Students show research at 26th YSU QUEST

By Denise Dick | April 8, 2015 at 12:10a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Hundreds of Youngstown State University students showcased their research in everything from medicine and forensic science to engineering and criminal justice at the QUEST Forum for Student Scholarship.

This marks the 26th year for the event when undergraduate and graduate students present their research and answer faculty questions. Winners earn scholarships and prizes.

Jeffrey Coldren, YSU’s director of undergraduate research and a psychology professor, said QUEST operates like an academic conference, allowing students to present and answer questions about their research.

“I really like it because it gives the opportunity to show what we really do at this university,” he said.

Students are working and engaged with guidance from faculty, Coldren said.

Students presented their work throughout the day Tuesday in the seminar rooms of Kilcawley Center.

Some of them were poster projects while others delivered oral presentations.

Junior Amanda Shuluga, who is double-majoring in psychology and pre-counseling, presented “The Effects of Physical Activity on Attention in Student Athletes.”

She gave sets of photographs to a small sampling of female golfers both after they had just worked out and when no workout was done. The athletes were asked to identify changes in the photos.

Although there was a slight increase in the number of identified changes after exercise, it wasn’t significant, Shuluga said.

An avid runner, Shuluga selected her topic because it appealed to her interests, she said.

Second-year criminal- justice graduate student Abigail Frohnapfel studied the connection between police-officer stress and domestic violence. The topic appealed to her because as a court advocate in Portage County, she sees a lot of domestic-violence cases, she said.

Frohnapfel used data from a Baltimore study in the late 1990s.

The Baltimore study looked at police-officer stress by officers feeling burned out from the job, feeling moody and impatient, having high blood pressure, smoking and alcohol consumption and whether those officers committed domestic violence.

Frohnapfel said results showed a correlation between domestic violence and feelings of moodiness, impatience and irritability.

QUEST 2015 included 222 projects representing the group or individual work of 372 students.