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BRISTOL, R.I. – From reimagining community health care to decoding riverbed patterns and questioning the fairness of our legal system, students presented bold answers to real-world questions through their research and capstone projects at the 12th annual Student Academic Showcase and Honors (SASH) on Wednesday, April 23.

As part of the annual tradition of SASH, more than 200 undergraduate and graduate student projects were featured in a daylong celebration of intellectual curiosity and collaboration. Students from every school at �Ӱ���Ƶ University presented academic research, Honors Capstone projects, and senior theses, and took part in artistic performances and panel discussions that showcased the depth and diversity of their scholarly and creative work.

"SASH exemplifies our commitment to providing students with opportunities to engage in meaningful undergraduate research, which empowers them for future academic and professional success,” said Margaret Everett, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. “At RWU, we believe in the power of interdisciplinary learning, where students can explore the dynamic intersections of fields across arts, sciences, and professional programs.”

Here are just a few of the many projects shared at SASH 2025:

Digging Deep into the Phosphate Groove

Gabriella Wade, a senior Environmental Science major and Dance/Performance minor from Dighton, Mass., knows how to find rhythm — in both movement and mud. For her research project, Phosphate Groove: Analyzing the Rhythms of Sedimentary Deposits in the Kickemuit and Taunton Rivers, Wade studied how phosphate levels in the Mount Hope Bay reflect a long history of human impact.

Using a missile-shaped container and a plastic corer, Wade and her research team drilled into the bay’s sediments, retrieving seven core samples. By analyzing how phosphates have settled into layers of sediment over time, they uncovered a clear pattern: the deeper the core, the higher the phosphate levels — evidence of how decades of human activity, including industrial pollution from the textile boom in Fall River and unregulated agricultural runoff, have left a lasting imprint on the ecological health and species distribution of the bay.

For Wade, the research hits close to home, both geographically and personally. “I wasn’t very confident in chemistry at first, but Professor Stephen O’Shea guided me through it. I’m grateful, because it made me more confident in my abilities and helped me understand how vital chemistry is to environmental science, especially when studying something so close to where I grew up.”

Wade hopes to continue working in the field after graduation, studying how climate change and human behavior continue to shape natural ecosystems.

Bridging Health Gaps Through Policy

Community health workers are critical to any community, but especially underserved ones. They are public health workers who form trusting relationships with the people they serve, building a bridge between the community and healthcare and social services. Frannie West, of North Providence, R.I., who is graduating with a Master of Public Administration in May, evaluated the effectiveness and sustainability of Medicaid-funded Community Health Worker (CHW) programs in Rhode Island. Her project explored the systemic barriers CHWs face and offers policy recommendations for a more stable workforce.

“I’ve seen firsthand how essential CHWs are in bridging health and social gaps, especially for underserved communities,” said West, a CHW and the founder of R.I. Support Network. “I hope other people see how critical CHWs are to improving health equity and that investment in this workforce is long overdue.”

In her research, West found that despite CHWs being long recognized as effective, they still lack consistent funding, professional recognition, and policy support across states. She is taking the helm of correcting this by collaborating with the RWU Extension School to launch a new Community Health Worker Certification program, which will be offered soon at RWU EXT. She said her research has only deepened her passion for health policy and community work and solidified her goal of pursuing a law degree and doctorate in Public Health.

Reclaiming Lippitt Hill

Architecture major Hogan Cain from Dover, N.H., is challenging the future of urban redevelopment by revisiting the past. His project, Equitable Renewal: Lippitt Hill Revisited, sheds light on the unjust erasure of a once-thriving community in Providence, R.I., which bore witness to more than 5,000 displaced residents through redlining and eminent domain in the 1960s. Through figure-ground drawings and careful site analysis, Cain reveals the extent of the land cleared and lays the groundwork for what an equitable and inclusive future might look like.

Now occupied by the sprawling University Heights Apartments, the area remains a controversial symbol of disconnection and missed potential. Cain's proposal counters that legacy with a design focused on repairing urban fabric by restoring residential density, reconnecting the site to the broader community, and activating its streets. With a minor in Business and a core concentration in Art & Architectural History, he envisions mixed-use housing, vibrant public spaces like plazas, courtyards, and walkways to knit the neighborhood back together, and a retail corridor along the perimeter that would bring life and commerce to the edges of the site.

Cain, who will begin RWU’s Master of Architecture program this fall, hopes his research inspires others to question the built environment and imagine more equitable, community-driven design solutions. “I hope people start to think more critically about their communities. We often take our neighborhoods for granted, but every street and sidewalk was designed by someone, and that means it can be redesigned. The world is more flexible than we think.”

Making Inclusive Design the Standard

Graphic Design majors Hannah Caple from Plymouth, Mass., and Emily Eicher from Harwinton, Conn., are challenging the inclusivity of current web design accessibility through their project, The Exclusionary Nature of Design Practices. Their research focuses on five key principles that would help make design more accessible including alternative text, using color with proper contrast, finding easily readable interfaces, including proper headings for screen readers, and providing captions in video and audio content. Talking about accessibility can be a very broad topic, so their goal is to narrow down how to make web designs more inclusive and create guidelines that focus on making accessible design fun instead of only a legal requirement for ADA compliance.

