OSHAWA -- Trent University’s Oshawa campus recently hosted a meeting of the minds, allowing students and faculty to share and discuss their research with the community.
The session, open to the public on Wednesday, April 8, included information on what’s known as the dark triad of personality, which includes Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sub-clinical psychopathy. There was a history lesson about military officers whose memoirs claim they had affairs and flirted with nuns in Portugal when France invaded in the 19th century.
Most of the students presenting were showcasing their undergraduate thesis. Emily Baker, a psychology student, talked about her thesis ‘Remember the RIF, Forget the Raff: How Categorization Can Cause Forgetting’. Her research showed when people are taught a piece of information and are then tested on only a portion of it, they often forget the untested portion.
“It could be used for education, for how we test people, especially in younger people,” says Ms. Baker.
Some of the other topics discussed were ‘Measuring Beauty: Victorian Space-Time Aesthetics’ and ‘What Your Family and a Tribe in New Guinea Share that Stops Capitalism in Its Tracks’.
“It’s a celebration of the research we do and our small community,” says Rita Bate, an English professor and co-organizer of the event.
The presentations were split into four sessions, with each session ending in a question period. The sessions had names such as ‘Theories of Everything’ and ‘Recoveries and Discoveries’. Academic disciplines represented included business, philosophy, anthropology and psychology.
The event was created to allow the commingling of different academic institutes to find common ground in their research, according to Beth Visser, a psychology professor and co-organizer of the event. It was also a chance to let the community know what the university is doing.
“It’s about bringing together students and faculty and sharing their work with each other and the community,” says Ms. Visser.
In the past the annual event was only open to faculty but because of the small 900-student community at the Oshawa campus it was decided to allow students to present as well.