Southwestern’s Largest Research and Creative Works Symposium in Years is Set to Showcase Student Success at its Best
Among the nearly 300 Southwestern students presenting at this year’s annual celebration of undergraduate research and creativity, the back-to-back King Creativity Fund winners will be sharing their most recent success project.
Each spring, the Southwestern University community is invited to come together to celebrate undergraduate research, innovation, and imagination at the annual Research and Creative Works Symposium (RCWS). One of the most exhilarating events on campus, RCWS features a full day of student poster presentations, talks, art exhibits, performances, and panel discussions.
Inaugurated in 1999, RCWS is designed to showcase various student intellectual interests, expertise, and experiences — both academic and extracurricular — that encapsulate the spirit of a liberal arts education. The community is invited to attend this year’s celebration on Tuesday, April 14. A full schedule for the Symposium can be found at southwestern.edu/RCWS.
“There are few more special days in the academic year than our Research and Creative Works Symposium, and that’s because it not only epitomizes, but positively manifests, what we are doing at Southwestern and why it matters,” Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of History Jessica Hower said. “This year in particular, we have students from every single discipline, department, and program on campus showcasing their achievements. They are demonstrating what they have done inside the classroom and out, sharing it with a public audience, and making connections that will live far beyond their time on campus. It’s a chance to experience and celebrate the best of SU, and isn’t to be missed!”
“There are few more special days in the academic year than our Research and Creative Works Symposium, and that’s because it not only epitomizes, but positively manifests, what we are doing at Southwestern and why it matters.” — Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of History Jessica Hower
Student projects displayed at RCWS connect to every corner of campus, including capstone presentations, Southwestern Undergraduate Research with Faculty (SURF) findings, independent study and research assistantship outcomes, study abroad experiences, and King Creativity Fund (KCF) submissions.
Founded in 2000 by Joey King ’93, KCF annually awards generous grants to Southwestern students pursuing projects that stretch disciplinary boundaries and/or apply new approaches to traditional academic methods. Students who submit projects to KCF automatically earn the opportunity to present their work at RCWS.
Zoe Hein ’26, Gus Papasan ’27, and Maglor Williams ’27 are three of the nearly 300 students scheduled to present at this year’s RCWS. The trio has the rare distinction of spearheading back-to-back KCF-winning projects. In 2025, Hein, Papasan, and Williams, along with Carolyn Bray ’27, Alison Dunn ’27, and Gerald Jones ’26, earned the top prize at KCF for their proposal to support the continuation of printed copies of The Megaphone student newspaper.
“We realized we needed funding support to be able to continue doing what we have always done for the student body: providing them with a print newspaper,” Williams said. “We believe it to be incredibly valuable, not only to our community, but also to the practice of engaging with journalism.”
An English major and music minor from Friendswood, Texas, Hein joined the staff of The Megaphone in her first year at Southwestern in 2022 during what was a tumultuous time for the publication. On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, the student organization had just three members and hadn’t printed a hard copy of the newspaper since before the pandemic began. Believing in the power of student journalism, Hein and Jones began working to revamp the newspaper, with the goal of reestablishing The Megaphone as a staple on campus.
As Hein and Jones were able to recruit more students to contribute to the publication, including Bray, Dunn, Papasan, and Williams, print editions of The Megaphone returned to campus in early 2023 thanks to a partnership between the University and the Williamson County Sun, who operated a printing press on the Georgetown square. However, in late 2023, an unexpected closure of the Sun’s printing press left the student organization with no other option but to work with a more costly, out-of-state publisher.
As The Megaphone’s operating budget dwindled in 2024, the organization was faced with the possibility of suspending print operations. Putting their heads together, the group developed the unique idea to apply for funding through a KCF grant. Just days before the deadline, they submitted their proposal for how to maintain and grow The Megaphone.
“It was a little bit out of the norm for King Creativity, where we were looking for funding to keep a project that we were already working on going,” Papasan said. “We decided to reach out to King Creativity and apply for funding to keep things going, and try to do more than we had been.”
