(From left) Scott Rozzi, instructor Sharon Calhoon, Alison Duncan, Robin Lemmon and Kim Bowman received more than they expected from a tests and measurements course. Bowman is now employed at IUK as an adviser.
Photo courtesy of IUK Media Relations |
They didn't plan for it. They didn't even know it existed. But because four IU Kokomo students convinced a professor to teach an unscheduled psychology course, they were recipients of the American Psychological Society's National Convention Research Award. They picked it up Memorial Day weekend at the APS annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
"We kind of pressured Sharon (Calhoon, IUK professor of psychology) into offering the class for us," said Scott Rozzi of Logansport, who along with fellow seniors Kim Bowman of Kokomo, Robin Lemon of Indianapolis and Alison Duncan of Greentown, created the award-winning questionnaire designed to measure the effectiveness of academic advisers.
"Most graduate schools require a tests and measurements course to get in. So that's why we wanted this course," said Rozzi, who will complete his degree requirement this fall. Bowman, Lemon and Duncan received their degrees during May commencement exercises.
Group's leader Bowman, said when they did their research, they submitted the project to APS just to get their work in front of professionals in their field.
"We were happy it would be accepted just to present the paper. We didn't even know there was an award," Bowman said.
This is the first time students from IUK were among the winners.
"No one's ever done this before," said Calhoon, who is also an adviser at IUK. "All I did every now and then was say 'How's it going?' I mean, they did it. They did it."
The questionnaire the students developed consists of 20 questions, explained Calhoon. But finding the most appropriate questions for measuring adviser effectiveness took a lot of work.
Bowman said the group worked with 300 IUK students to come up with the initial list of 190 factors students considered important in advisers. Through interviewing professional advisers at IUK, they developed 58 questions to address those 190 concerns; they whittled the list down to 20.
Besides convincing a professor to teach a course not offered on the university's schedule, the students also managed to overcome inexperience to create their award-winning questionnaire.
"We'd administered surveys to people but we had never created one," said Bowman. "This was the first empirically derived instrument we'd created."
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