May 2, 2013
DEKALB, Ill. – Northern Illinois’ Jenelle McCalla (Whitby, Ontario, Canada/Father Leo J. Austin), Shaakira Haywood (Canton, Mich./Plymouth), Jared Torrence (Norwalk, Ohio/Norwalk) and Hannah Savage (Cedar Falls, Iowa/Cedar Falls) were all honored last week at NIU’s Undergraduate Research & Artistry Day for their work in the classroom.
Along with being honored at a ceremony, the quartet also had their work published in a university publication.
"The Research and Artistry Day is a wonderful event to showcase the diversity of research interests of NIU's most distinguished students and faculty,” said Assistant Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Academic Services Dr. Liz Tovar. “I am thrilled that our student-athletes had the opportunity to participate and learn more about the research process. I am confident that their participation has helped them tremendously as undergraduate students and will benefit them greatly in their future academic endeavors"
McCalla, a psychology major and a senior on NIU’s track & field team, conducted a study titled “Autonomy as a Moderator of the Relationship between the Big Five Personality Dimensions and Work-Life Balance” that looked at which personality traits work best in balancing work and life. Her results found that emotional stability, extraversion and openness to experience worked best in satisfaction with work-life experience.
Haywood, a psychology major on the women’s basketball team, composed a study that examined how individuals are motivated in achievement situations based on the goals that have been set. The study, which focused on performance during a foot race, found that participants were focused on “improving their running time from the previous race and doing better than the other runners.” However, participants tried to avoid doing worse than other runners did during the middle portion of the race.
Torrence, a psychology major on the wrestling team, was the primary author in the study “Aging and its Effect on Self-Movement Cue Processing” that inspected the changes in spatial orientation as individuals age. His research discovered that the older individuals in the study had larger errors in direction and distance, which could expose evidence to how neurodegenerative disorders like dementia or Alzheimer’s develop during the aging process.
Savage, a freshman biology major on the cross country/track & field team, joined fellow student Megan Johnson in looking at how metabolic stress affects the malignant brain tumor glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).