While the King Creativity Fund generally supports the design and creation of new tools, processes, strategies, performances, works of art, and narratives, it also encourages projects like The Megaphone, where students demonstrate imagination, the willingness to tackle problems in unorthodox ways, and a readiness to take risks.
Under the guidance of Professor of Communication Studies and faculty advisor to The Megaphone Bob Bednar, the group’s formal project proposal, “Return of the Print,” centered around their reaction to the decline of physical newspapers and media in popular culture. To combat this trend on campus, the proposal sought funding to not only maintain operations of The Megaphone, but boost the number of pages in each copy and the number of copies printed.
“We were all very surprised when we won last year, because I think we all thought that we weren’t doing anything different, but a lot of the feedback that we got was that it was a really unique way to approach King Creativity that not many people had seen before,” Papasan said.
By establishing that Southwestern still has physical print publications, the group’s goal was to uphold the integrity of the high-functioning student environment and remind students that their voices matter. Just weeks after winning the KCF grant, the group presented their project at RCWS.
“It was a really positive experience,” Hein said. “We were in the Fine Arts Building, and across from us was someone presenting their art portfolio. There were a lot of really cool students there presenting some really cool things. To be in the same space as so many diverse projects and really getting to see what our classmates and our peers had been up to that year was really rewarding. I wish we had more time to walk around and see all of the other presentations.”
“To be in the same space as so many diverse projects and really getting to see what our classmates and our peers had been up to that year was really rewarding.” — Zoe Hein ’26
With hundreds of fellow students, faculty, staff, and members of the larger SU community attending the event, the group was able to further amplify their success. In the weeks and months following RCWS, student interest in The Megaphone skyrocketed. First-year student applications rose exponentially, and today, The Megaphone has 30-40 members, around half of whom contribute to each edition.
“The student workers who signed on are wonderful writers and photographers who are really able to produce the amount of content needed for this kind of newspaper,” Williams said. “As we continue to have these print newspapers handed out for free, we are able to cement in people’s minds what The Megaphone is and take it from this thing that nobody really knew about to a very respected organization on campus that is well-known by the student body.”
Having participated in The Megaphone for the last three years, and now serving as an editor for the publication, Williams used KCF and RCWS as an opportunity to take a moment to reflect on the student organization’s growth.
“We are sort of used to The Megaphone being part of our daily routine,” they said. “To have these moments where Dr. King recognized us and to be able to be alongside our peers at Research and Creative Works and have them look at us as valuable and interesting and a part of this community that has its own place and its own importance, was so rewarding.”
With that validation still lingering, Williams participated in a 2025 Summer SURF project as part of their English and anthropology double major. While conducting research in the University’s Distinctive Collections and Archives (DISCO), they learned that Southwestern used to have a literary journal where any member of the SU community could submit work to showcase to the rest of campus.
“Seeing the breadth and creativity of our peers at Research and Creative Works opened my eyes that there isn’t really a place sometimes to see what your peers are working on unless they tell you.” — Maglor Williams ’27
With intimate knowledge of how to manage print publications through their work with The Megaphone, and with a first-hand look at the wide array of student creativity on display through their participation in RCWS, Williams approached Hein — who was coincidentally working on another Summer SURF project in DISCO — about potentially restarting the University’s literary journal.
“Seeing the breadth and creativity of our peers at Research and Creative Works opened my eyes that there isn’t really a place sometimes to see what your peers are working on unless they tell you,” Williams said. “I had so much hope in the idea that we could facilitate that conversation and give students a place to showcase the things they are doing.”
Working alongside Head of Distinctive Collections and Archives Megan Firestone, Williams and Hein learned that Southwestern’s literary journal has existed under many different names and operated by many different student organizations throughout its history. The earliest copies of the literary journal, originally titled Spyglass, dated back to the early 1900s, around the time The Megaphone was established in 1907. The most recent iteration of the publication began in 2013 and was retired in 2019 due to a lack of student engagement and continuity, compounded by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have tried to revive it with a lot of respect for what they did,” Williams said. “One of the first things that we’ve been trying to do is go through all of the old editions to see how they organized it. We took notes on sizing and how they decided to print it and the messages that they gave to students on campus. It was so wonderful to look at those.”
