This past Saturday, March 24, 2012 I attended the 2nd Undergraduate Research Conference in German Studies, which was held in the Max Kade Center for German Studies in Pardee Hall at Lafayette College. Alongside me were approximately fifteen of my fellow Lafayette students, a handful of Lafayette professors, and maybe 50 other students and professors from more than ten different colleges and universities. Perhaps most notably, the conference featured Christopher Graves, a student from University of Texas, Austin, and Keynote Speaker Dr. Greg Eghigian of Penn State University.

Upon reflecting on the success of the conference I believe I must comment on the wide variety of disciplines that were represented at a German conference. Researchers presented their ideas on psychology, identity, and collective memory just to name a few. I was shocked to learn that not all of the presenters were German students, but some had studied history, art history, or philosophy. For that reason, the majority of the presentations were in English, and therefore, catered to an audience of not only German students/faculty, but a diverse group of students and academics.

After lunch the Lafayette students were given the opportunity to present research that they had done during the past year. The majority of projects shown were either iMovie projects, or ePortfolios, which either way each demonstrated Lafayette’s willingness, desire, and capability to incorporate both multimedia and new innovative language learning technologies and strategies into the German curriculum. Students and professors were impressed by our research and seemed to enjoy asking the students about not only their projects, but their future plans.

All in all, I would say those who attended the conference thoroughly enjoyed learning German from a diverse group of students who each used unique methods to prepare and present their findings. I would also like to mention the success of Lafayette’s own Tia Seibold ’14 who presented her research on memorials from the German Democratic Republic. Moreover, Rachel Venaglia ’14 and Hannah Kowalski ’14 also did a great job presenting their research on Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. Although I will be leaving Lafayette after graduation this spring, I am sure that both students and faculty alike are already looking forward to the 3rd Annual (potentially National) Undergraduate Research Conference in German Studies, which will be held at Moravian next year.