News and Notes About Farmington College Students

FARMINGTON, CT - Here are some recent news items pertaining to college students from Farmington, as compiled from reports by readMedia Newswire.

Springfield College Distinguished Senior Award

Springfield College senior Amanda Upchurch of Farmington earned the Springfield College Education Department's Distinguished Senior Award.

Upchurch received the honor at the recent Springfield College Academic Awards held on campus. The Distinguished Senior Awards are presented annually to graduating students who have performed consistently well in the classroom. The award recipients are chosen by their respective peers in their individual department.

Research poster presented at CREATE Conference

More than 250 talented students at Eastern Connecticut State University presented research and creative work at the university's second annual CREATE conference this past April. CREATE stands for Celebrating Research Excellence and Artistic Talent at Eastern, and is the university's premier, academic year-end showcase. At the culminating event, students of all majors presented professional posters, live music, dance performances, artwork, photography, documentaries and panel discussions.

Christina Welch of Farmington, who majors in Pre-Secondary Education and Biology, presented a research poster at the event. Welch's poster presentation was titled "How Can We Coax the Brain to Self-Repair?"

"When someone experiences a stroke, their brain performance is affected as critical blood supply is cut off, thus resulting in loss of function as the neurons die," said Welch. "It was once believed that if you damaged or injured your brain it could not self-repair. However, as the field of science advances this theory is being challenged. We now know there are discrete regions of the nervous system that can replace cells that are lost or damaged. One example is the tissue that is responsible for our sense of smell, called the olfactory epithelium. When the olfactory epithelium repairs itself through cell replacement, its function is likewise restored. This is how we are able to maintain a memory of the smells we have encountered over our lifetime. By applying regenerative mechanisms from the olfactory epithelium to the brain, functional recovery following a stroke may allow people to regain partial brain function and cognition. By studying the olfactory epithelium in chicken embryos, our goal is to identify the cells that are capable of cell replacement, termed regeneration. We use antibodies, like those found in your immune system, to apply fluorescent tags specifically to the cells thought to regenerate. A laser confocal microscope is used to visualize the cells labeled with fluorescent tags and produces a digital image that allows one to determine the location and abundance of the labeled cells. This research will contribute to the overall understanding of embryonic development in the olfactory epithelium and the long?term goal of identifying how neural tissue can regenerate to replace lost neurons."

Beta Gamma Sigma National Honor Society

Olivia Lathrop of Farmington was welcomed into Beta Gamma Sigma National Honor Society on April 21 at the Western New England University chapter's 12th annual induction ceremony. Beta Gamma Sigma is a national honor society for business majors at schools accredited by AACSB International, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Students are selected from the top 7% of juniors, top 10% of seniors and to 20% of graduate students. Candidates must have completed two semesters of study at Western New England University. Lathrop is majoring in Sport Management.