With a thorough history of the publication under their belts, Hein and Williams recruited Papasan and Caitlin Stewart ’26 to help make their vision a reality. Under a new title, The Sea Shanty, the group applied for and received grant funding for initial publication and marketing efforts. After advertising the newest iteration of the literary journal to campus, the group received over two dozen submissions from students and faculty, including everything from poetry, short-form prose, and film reviews, to academic papers, photography, and artwork.
The first print edition of The Sea Shanty debuted at the KCF Symposium before an official book launch on April 9 in front of a standing-room only crowd at the Lark & Owl Booksellers in Downtown Georgetown.
“We have everything from a beautiful photograph, taken by our good friend Sally, of a Native American woman in full regalia, to poetry in Spanish by Alan, who is a bilingual student here,” Williams said. “I feel so optimistic and so glad that we have been able to grow The Megaphone, not only to the place where it is now, but to do other things like this as well, moving beyond just journalism and into the art and stories of our peers that they want to share. To broaden the scope of what we do has been very rewarding.”
With a new name, a budget, a publisher, and a boatload of submissions, the group decided to submit a proposal to KCF to not only help ensure The Sea Shanty gets off the ground, but remains a permanent fixture on campus in the years to come. Early on, Hower saw the value of The Sea Shanty, and played an integral role in convincing the group to participate in KCF and RCWS again in 2026.
“Being part of this has made me want to go into publishing. I know what I want to do now, and it’s because I find joy being in this group.” — Zoe Hein ’26
“We have many traditions when it comes to showing off student work, but many are necessarily ephemeral — from productions to exhibitions, panels to presentations. They are all wonderful, but they are, by definition, limited in terms of what students can share, how many get to see it, and how long it survives,” Hower said. “There’s a reason that every great institution has a literary journal — and now we are, once again, among them, but with a version that is better because it bears the Southwestern stamp. The Sea Shanty is a beautiful, durable artifact, but it’s all those things and more because it is entirely student-run. I cannot wait to see what this grows into, as the place where students show off what they can and do, for everyone to see, present and future.”
With Professor of English Eileen Cleere serving in an invaluable leadership role, the students’ 2026 KCF proposal outlined their vision for the journal to provide a space for freedom of expression and speech through a creative format. The Sea Shanty is designed to provide the SU community with an outlet for artistic exhibition in the form of an official undergraduate publication.
King was sold on the group’s vision, naming The Sea Shanty as the 2026 KCF winner, the second victory in a row for Hein, Papasan, and Williams. Thanks to the additional funding from KCF, the group was able to order another print run and plans to distribute The Sea Shanty at this year’s RCWS.
Aside from the comparatively rare experience of winning consecutive KCF awards, and getting to present in her second straight RCWS, the entire experience has been life-changing for Hein, who now serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Megaphone.
“Coming into my undergraduate experience, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I knew that I wanted to be an English major, but I didn’t know exactly where that would take me,” she said. “Being part of this has made me want to go into publishing. I know what I want to do now, and it’s because I find joy being in this group. It has been really cool to be part of a club that has helped me decide my life goals.”
Hein will be presenting the details of The Sea Shanty project alongside Papasan and Stewart — while Williams supports from afar during their current study abroad experience in the Netherlands — at the 27th annual Research and Creative Works Symposium on Tuesday, April 14 at 11:00 a.m. in the lobby of the Fondren-Jones Science Center.
“There are a lot of things that people say are unique to Southwestern, but Research and Creative Works truly is,” Hein said. “It is very unique to Southwestern. I think it’s a great privilege that every student here has the ability to participate in it and to show off their work. I’m very thankful that we have this opportunity, because this opportunity isn’t available at other places. You’re not going to get this experience anywhere else.”
Southwestern University published this content on April 13, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on April 13, 2026 at 16:26 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]
