PSFA Students Honored for Their Research at the 2024 SDSU Student Symposium
On March 1, 2024 San Diego State University held the largest Student Symposium (S3) in school history. The symposium featured the work and research of over 650 SDSU students, and standout projects were highlighted the next day at the S3 Awards Ceremony. The College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts had 12 students honored with a variety of awards during this ceremony.
Chasley Schoettle was honored with the President's Award for the Arts in recognition of her presentation Dancing Beyond Boundaries.
“I was told my whole life that as a self-taught dancer who immersed themselves in breaking, that hip hop is not technique,” said Schoettle.
These voices only inspired Schoettle to experiment more and find her own style through the combination of breaking and ballet.
Crystal Choi received the President’s Award for her project, Making Art Museums More Accessible: The Laguna Art Museum, A Case Study. In this case study Choi investigated the Laguna Art Museum to assess its current accessibility and find places where it could be improved.
“Through this research, I aim to show why it is imperative that museums include accessibility in their museum designs and how these changes can benefit all museum goers' experiences,” said Choi.
Annika Wong received the President's Award for her study Exploring Student-to-Student Confirmation, Communication Apprehension, and Academic Self-Efficacy in (Post) Carceral Education. This study compared formerly incarcerated students with those who had never been incarcerated in order to identify similarities and differences in what each population values in an academic setting.
“The plethora of research on students who have never been incarcerated cannot be generalized to this population because of the differences that exist in their academic and life experiences,” said Wong.
For his project No More Brownfields: Branding for Community Outreach which implemented a branding system for the National City Brownfields Assessment Project, Kieran Gomez-Rodriguez was granted the Arts Exhibit Award.
When speaking on why this project was important to him Gomez-Rodriguez explained, “Due to zoning laws not coming into effect until after settlement and industrialization had taken place, many residences are adjacent to heavy industry and abandoned sites that formerly or currently are contaminated.”
Alyssa Moreno received the Outstanding Creative and Performing Arts Award for her presentation and performance, Entremedio / In-between. Moreno explained how combining her Mexican and American identities through movement inspired this performance.
“My research consists of attempting to access and hold both sides of myself in their most absolute and complete form while dancing,” said Moreno.
For her project Why Does Gender Matter? Student Perspectives on Leadership Sydney Stafford received the Dean’s Award. In her research, Stafford interviewed two feminine and two masculine-identifying individuals in leadership roles at SDSU in order to investigate the differences in leadership styles between these two genders.
“Finding relationships between empathetic leadership and femininity, as well as task efficiency and masculinity, allows research to expand through various perspectives and lenses,” said Stafford.
