Student-research excellence on display at Wellspring Symposium

By Chuck Gordon

Victoria Hoyos spent much of the spring semester navigating labyrinthine legal jargon while researching the ways states and municipalities push back against federal immigration crackdowns. The senior political science major stood in the Ethel K. Smith Library's Hall of Flags for an hour on Wednesday, using plain English to explain the dry legalese to anyone who stopped by.

"Sanctuary policies are the biggest tools states have to resist the federal immigration agenda," she said while standing in front of a very thorough poster. "These allow states to protect their immigrant populations by playing in this gray area."

Hoyos was one of 172 students who gave oral or poster presentations during the two-day Wellspring Symposium, a biannual celebration of students' research, experiential-learning experiences, creative works, Honors College projects and much more.

Hoyos was happy to share her research, which, in addition to being an Honors College project, was something of a passion project for her, since she hopes to one day become an immigration lawyer. Picking her way through dense legal texts will come in handy in her post-Wingate days.

"In law school you read a lot," she says, "and there's a lot of confusing language, so having to read stuff like this helps me to rewire my brain a little bit so I can understand it in the future."

The number of presentations given during this year's Symposium (90) was on par with the spring 2025 event, but 18 more students participated this year (several projects involved more than one student). In addition, 40 mentors helped guide student presenters during the year, and 21 faculty and staff volunteers served as poster judges or session moderators.

The event is a highlight of the year for many students and employees. Within the allotted hour for oral or poster presentations, students typically evolve from unsure to confident as they refine their presentations for each new audience member.

Hoyos didn't have much to worry about in the confidence department. "I've been a public speaker for a long time, doing things like Model UN (United Nations)," she says. "I do enjoy it. And I like being able to teach other people about topics they're not superfamiliar with."

Teaching students to boil down something complex for the uninitiated is one of the goals of the Wellspring, which has grown considerably over the years.

"We have poster judges who are sometimes like, 'I don't know how to judge a poster outside my discipline,'" says Dr. Brett Schofield, assistant professor of biology and coordinator of undergraduate research. "They're the perfect person to judge, because I want all the students to be able to explain their work to an educated audience who doesn't know about their topic."

Dr. Chelsea Kaufman, associate professor of political science and one of the volunteer judges, says she loves coming to the Wellspring every year. She served as a mentor for several students who were presenting on Wednesday afternoon, but she especially enjoyed listening to the students outside of her field explain their research.

"In your professional job, not everyone is going to have the same background as you," she says. "If you're in a job that has clients, they're coming to you because you have expertise in the field. They don't. You need to be able to explain what you're going to do for them in terms they're going to understand and that are going to be meaningful to them. Learning this skill is so important in every single job."

Juliana Sebastian, a third-year student in the School of Pharmacy, is one of those students who expertly and clearly explained her research to Kaufman on Wednesday. Sebastian studied the efficacy and safety of berberine, a naturally occurring dietary supplement that's become all the rage on social media over the past couple of years.

Sebastian, working with Dr. Samir Kouzi, did an exhaustive meta-analysis of berberine studies dating from 2003 to October of 2025. All of the studies compared the use of berberine in people who were careful about their food intake and who exercised vs. those who watched their diet and exercised but didn't take berberine. She says that after researching the supplement, she would recommend it.

"We found that it lowers anthropometric measurements pretty significantly in all studies compared with diet and exercise alone," Sebastian says. "I'm always skeptical, but I like it. My mom's even taking it."

Before entering pharmacy school, Sebastian worked as a health coach, helping patients get their weight under control before surgery. She figured that studying a weight-loss supplement would be a good way to hone her literature-evaluation skills.

"Going into pharmacy school, I didn't realize how much literature evaluation there was, so honestly it was really good practice," she says. "I want to do a residency after pharmacy school, and there are whole semesters dedicated to just literature eval, so I was like, 'Let's just knock it out in a fun way, in something I'm interested in, before it's my job.'"

Senior Karla Grande says that her psychology research helped her refine her time-management skills. Grande worked on a long-running off-site research experiment at the Monroe Science Center in which she and other psychology students studied how much children learned during visits to the center.

They alternated days at the center, working up to four hours at a time enlisting participants and administering surveys.

"I definitely became more organized," she says, "trying to schedule my time to do this and to go to the science center."

Grande was one of four winners of Best Poster Presentation Awards, for "Interactive Learning in Science Centers: Examining How Exhibit Type and Engagement Duration Shape Children's Science Learning."

Other Best Poster Presentation winners:

• Michael Gyamidu: "When Does Simplicity Win? Comparing Classical and Deep Learning Methods for High Dimensional Portfolio Risk Management."
• Kailey Spicer and Michael Tetteh Sowah-Dowuona: "Nuclear Import of Satb2 Is Driven by an N-terminal Nuclear Localization Sequence."
• Benjamin LaVigne: "Purification of 7-Hydroxymitragynine."

Best Oral Presentation winners:

• Graduate: Occupational therapy students Katherine Kanos, Savannah Barnes, Claire Monagle, Mary Morrison - "The Impact of Vagus Nerve Gliding on Anxiety and Quality of Life."
• Undergraduate: Yomarielys Chinea - "Puerto Rico Entre la Estadidad y la Independencia (Puerto Rico Between Statehood and Independence)." Her research was presented entirely in Spanish.

Dr. Daina Nathaniel, professor of communication, was named Mentor of the Year.

Learn more about the Wellspring Symposium.

April 23, 2026