Events, presentations draw students to SU Showcase

Even on their day off, thousands of students filled the classrooms Tuesday - for activities and academic presentations.

Kenyan immigrant Muslim Ahmed put her story on display.

Ahmed and other immigrants' stories were on display Tuesday in the Schine Student Center as a part of SU Showcase. The students stood next to their displays and also answered questions.

The immigrants wrote down their narratives at the Westside Community Center. Syracuse University graduate students in the School of Education took the stories and put them on posters, which took months of work, said Kristina Montero, an assistant professor in reading and language arts.

"It is important to document their stories and not forget the details," she said.

SU Showcase, known as MayFest until this year, began with a morning of presentations, shows and fairs put on by SU students, faculty and community members.

Robert Enslin, communications manager for the College of Arts and Sciences, said organizers estimated attendance to be at 3,500 people. He said the change from last year is that the activities seemed to be more concentrated in an earlier time frame, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.

"I was really happy to see some nice, out-of-the-box thinking with respect to programming," Enslin said. "Especially the morning Funk 'n Waffles event in Heroy, with the breakfast panel. It was a neat morning anchor event."

Among the featured events was a series of teach-in seminars in the Life Sciences Complex, including a global warming seminar hosted by Joan Deppa, an associate professor of newspaper, and Jessica Wholey and Lin Lin, both graduate students in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The trio presented their findings from three years of research on the coverage of global warming in popular newspapers in North America, New Zealand, Australia and China.

The group said they were surprised to find how differently global warming was conveyed in American media.

"Even though we are living on the same globe, certain areas are paying closer attention to issues that affect us all," Deppa said. "It's a global issue. Newspapers in different countries see it differently."

Students presented posters and projects in an event called "Sci-Mix," also in the Life Sciences Complex.

Afton Waters and Jennifer Hermes, senior psychology majors, presented their research on the self-objectification of women, how women see themselves and how external pressures influence them.

Waters and Hermes, who both have a background in dance, discussed girls with low self-esteem and the emphasis on body image in the dance world. They conducted a survey of four different groups of women on campus, including dancers from DanceWorks and Orange Pulse, SU women's field hockey team and a group of female psychology students, and presented their findings.

The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs hosted a cultural fair featuring diverse dishes and musical talents.

Organizations such as Impunity Watch, a humanitarian advocacy group on campus, attended the cultural fair. Sarah Benczik, editor-in-chief of Impunitywatch.com and a second-year law student, said she found the turnout surprising.

"I'm impressed by how many people showed up," Benczik said.

Students and parents watched as Sam Sampere, a lab manager in the physics department, made a ping pong ball go through a soda can with the help of air pressure in a magic show in the Physics Building.

Sampere, who has been performing for 15 years, said that he would hardly consider his performance a "magic show" because there was nothing supernatural about it - there is an explanation for everything.

Other events included a breakfast and panel discussion sponsored by Funk 'n Waffles, a model United Nations roundtable, a geography poster session and chemistry research project demonstrations.

After noting how few students showed up, Sampre said it is a shame that more students did not come out to enjoy the show. "This is fun and cool," he said. "How could you not want to share it?"

hakebede@syr.edu