By Mia Martinez | Reporter
Baylor’s Moody School of Education hosted a Baylor Emerging Research Conference on Saturday, which provided a platform for graduate students within the School of Education to share their research.
Many of the graduate students are earning their EdD in Learning and Organizational Change, a 54-credit program comprising foundational, organizational change, research method, immersion and dissertation courses. The conference not only showcased individual research projects but also demonstrated how the projects are able to influence the direction of education and leadership opportunities.
The conference began with a prayer by Graduate Chaplain Jackson Giwa, the embedded chaplain for online graduate students.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Maria Del Carmen, associate dean for faculty affairs and professor of curriculum and instruction and teacher education for the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver, opened the event. Del Carmen discussed her own research interests, which are specialized towards humanizing research and impacting her community.
“As a community-engaged scholar, you look at impact differently,” Del Carmen said.
Throughout the day, graduate students, professors, researchers and doctoral students each presented their studies and although each study was different, they all shared a common goal. Through this research, they wanted to make an impact and to make a difference in bettering education.
Mathew Roozrokh, a graduate student from Greenlawn, N.Y., is studying neurodivergent undergraduates’ motivation to persist towards degree attainment and explained his interest in this area of study.
“To me, this lit a fire of urgency,” Roozrokh said.
Roozrokh said the purpose and passion of this study was “understanding the students who are overlooked in higher education.”
Another presentation came from Granbury doctoral student Brentley Bendewald, whose study, titled “A Quasi-Experimental Comparison of Two Instructional Models in Introductory Statistics,” explained different teaching approaches toward impacting student learning when it came to statistics and wanting to help find solutions towards helping students in the classroom.
“Find a passion; even if people tell you it’s not going to make a difference, it will,” Bendewald said.
Many other presenters gave similar responses to Bendewald about motivations and impact.
Kelsey Sparks and Dylan Kirkwood’s research study, titled “Unlocking Sharing: How Small Cues Can Make a Big Difference for Kids with Autism,” encouraged students to follow their interests and help where they can.
“If something sounds interesting to you and someone needs help and you have the capacity to help, help because you might find your passion,” said Sparks, a doctoral student from Waco.
