National Conference Offers Opportunities for Phi Alpha Theta Members

    The three young women presented their essays at the Phi Alpha Theta 2010 Biennial Conference held at the Hyatt Regency Bay Spa and Marina Jan. 6-9 in San Diego, Calif.

  Fuqua presented an essay titled “Anchored in Education: The Making of Drew Central Schools."  As an alumna of Drew Central High School, she knew there was a connection between the high school and UAM. She started the focus of her paper there, but it soon developed into the history of Drew Central.

   The school began as an instruction center for student teachers, which would turn into one of the 80 plus schools in Drew County and the surrounding areas. Some schools in the area became consolidated to give the student teachers "real world" experience. Drew Central School District will be using her essay for an All School Reunion.

   Pasterniak presented an essay on “The Counter Culture at UAM.” She developed the idea on hippie culture. She said the hippie culture had fascinated her since she was a child.  She talked about how people always heard about hippies rampaging college campuses nationwide during the hippie movement.

   “It’s a wide misconception, it was only the sort of schools that had the hippie culture over run them,” she said. “In the South, you didn’t see that wasn’t very prominent at all. You might have a few characteristics, maybe there was an underground culture, but not to the extent you see movies portray and drugs did not over run every college campus.”

   She investigated in her essay what UAM has as counterculture and compared new age hippies to the original hippies as well.

   Pope presented an essay on “The Legendary King Arthur: The Romance an the Reality.” She said she selected the topic based on a time period of history, which interested her. She described herself as an “early British history buff.”  Her interests in history include Arthurian, Medieval, Tudor Britain, Scandinavian and British history.

The Conference

   The Phi Alpha Theta 2010 Biennial Conference offered opportunities and a few firsts for Fuqua, Pasterniak and Pope.

   Fuqua described her reaction to hearing her essay was selected to go to the conference as  “excited and more than a little surprised.” She thought a topic on a local topic would not interest anyone.

   “On the contrary, I had several people at the conference want to sit and discuss my work,” She said. “It seems that "Little House on the Prairie" had a major impact on the American way of thinking and many wanted to know if that was accurate, and for the most part it is.”

      Fuqua said the conference gave her an opportunity to meet people from all of the United States and even different parts of the world. She said she was raised in Southeast Arkansas and has not had the opportunity to travel. She described the opportunity as eye opening, because the United States is a diverse and interesting place that deserves to be explored. She said going to the conference is an experience she would always cherish, and she was very thankful to the University for giving her the opportunity to learn outside of the classroom.

   She said going to the conference expanded her view of the existing world around her.  As a history major she focuses on the past and it was nice to experience a present, which would lead to a future. The trip influenced her Social Studies degrees as well. It allowed her to see all the different ethnicities and cultures emerge as one. She described San Diego as made up of several small towns and said the opportunity to drive through a series of cultural changes, such as Old Town Mexico, was an amazing experience. 

    Pope said she was hesitant about the conference, because she thought it was going to a “much bigger deal” than turned out to be. She said she thought it would be an auditorium full of people.

    “I was happy I got to go, because not everybody gets an opportunity like that,” Pope said. “What it is pretty much doing is helping us further our research and what we like as history majors. With most of us wanting to go to graduate school, this helps us a lot with writing a master’s thesis."

   Pasterniak said she was excited when she heard her essay was selected for the conference. She said she felt honored to have to the privilege to go to the conference and it was like receiving an award for the hard work it took to work on the essay.

   Pasterniak said she was scared of two things: presenting her essay at the conference and flying for the first time. Pasterniak and Fuqua both flew for the first time when they traveled to California.

    Pope and Pasterniak said they met people from around the world and people from many colleges in the United States at the conference.

    Pope described the setting for the presentations as intimate with 3-4 people presenting their essays per panel. She gave her presentation in a suite of the hotel with three other people presenting. The head of the panel heard their presentation and seven people were in the room while she presented her essay. She said it was not as nerve-racking as she thought it would be. She expected a big audience, but learned it was just small and intimate.

   After she read her essay, people asked her questions and panel chair commented on how to improve her essay.

   “It makes me more confident in myself,” she said. “ Just because we go to a small school like UAM, we can compete with the University of South Carolina. We have just as good or better papers than they did. We aren’t ‘you ain’t much’.”

   Pope said she was thankful for Day and for his part in setting up a way for them to go to the conference and glad he had faith in them.

   Pasterniak said Day cares about his students. She said Day’s goal at UAM is to make his students successful.

A Great Opportunity

   Day said he was very happy and very pleased the students had this great opportunity to present their own research at the national level.

  “They got to serve right along side schools from the Big East, Pac Ten, the SCC and Big Ten. They are all much larger schools with much more funding and resources than UAM,” Day said.

   The School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society and the generosity of the Office of the Provost-Academic Affairs helped to pay for the trip to California.

  Day said they received the support of Chancellor Jack Lassiter and Provost David Ray. He described Lassiter’s and Ray’s reaction to the presentation the students made as exciting and encouraging as to give them approval to submit their applications.

   Day said the conference was a very good educational opportunity for the three students.  He described presenting the essay as a college opportunity of a lifetime, not only to present their work to other schools, but to see what other schools are doing and what other schools are interested in doing.

   “I think that the three students, Ms. Pasterniak, Ms. Fuqua and Ms. Pope; they all were great ambassadors of UAM and they very much enjoyed the experience and learned a lot,” Day said. “I’m very honored to be associated with their projects, they did very good work.”

 

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