Concord University Holds Annual Pre-Professional Day for Students

Many students presented research during Pre-Professional Day as a way of showcasing their talents and
to gain the experience of presenting to other professionals.
Photo By James Hoyle

On Friday, November 18, in the Ballroom on the third floor of the Student Center, the ultimate culmination of a semester’s worth of research and work occurred.

    Concord University’s annual Pre-Professional Day occurred, lasting from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. The event itself was divided into two different sections. On the left side of the ballroom, there was a graduate and professional fair, with booths set up with graduate schools from various parts of the region talking about what their professional programs have to offer would-be students. Some of the representatives present included such colleges as West Virginia University, Marshall University, Concord University, and the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. 

    This event is important for a myriad of reasons. For one, it shows that the entire semester did eventually lead up to something other than just a grade in a series of grades that a student earns during this time. Secondly, it gave students an opportunity to meet with professional and graduate programs and their representatives so that they could become better prepared for graduate school, should they decide to continue their education after Concord University. 

    On the right side of the Ballroom was where the actual projects were. There were several different kinds of experiments and projects from subjects and majors of all kinds. There were all kinds of different things, from the usage of lavender in aromatherapy to reduce heart rate to testing the safety of the drinkability of the water of Little Bluestone in Raleigh County. According to Steven Matney, a pre-Med major and  a sophomore, Pre-Professional Day means “…getting to meet new people, getting to meet men and women from different schools, you know, administrators and such, and actually getting to do a project, and letting them see what it is that we do here at Concord University.”

    To give an example of just what kind of work and the amount of effort that goes into these projects, Steven showed off the project he made with his partner Tana Miller. The project began by asking the question of whether or not livestock affected the quality and drinkability of water. They gathered their equipment, formed a hypothesis, and went out to Camp Creek, a creek in Mercer County that plays host to Camp Creek State Park. Camp Creek is also a known location where local farmers water their animals. And so, at Camp Creek, they measured for fecal coliforms. They took samples from the creek from four different locations around the creek, three of which are known watering holes for livestock and a fourth where no known livestock drink from. After several weeks of study an analysis of the samples gathered from all four different locations, Matney and Miller concluded that livestock do have a negative impact on the quality and drinkability of water for human consumption. The three sites where livestock were water had consistently more fecal coliforms than in the one site that had no livestock influence. Every single one of these projects had a similar amount of effort put into them. This day showed that college can give something more tangible to students than just good grades.