Erinn Finley
Staff Writer
[email protected]

As part of the Spring Scholars Week, students were challenged to use images in a communicative and expressive manner.

The Images of Research competition is open to all students. Research and Instruction Librarian Dana Thompson coordinates the competition.

Five prizes are awarded for this competition: first, second and third place, plus two honorable mentions.

“This year we had submissions from Studio Art, Ag Business, Horticulture, Business Administration, Journalism, Graphic Design, Wildlife Biology, Biology, Agronomy, English, Photography and Mathematics Education,” Thompson wrote in an email that announced the winners.

This semester’s first place winner was agronomy major Miranda Rudolph with her picture “Drops Of Wonder.”

Rudolph wrote her project is a study of the effectiveness of apple cider vinegar against drought stress at various stages in soybean development in her project description. She wrote she took the picture of the application of the apple cider vinegar on the first treatment group.

“The droplets seen are the apple cider vinegar settling on the leaves after I sprayed it on each replication,” Rudolph wrote. “The title ‘Drops of Wonder’ refers to the extremely complex and not entirely understood nature of drought and the effects that different compounds have on drought recovery. Scientific investigation begins with a simple ‘I wonder what this will do?’ and can sometimes lead to groundbreaking discoveries that change the world.”

Agriculture business major Savannah French received the second place prize for her photo titled “Little Worker with a Big Impact.”

“The research being conducted focuses on bees and their [effect] on crop production and yields,” French wrote in her description. “Pollinators increase crop yields, but crops are not always the best for pollinators. The research goal is to find a solution that helps our bees and our farmers increase production while becoming happier and healthier.”

John Gee, a studio art major with an emphasis in photography, placed third with his photograph titled “Waste.”

Gee’s photograph shows several plastic shopping bags pinned to a wall. He wrote in his description that with the ongoing climate crisis, it is more important than ever to take action no matter how small it seems.  “By pinning the bags on to the wall, it emphasizes how useless plastic becomes after it is used,” Gee wrote. “The choice to only use bags that feature red logos is intentional as red is usually seen as a color of danger symbolizing the danger of climate change and how we utilize plastic in our society.”

Gee wrote that the outward facing logos become confrontational toward the specific companies, calling them out since much of the climate crisis stems from corporations.

One honorable mentions was awarded to wildlife conservation biology major Michelle Weaver for her photograph “Eye-D.”

In her description, Weaver wrote that her project is looking into how wetlands respond to restoration. She wrote one key aspect of this research is to collect aquatic insect samples and ID them.

“Aquatic insects can be a good indicator of water quality and would give us insight into how well the wetlands are doing,” Weaver wrote. “Pictured is a damselfly we collected and preserved as part of this process. As most of these insects are very small, we use microscopes to ID them.”

The other honorable mention went to studio art major Molly Ramsey for her photograph “Eroding Beauty.”

Ramsey wrote in her description that her photograph represents the way nature can be destroyed by people and animals but can then adapt and become beautiful again. She wrote that the picture shows a creek bed that at one time was a small trickle through the woods and has now become so big that a bridge is needed to cross it.

“The creek is in a high traffic area as it is near the disc golf course, no matter how much we try to preserve nature, it will undoubtedly continue to grow in size each year,” Ramsey wrote. “The picture itself was taken to represent the good and the bad of Murray, thus ‘Eroding Beauty.’”

Prize money is being awarded to each of the students who placed this semester. The first place winner received $100, second place received $75, third place received $50 and the honorable mentions received $25 a piece.

The five prize winners will also be featured in the semiannual campus publication Steeplechase.

To see all of this year’s winners visit https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/steeplechase/.