment Production and Design" incorporates entertainment and arts management, theater and film production, and engineering principles. His capstone project, "Girlfails: From Page to Stage" is the full production for the world premiere of the new play Girlfails, for which he is the executive producer, technical director, and lighting designer. This project sees the production through all phases of development, design, and staging while providing a better understanding of the landscape for young theater professionals creating independent work. In this presentation, AJ will provide a peek behind the curtain at the process of producing new work and reflect on his path through his Custom-Designed major.

Using AI to Diagnose Genetic Illness from the Face

Mahadhi's Custom-Designed major, "Human Genetics", combines biology, health sciences, and data communication, to convey a lifelong love for the interplay of nature and nurture. Her soon-to-be-published capstone project is a literature review of Face2Gene, a facial recognition AI that diagnoses genetic disorders. In her presentation, she will present the key themes and issues in the 100+ articles she read. Ultimately, using F2G as a case study, she wishes to speak to timely worries about AI and its foreseeable impact on existing healthcare practices.

Failure is inevitable. Luckily, it's a necessity for long-term success. This workshop will break down common misconceptions about ""working as hard as you can to accomplish your goals."" Participants will have the opportunity to practice concrete skills to prevent burnout and reframe their relationship to their ambitions. This workshop will be led by Writers Room’s Teaching Artist Gabriele Preston, a recent graduate of an “elite institution,” and Ms. Victoria, an elder who led a distinguished professional career before becoming a published author, who will share their own stories of failures and what followed as a starting point for the workshop.

Boundaries of Diversity in Clinical Trials

Cassie’s Custom-Design Major is titled “Neuroscience” and pulls from biology, psychology, and medical sociology. For her capstone project, she aims to show that geography and education levels in the United States are a few reasons for the lack of diversity within biomedical research. Cassie will utilize the resources provided by the National Library of Medicine (clinicaltrial.gov) to collect data on the location of clinical trial sites and calculate the Flesch Reading Ease Test and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Test of trial summaries from Alzheimer’s Disease treatment trials to compare to the prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease and the reading abilities of an average person. These efforts are meant to highlight that certain individuals are underserved by biomedical research, due to the social determinants of health, which will lead to a lack of diversity in results collected by industry.

Sustainable Conversations: A Visual Food Ethnography

Ariana Scheuer’s Custom-Designed major, “Environmental Conservation & Outreach Through Storytelling,” incorporates pillars focused on visual and verbal communications, environmental studies, and humanities. Her capstone project is a photographic book which incorporates a variety of participants’ stories about the relevance of food and sustainability in their lives, how those themes interconnect, and images of their cooking process during one of their weekly meals. The intention of this project is to bring awareness to the variety of ways that people define and incorporate sustainability in their lives, and how ‘food sustainability’ can look many different ways.

William Shakespeare is a household name for good reason. His celebrated classics and literary themes have influenced generations of writers, performers, philosophers, and audiences, omnipresently evident in contemporary film, television, literature, and stage production. For a special live event of Pennoni Honors College’s Pop, the Question podcast, host Dr. Melinda Lewis gathers together with an ensemble cast of Drexel University’s own characters—including members of Pennoni’s Shakespeare Read-Aloud community—to discuss the themes, adaptation, legacy, and impact of Shakespeare’s writing on popular culture.

LeBow undergraduate students who participated in two one-week intensive courses abroad (one based in Florence, Italy and the other in Barcelona, Spain) will present their collaborative research on various aspects of business and culture, based upon the topics, lectures, site visits and experiences during the programs. The ICAs were part of a first ever “dual city global classroom,” where students partook in similar programs and during the program itself, communicated and shared virtual workshops to also learn from the other country. Their research projects will therefore focus on topics relevant to two global markets and highlight the learnings and comparisons from both Italy and Spain. Visting Professor Dr. Emilee Simmons (Trinity Leeds, UK) will be advising and participating in the session.

Bridging Worlds: Expanding Medical Creative Arts Therapies Through Education

Lozen’s Custom-Designed major, “Integrative Neuroscience,” incorporates molecular neurobiology, social sciences, and somatics and dance/movement therapy. Her capstone project is an interprofessional education curriculum for creative arts therapy and medical students, including standardized patient simulations and a framework for clinical internships. This curriculum aims to promote knowledge of the roles of creative arts therapies and their uses in medical settings and establish competencies of clinicians in providing appropriate care and referrals. Lozen will walk through her experience with the Custom-Designed major and the process and final outcome of developing this curriculum.

What would it be like to spend a year overseas, pursuing your interests on your own terms? The Fulbright US Student Program provides grants for one year of research, graduate study, creative projects, or teaching English in 140+ countries. This info session will provide details about the program, the Drexel application process, and tips for crafting a competitive application. Fulbright is open to US citizens who are current juniors, seniors, recent alumni, or graduate students in any major, but other undergraduates interested in applying in the future are welcome to attend.