Senior Seminar Anyone?

• 21 Apr 2012

It’s Senior Seminar Season!!  That wonderful time of the year when the campus community is invited to a variety of presentations with titles such as:

• Personality and Perspective: The Effects of Having a Sibling with a Disability
• Branding in Higher Education and Its Effective Application in Television Advertisement: A Bethel College Case Study
• A simple analysis of trends in giving
• Erasure: a process of creation through destruction
• Revision and the Writing Workshop: Editing Our Selves as Therapy
• The Effectiveness of Retrofit Wall Insulation Using a Bethel College Dormitory as an Example
• Peace or Persecution? Mennonites in the Holocaust
• The Panama Canal and the United States-Panamanian Relations It Created
• The Use of Morpholino Oligos in the Controlled Gene Expression of Prion Protein (PrP-1) in Danio rerio
• 2D Video Game Landscaping: From Generation to on-the-fly Isometrism
• Gathering ‘Round to Vision the Future: A Closer Look at Western District Conference and South Central Conference’s Reactions to the Gather ‘Round Sunday School Curriculum and the Next Denominational Curriculum

This is just a sampling of the titles and topics covered in this year’s list of seminar projects.  These research projects are children nurtured by their presenter through the brainstorming phase, the lengthy data collection stage, and finally the time-consuming (and often painful) writing phase.  These presentations are based on the written project and report of often 30 pages or more (the exact requirements vary from department to department).  This project is an amazing opportunity for undergraduates at Bethel to do original research which contributes to current discussions happening within their disciplines.  It is also an opportunity for Bethel students to finally share that paper they’ve been furiously typing out on their laptop for the last several weeks.

The actual presentation of the project is a right of passage; practically every graduate for decades has completed a project and presented their project and findings.  You frequently hear seniors (and others) comforting presenters in the days, hours, and even minutes before their presentation with the mantra, “It’ll all be over soon.”  And the familiar jubilant faces of those who have successfully completed their presentation are one of the true joys of the senior seminar season.  So, next time you see someone who looks especially happy on campus they just might have participated in that right of passage that makes a senior Thresher a Thresher.