Caple explains that accessibility can be something easily ignored, or pushed to the side, but its impact for those in need should define its importance. “When you think about it, the term accessibility can be very broad, and it’s something a lot of people want to incorporate, but are unable to due to the barriers to break and how it can be technologically challenging as well.”

Both researchers were a part of a team of Graphic Design students who were the first in the department to receive both Student Senate and Provost funding, allowing them to take their research to the  Conference held this year in New Orleans. “Funding helped us reach a wider audience, bring back information learned at the conference to the university community, gain valuable insights, receive professional development experience and build confidence.”

To Eicher, it was important to pave a path for future Graphic Design students at RWU. “We wanted to open up opportunities for future graphic design students to be able to do this kind of work and things they are passionate about. It was a great situation of being able to advocate for ourselves and talk to different programs to get the funding for this project.”

For both students, this research was incredibly important in defining what they could do after graduation and they are hoping to implement all of their research along with their learned skills to their future aspirations.

Engineering Below the Surface

Seven students focused their Senior Engineering Capstone project on building an unmanned undersea vehicle designed to locate a sound target and then launch a torpedo. The project was given to them by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), which challenged students to design a fully autonomous prototype that can drop a torpedo on a sound source in a pool. 

“There were so many things that we did not know about when we started this, we really had to research and learn a lot,” said Nick Efthymiou, a Mechanical Engineering major from Oceanside, N.Y. “The aspect of teamwork and working with people from different specializations really came into play.” 

Each student brought a diverse set of skills and learned from each other – Efthymiou; Hunter Dolphin, a Mechanical Engineering major and Mathematics minor from Gales Ferry, Conn.; Griffin Hebert, an Electrical Engineering major and Mathematics minor from Scarborough, Maine; Brad King, a Mechanical Engineering major and Mathematics minor from Berkley, Mass.; Hannah Limanek, an Electrical Engineering major and Mathematics minor from Sutton, Mass.; Evan Parker, a Mechanical Engineering major from Hooksett, N.H.; and Nick Savino, a Mechanical Engineering major from Simsbury, Conn. The biggest challenge students faced was waterproofing the prototype given all the electronics in it. But they ultimately ran a successful test on April 23. 

The students felt they had a secret weapon in their design adviser, Erin Magsamen ’22, who works with NUCW. “We were in a special situation, as our faculty advisor isn’t a faculty member of the engineering department. She's an alum of �Ӱ���Ƶ," Limanek said. “She was a mechanical engineer and did this project her senior year, so it was cool to have her perspective on everything.”

Does Heavy Investment in A.I. Improve Stock Returns?

The tech industry has made a huge shift towards artificial intelligence (A.I.) in recent years, but how beneficial is that shift for a company’s overall success in the stock markets? Kylie Durkin, a senior Finance major and Accounting minor from Shrewsbury, Mass., made a comparative analysis and portfolio simulation to see if those returns were sustainable for companies like Nvidia and Microsoft where A.I. was the core business. Durkin found that even though A.I. stocks did see a surge in growth, they followed with big corrections. For example, if a company were to go up 9%, it would go down the same amount the next day.

However, what surprised Durkin the most was seeing how some A.I. stocks outperformed others. “I think what led to that was definitely market sentiment, consumer sentiment,” she said. “We're seeing a lot of market downturn, especially over the last few months because of foreign policy. And a lot of the A.I. stocks are foreign companies, and with that, it led to a lot of uncertainty on whether we are going to be able to continue stable trade.”

Durkin’s project was partly inspired by her participation in the Center for Advanced Financial Education (CAFE), RWU’s student portfolio management program, where she worked with tech sector funds. “That gave me the idea for this project, especially after I took my financial modeling class and we made the simulations of portfolios. I thought it would be fun to see how those stocks that may have not worked as well in the investment fund would have performed over a different time.”

Durkin credits her faculty advisor, Assistant Professor of Finance Dennis Ding for helping guide her work on this presentation. “It would not have come out as well as it did without him because, through his class, I learned how to make those simulated portfolios,” she said. “And I was always able to go to him when something didn't work out quite as well as I hoped.”

Durkin said she hopes her audience gained a better understanding of the stock markets and financial literacy, especially given the wide-reaching impacts of the financial markets, from the prices of goods to retirement accounts.

After graduation, Durkin will have already started her career with Fidelity Investments as a customer relationship advocate. She plans to earn her master's degree at Georgetown University in addition to studying for her financial licenses.

Rewiring the Classroom

What happens when Psychology students take a deep dive into the minds of future engineers? For Emily Barrow, Fiene Kalski, and Christian Murphy, the answer was a cross-disciplinary study that could change the way universities think about education. Their research project, Implications of the Engineering Mind on Education, explores how personality traits differ between engineering and non-engineering majors, and how those differences might point to needed reforms in how engineering is taught.

