Thriving research program empowers students and faculty
On November 1, Pacific University will host its 15th annual Undergraduate Research Conference for Pacific students on campus. It is a chance for students to showcase their research, especially if they have been awarded grants or funds for research. The majority of the research comes from the STEM departments, but there is also research from the departments of philosophy, psychology, and business, which is attending the conference for the first time.
To get some insights and game-day previews, the Index talked with senior Chandler Fleming who is representing the School of Business at the conference.
The Index: What is the idea of your research project?
Chandler Fleming: We are presenting our group project from organization behavior that we did last semester. Our topic was job performance and factors that contribute to that. We interviewed a bunch of different people, I interviewed my mom and another teammate interviewed Mallory Highfield, who is a faculty member. We also interviewed a baseball coach who also works here. So we had a good array of people that we interviewed, and then we conducted a survey about what matters to people in regards to job performance. At this Research Conference, we are basically going to present our same project and the research that we found in regards to job performance, and our factors were task delegation, and so on.
The Index: How did your team come up with this topic of research?
CF: The class was really helpful with organizing the research project itself. We got to choose between two independent variables, job performance or organizational commitment. We chose job performance because that was what interested our group the most. We conducted our interviews and then were able to choose a dependent variable from there. Our Professor, Calderon, really helped us with the structure and helped within the process. But we really realized in the survey and the interviews to create the project itself.
The Index: What was the workload? And was this all worth it?
CF: It is definitely a lot of work, but it pays off because the content is so interesting and there are awards at this conference, which we used as motivation. The work is basically about what makes people withdraw from work or how people behave in certain situations. Even though it was a ton of dedication and took up a ton of time, our work paid off and we are now rewarded to present at this Research Conference out of the other research projects in our class, ours is the one that got chosen and that’s a big deal.
The Index: Is the school supporting your group’s research in any way?
CF: We definitely have a lot of support from Professor Calderon. He’s kind of the head of getting us into this conference. He was actually the one who asked the head of the conference if our group could present because from what I have heard, no college of the Business classes have ever presented any of their research. Calderon was super excited because not a lot of people have this kind of research like ours which makes it unique. He’s also helping us to be successful and know what to expect at this conference as well.
The Index: What do you gain from presenting this research?
CF: It is a really good opportunity. It also looks good on a resume, to say that we went to a research conference and presented something that I worked really hard on in class. I have really enjoyed the business classes I have taken and I kind of want to pursue that in my career and to be able to say I took this step further and presented at a conference with other established projects. In this class, anybody who’s taking this class knows how hard it is towards the end of the semester, but to be able to be rewarded by being able to present in front of a crowd is super validating and it shows our hard work being paid off. — Kya Kearns
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