Across Randolph-Macon’s campus Friday afternoon, the Student Symposium of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work gave students a chance to formally present their work and showcase a broad range of scholarly pursuits.

“The Symposium is an opportunity for our community to celebrate the wide range of scholarship at Randolph-Macon,” said Kate Laws, a biology professor and Symposium Co-Chair.

The event featured 176 student presenters, including 32 students that presented multiple projects. For many students, this was an opportunity to give a poster presentation on research projects conducted throughout the semester.

Miriam Moreno-Alcala ’24 presented a poster for her international studies course titled How did we get here? U.S. Immigration Policy. An immigrant herself, Moreno-Alcala explored the path dependency of America immigration policy, highlighting how the history of policy decisions affected subsequent legislation.

“This means a lot to me because I was able to put into practice all the skills that I learned throughout my four years now that I’m a senior,” she said. “And it means a lot for my work to be able to be taken into consideration when it comes to research.”

Research from a variety of academic disciplines was on display in Payne Hall and Copley Science Center, from the sciences, to humanities, to nursing, and more. In addition to traditional poster presentations, RMC students shared their work in creative and interactive ways.

Some Honors students gave presentations on Japanese cuisine, while others displayed 3D-printed artifacts that represented interpretations of the female self in the works of Spanish playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca.

Elsewhere on campus, music students performed recitals for wind, percussion, and string instruments, physics students demonstrated the operation of a Tesla coil and the spectroscopy of different elements, and the Franklin Debating Society hosted an oratory competition.