Students and mentors at the 2016 Spit for Science Undergraduate Research Symposium
During the Fall 2016 semester, COBE partnered with students in three undergraduate classes to promote scientific research, create promotional campaigns and spread basic knowledge about health and wellbeing on campus.
Over the past week students have presented projects to us in all three courses, and we are so proud of their hard work. We cannot wait to collaborate with them and integrate their ideas into our messaging and promotional campaigns next year!
Spit for Science
Spit for Science: Conducting and Understanding Research is an undergraduate course cross-listed in the Biology and Psychology Departments at VCU which gives students a chance to learn more about the Spit for Science research project by creating their own study using real data in collaboration with doctoral and post-doctoral student advisors and partner organizations across the university.
Students in the Fall 2016 course partnered with Rec Sports at VCU to explore how participation in recreational sporting activities impacted stress and depression levels, Rams in Recovery to learn more about students in recovery and how to help students with substance use disorder at VCU and The Wellness Resource Center to investigate the role of alcohol consumption, sleep quality, and depressive symptoms in predicting alcohol use disorder symptoms.
At the end of the semester, students presented their preliminary results at the Spit for Science Undergraduate Research Symposium, which allowed students to gain experience discussing their findings and answering questions from professors and graduate students.
Style
Style is a senior capstone course for advertising students in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture which acts as an advanced, intensive study of advertising style, forming one’s own sense of style and the creative process.
Jay Adams’ service-learning iteration of this course also emphasized strategic and creative development of advertising campaigns in the real world by tasking students with promoting COBE’s THRIVE living-learning community, 7 Cups application launch and other new initiatives.
Students devised comprehensive campaign strategies and executions including websites, social media channels, flyers, buttons, stickers, paper airplanes, tea bags and tons of other amazing ideas that we hope to integrate into our content and marketing strategies in the coming weeks.
The Science of Happiness
The Science of Happiness is an interdisciplinary course that examines the state of college student mental health and wellness on a personal and systemic level. The class is an opportunity to re-evaluate beliefs, values, and assumptions, and to do so in the context of learning about the science behind health and wellness.
In this course students look at how individuals can create positive change by reinterpreting their goals and identifying steps towards having a successful experience in college and beyond. Key findings from the fields of positive psychology and the study of mental illness will inform our understanding of the biopsychosocial underpinnings of well-being.
For their final assignment, students joined into teams of 3-4 and chose an aspect of what they learned from their course to spread to the greater student body through a variety of different means. One team created a study on how their parents’ relationship impacts their children’s romantic relationships, while others focused on the positive impact of random acts of kindness towards strangers.
Mindfulness and stress management were also popular choices as students created websites, social media pages and guerrilla marketing campaigns to promote health and wellness among the greater student body.