Magsamen-Conrad’s work with undergraduates is recognized with Blinn Award

Dr. Kate Magsamen-Conrad, Department of Communication, received the 2017 Elliott L. Blinn Award for Faculty-Undergraduate Student Innovative Basic Research/Creative Work.

The award recognizes innovative basic research/creative work conducted by individual faculty members in collaboration with undergraduate students and supports collaboration with additional students. It is given in memory of Dr. Elliott Blinn, a professor of chemistry, who dedicated his career to sharing with his undergraduate students the excitement of the process of discovery by directly involving them in basic research/creative work. Magsamen-Conrad received a $2,500 award, which included $1,250 transferred to a department account for the continued collaborative research activities with BGSU undergraduate students, as well as a $1,250 cash prize.

Introducing students to the importance of research, Magsamen-Conrad has left a mark on the lives of current and former BGSU students, who are quick to point out her influential teaching methods.   

“It was in the first class I took with Dr. Magsamen-Conrad that I began to learn what research ultimately was, and how we can use it,” said Adrianne Beer, who is expected to graduate in May. “It was in the research methods course that I learned data collection through interviewing and surveys. Not only were we able to collect our own data but we learned how a researcher analyzes data and uses it.”

Kayleigh Bondor ’15 transferred to BGSU in 2014 and joined Magsamen-Conrad’s research team as an undergraduate.

“My involvement in Dr. Magsamen-Conrad's health campaign project actively reformed my understanding of the discovery process,” she said. “I was raised believing that college was a faraway dream, and I am thankful for the previously unimagined opportunity to have discovered research processes within academia.”

Casey Schonhardt ’15 said working with Magsamen-Conrad was a career-awakening experience.

“My experience as a student-turned-peer-mentor in the Intergroup Communication Intervention project created by Dr. Magsamen-Conrad has, without a doubt, been the thing that prepared me the most for life after college,” she said. “As an ambitious student who has never had to rely heavily on others for my success, the project challenged me to see the process of knowledge and discovery as more than just a quantitative personal record, teaching me instead how it could subjectively affect others in the long run.