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Northwest students, faculty and staff, community members and area employers attended PBL Palooza Tuesday evening at the Carl and Cheryl Hughes Fieldhouse to view poster presentations details students' profession-based experiences. (Photo by Brandon Bland/Northwest Missouri State University)
Nov. 21, 2019
Poster presentations lined the track Tuesday night inside the Carl and Cheryl Hughes Fieldhouse as Northwest Missouri State University students shared their profession-based learning experiences during the inaugural PBL Palooza.
Northwest Career Services organized the event to highlight students’ internships, field experiences, practicums and research projects. The showcase of more than 60 posters featured a variety of topics from squirrel behavior to a comparison of hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap.
Jill Brown, director of partnerships and placement at Northwest, said the primary objective of the event was to help students discover the variety of opportunities and experiences available to them.
“In my line of work I get to see these awesome things all the time, and I tend to go to lots of these poster sessions or seminar sessions, but what I think sometimes is missing is the opportunity for what I like to call ‘general collisions of awesomeness,’” Brown said. “It’s so easy in college to stay in your lane. We’re hoping that if you were standing next to someone (at PBL Palooza), you might be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could do that at Mozingo,’ or ‘I didn’t know you could work for New Balance.’”
Mariah Weaver, an emergency and disaster management major, presented a poster about her experience participating in the Northwest's annual Missouri Hope disaster simulation. (Photo by Brandon Bland/Northwest Missouri State University)
While students shared science research and reflections of summer internship experiences, the event drew employers, community members, faculty and staff, as well as students. Attendees received tokens to vote for their favorite posters, and winners received a variety of prizes.
Joe Suchan, of Maryville, who is graduating in December with his bachelor’s degree in interactive digital media with a computer science emphasis, won the individual category of the poster contest. His poster provide a recap of his summer internship at New Balance in St. Louis, Missouri, where his responsibilities included creating content for sponsored athletes and the company’s website.
“After talking to everybody today it kind of put into scope the projects I actually got to work on,” Suchan said. “I work at Career Services and Jill always talks about profession-based learning and just taking any opportunity to get out there and talk about something because it builds your skills, and it’s always good to reflect.”
Veresia Cloughley, who graduates in December with her bachelor’s degree in horticulture and environmental science, presented the research she conducted last summer as an intern with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Her work resulted in a full-time job offer with the state conservation department and she will continue her research of prairie degradation and restoration.
“This was the third time I’ve actually presented this poster, and each time you learn more,” she said. “This time was the first time that I’ve presented next to other genres of posters like biology, chemistry, geology, things like that. It was just interesting the variety of people that were here.”
Veresia Cloughley presented the research she conducted last summer as an intern with the Missouri Department of Conservation. (Photo by Jill Brown/Northwest Missouri State University)
A complete list of PBL Palooza poster prize recipients is provided below.