The team of Psychology majors administered two in-depth surveys to RWU students: a 63-item questionnaire on preferred teaching methods and the NEO-PI-3, a psychological assessment that measures the “Big Five” personality traits. They found notable distinctions, including a spike in neuroticism among engineering students, that raised questions about whether traditional engineering education best supports the students pursuing it. With mentorship from Assistant Professor of Psychology Rebecca Distefano and Issa Ramaji, Director of the Cummings Institute for Real Estate at RWU, the team analyzed the data to identify gaps in current educational practices and suggest more inclusive, adaptive approaches.

“What makes this project powerful is how we combined our different perspectives,” said Barrow, a junior from North Providence, R.I. “It started out of curiosity because we wanted to understand our peers, engineer or not, and how their personalities influence the way they learn. That naturally led us to ask how education can be more responsive to who students actually are.”

For Murphy, a sophomore from Lynnfield, Mass., the project was also a breakthrough moment as a young researcher. “This was my first time doing research, and it opened my eyes. We didn’t just collect data, we got to apply it to something real and meaningful. Now I know I want to do more of this.”

The team’s findings have already made an impression, as their paper has been accepted for presentation at an international conference in Boston this summer.

Bridging Language Gaps in Special Education

Kellee Beachy, from Cranston, R.I., graduating with a Master's in Special Education, took the opportunity to apply her SASH project directly to her work as a school teacher. Her project bridges language content and writing for multilingual learners with disabilities through sentence-level strategies. So what does this mean? It supports middle school students with learning disabilities, and who are also multilingual learners. Beachy’s project focused on teaching students sentence-by-sentence strategies to help them develop stronger and more complex language skills.

“I wanted to explore this topic because I noticed that some of my students are having a hard time passing the mandated assessments for language,” said Beachy. “And to see students identified as multilingual learners, and as students with learning disabilities, I just wanted to find a way to give them a leg up as they get into high school.”

Beachy said the thing that surprised her the most while developing her project was finding that there is not much research about supporting multilingual learners who have learning disabilities. “Writing is something that hasn't had that much focus on when it comes to the student work, so we see students having a hard time utilizing punctuation and giving us paragraphs that were just one big sentence. That is why I focus on going sentence by sentence in the research.”

Ultimately, Beachy hopes her project can be expanded to help students across disciplines. She’s already had fellow teachers in her school utilize sentence-level structures in their classes. 

“This project is giving me more opportunities to support students. It's allowing me to share my research with teachers within my school base. So by doing this and having data to show how this can help and support teachers, I've been able to get other people interested.”

Justice, Judgment, and the Juvenile Divide

Caroline Freeman, a senior Criminal Justice major and Psychology minor from Falmouth, Mass., along with her co-researcher Olivia DaSilva, a junior Criminal Justice and Psychology double major with a minor in Legal Studies from Portsmouth, R.I., have found passion in advocacy for juvenile rehabilitation. Through their research project, The Public’s Perceptions of Juveniles in the Adult Court System, Freeman and DaSilva looked into different scenarios involving juveniles and highlighted the complexities of the criminal justice system. 

By interviewing 12 people, six undergraduates and six processors, the pair was able to collect data that analyzed the opinions of diverse public groups regarding the criminal justice system, specifically focusing on how juveniles are sentenced, tried, and treated. They used four main factors in their research, including age, nature versus nurture, crime type, punishment, and post-incarceration. Their research, through qualitative and quantitative data analysis, found that the factors mentioned can influence sentencing approaches and the effectiveness of rehabilitative programs.

DaSilva credits their familiarity with the “human subjects research” criteria, a necessity when it comes to questioning ethics in human research, to Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Sozer Mehmet. “He was a great resource to turn to. He helped us navigate this whole process by breaking down each step, especially with deadlines. He was very helpful in answering any question we had, big or small.”

For Freeman, her internship with the  through the Department of Children, Youth & Families, has inspired her to work with youth in the juvenile system. “It’s really important to get [juveniles] back on track, because they are a future generation. The juvenile system is very gray, but we want to make sure we are taking the right approach to each person and meeting their needs.”

Both students have cultivated their passion for challenging and redefining the criminal justice system through their research, paving a path for rehabilitative care and advocacy.

Recipe for Revenue

How do you bake the most profits from a batch of breads, cakes, and pastries? That’s the question Gabrielle Petroniro, a junior Finance major and Mathematics minor from Wolcott, Conn., and Danielle Vogt, a junior double major in Applied Mathematics and Data Science with minors in Business Analytics and Computer Science from Warwick, N.Y., set out to answer in their project, Maximizing Profits of Baked Goods in Bristol.

Using mathematical modeling, they calculated the best mix of products to maximize revenue while staying within limits on flour, sugar, labor, oven space, and budget. The project served as a hands-on example of how linear programming and optimization tools can guide smarter decision-making in small businesses.

For Petroniro, their coursework gave them the analytical foundation and skills needed to take on this real-world challenge with confidence. “What we’ve learned in class helped us not only conduct this research, but also communicate it clearly to an audience who might not be familiar with mathematics or finance,” she said.

Vogt, who interns with  and supports Navy projects, says this project has reaffirmed her desire to pursue research opportunities in her career. “I want to go into research. Right now, I work with the Navy doing research on torpedoes, and this kind of problem-solving is just another way to think critically. It’s helped me see problems in a different way.”