Video Submission- Izzy Pounders

Izzy Pounders, MUW Student, reads from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

What makes a good product?

My research for the summer of 2022 was on product design. As a graphic designer product design has always interested me but I was only aware of the technical aspect of it. Through the research I immersed myself in the process of product design from beginning to end. My goal for the entirety of the research was to design a real product and to explore the importance of functionality and aesthetics. The early stages of the project was all research as I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and An Industrial Design Guide by Carmen Andrisani and Neville Songwe. Next, I rendered a design based on what I learned. Afterwards, I started construction on the product which perhaps taught me more on product design than the preliminary research. Finally, I focused on presentation and graphic design. My entire process is to be presented on a poster that summarizes my research and will inform the viewer on what makes a good product

Improving Influenza Vaccination Rates Among Children Through Provider and Staff Education

Children younger than five are more likely to develop severe medical complications from the influenza virus. As of June 4th, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 199 pediatric flu-related deaths for the 2019-2020 influenza season; seventy-eight percent of these deaths occurred in children who had not received a flu vaccination. The CDC annually recommends influenza (Flu) vaccination for all children ages 6 months through 18 years. Any child 6 months to 8 years old who had not received a previous dose of the flu vaccine or whose influenza vaccination history is unknown was recommended to receive a total of two doses of the vaccine four weeks apart. A quality improvement project was performed at three primary care clinics in Northeast Mississippi to improve flu vaccination rates among children 6 months to 18 years old

Video Submission - Sheila Morgan

Sheila Morgan reads from The Color Purple by Alice Walke

Primary Care Provider Adherence to Quality Measures: Advance Directives

The need for advance directives is increasingly relevant to the current healthcare system. Advancing technology has transformed chronic, terminal illnesses to conditions that cause slow debilitation. Individuals now enter into care alone more often than in the past. With no advance directive in place, families and/or healthcare providers are forced to make difficult healthcare decisions alone. Advance-care-planning affords the opportunity for disease detection and improving patient outcomes while lowering overall costs; however, such conversations are not easy to approach. Therefore, the purpose of this project was to deliver education to primary care providers in rural Mississippi to improve provider attitudes, knowledge, and behavior regarding the advance directive in order to improve current return rates of the advance directive. An educational session was conducted with pre- and post-surveys. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the responses to the two surveys as independent samples. Standard statistical analysis was performed on these results, and it was determined that the project goals were met. Primary care provider knowledge rates increased significantly from pre-survey to post-survey (χ2 (1, N = 14) = 4.667, p = 0.031). Self-reported competency skills increased significantly from pre-survey to post-survey (χ2 (1, N = 14) = 7.143, p = 0.008). The percentage of respondents who reported lacking competency or skills decreased from 85.7% to 14.3%, and provider compliance increased significantly from pre-survey to post-survey (χ2 (1, N = 14) = 7.778, p = 0.005). It was concluded improving knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of 5 primary providers with respect to advance directives could improve the quality of care provided for residents in Mississippi

Perceived Racism and Help Seeking Behaviors on College Campuses

This goal of this study is to measure if and how perceived racism on college campus affects mental health help seeking behaviors of students. The goal is to examine racism in asynchronous courses as well as synchronous online and face-to-face courses across primarily white and historically black colleges and universities. The proposed study will include assessment of perceived racism, help seeking attitudes, and intent to seek help among students at six universities in the state of Mississippi. Implications would be to open disclosure on micro- affirmation/ micro- inclusions in college courses regardless of course delivery method to improve the well being of all college students regardless of race or ethnicity

The Impact of Using Best Practices to Improve English Language Arts Standardized Test Scores in Rural Central Mississippi Schools

In recent years, the Mississippi Department of Education has made several changes in curriculum and policy to improve students’ literacy rates on standardized test scores. As a result of these changes, teachers have been offered more professional development training to educate them on best literacy practices to implement in the classroom. This study aims to identify best practices that teachers use in third-grade classrooms to improve students’ standardized test scores on the Third Grade Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) for English Language Arts (ELA). Upon obtaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, the student researcher obtained approval from administrators to conduct research in the Lowndes County School District. The student researcher compiled Third Grade MAAP ELA test scores data over three consecutive academic years (2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019), surveyed those third-grade teachers on best practices used for ELA instruction, and compared the teacher survey results and test scores to determine what correlation exists, if any, to improve standardized ELA test scores

Disappearing Women Between College and STEM Leadership

STEM is an evolving and ever-growing world with innovations in technology being designed. With the evolution of technology comes assessing the people developing the technology. The people creating and working in technology evolving and growing with diversity? We will look at one aspect of diversity with women to see how they have advanced in STEM. Women have increased in working on college degrees in STEM. We will evaluate the progress of women in the STEM leadership role. With research on women moving into leadership in STEM and what challenges women could be facing working in STEM