Elizabethtown College News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
4/7/05
Contact: Mary Dolheimer, director of marketing and media relations, 717-361-1587, dolheimerm@etown.edu
E-town College hosts undergraduate social research conference
ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. – Twenty-five years after it hosted the first-ever Mid-Atlantic Undergraduate Social Research Conference, Elizabethtown College is again welcoming the annual event to its campus on April 19.
More than 175 undergraduate students from 16 colleges will present papers on a variety of social research topics at the event, which is being coordinated by Assistant Professor of Political Science April Kelly-Woessner, Assistant Professor of Sociology Michele Kozimor-King and Professor of Political Science Fletcher McClellan. Nearly 50 Elizabethtown College students will present on topics ranging from the effect of education level on attitudes toward gay rights, voting and moral issues, Jewish liberalism, support groups for men with HIV/AIDS and block scheduling.
"For the past 25 years, this conference has provided undergraduate students with a unique opportunity to showcase their research in a nurturing, interdisciplinary environment," Kelly-Woessner said. "Student participants gain valuable experience in public speaking and presentation. More importantly, students and faculty alike are able to exchange ideas across disciplines to better their own research agendas."
The first such event was hosted in 1981 by Young Center Senior Fellow Donald Kraybill, who was then serving as a sociology professor at Elizabethtown. Twenty-three conference participants represented five different schools that year, with 21 coming from just three schools – Elizabethtown College, Gettysburg College and Shippensburg University.
The idea for an undergraduate research conference grew from a fall 1980 telephone call between Kraybill and Donald Hinrichs, a professor in Gettysburg College’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. "After agreeing that such a conference would be helpful for students enrolled in social science courses, I agreed to host the first one at E-town in spring 1981, and Hinrichs agreed to sponsor the second one at Gettysburg in the spring of 1982," Kraybill said. "With that impetus the conference gradually evolved and expanded as more faculty froms other schools supported it by hosting the conference and sending their students."
One of the remarkable things about the conference is it operates successfully without an ongoing steering committee or a budget, according to Kraybill. Each college or university that agrees to host it provides the finances for their conference and also organizes the mailings and promotions for the event. "Organizing and promoting this conference takes considerable work, but faculty from schools in the region have generously contributed their time and leadership so that the conference can thrive," he said. "The conference has grown far beyond our expectations and has provided a significant venue for the professional development for hundreds of students to report the results of their research to peers and faculty from other colleges and universities."
At Elizabethtown College -- central Pennsylvania’s premier small, comprehensive college -- 1850 men and women enjoy personal attention, breadth of curriculum, experiential learning and a commitment to serving others. Elizabethtown has been ranked for 11 consecutive years by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top comprehensive colleges in the North.
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