FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 2020
Contact: Jason Hogue, Director of Marketing and Communications, 402-872-2429
Peru, Nebraska – A Peru State College collaborative research project received second place and a $2500 cash prize at the 2020 national convention for Alpha Chi. Alpha Chi is a national honor society for juniors, seniors and graduate students from all academic backgrounds whose GPAs rank in the top ten percent of their school.
Three Peru State students – Dylan George (Beatrice, Neb.), Kaylee Gill (Allen, Neb.) and Sara Vance (Shenandoah, Iowa) – and Dr. Kate Trout, assistant professor of biology and human health, participated in the convention, which took place virtually this year.
The event, which was scheduled to take place March 19-21 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was cancelled a week prior due to precaution against the spread of COVID-19, and was held virtually instead.
“The Alpha Chi National Office worked diligently to make an all virtual convention for the students, which was a testament to their dedication,” Trout said.
The Peru State group submitted a video presentation on their project, “Interdisciplinary factors that may support the spread of misinformation in the era of social media: building an interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional model,” which related to the 2020 conference theme of Cultures of Conspiracies. Each person on the team represented a different academic discipline for the presentation — George, Science and Epidemiology; Gill, Education and Art; Vance, Social Science and Education; and Trout represented Systems Modeling and Biostatistics.
According to Trout, the team’s success was due to the hard work of the students during the initial stages of the project and throughout the past eight months.
Trout said, “I wanted to thank and recognize Dylan, Sara, and Kaylee for their hard work and persistence to complete this creative research project through floods, working across campus, senior exams, and a pandemic.”
“They should be proud of not only completing this work, but also of their accomplishment of competing with the brightest students across the nation!”
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