The Festival of Excellence Hosting SUU Talent, Displays

Published: April 04, 2014 | Read Time: 2 minutes

Each semester at Southern Utah University, 1,955 classes are taught, equaling out to about 39,900 final projects being completed by students. These projects are full of talent and innovation, so why not share. The Festival of Excellence is a time for the Thunderbird Community to celebrate those excellent research projects, paintings, community initiatives and choreographed dances all being completed by SUU’s faculty, staff, alumni and students.

With just a few weeks left in the spring semester, the Festival of Excellence will recap the 2013-14 school year on Tuesday, April 8, with presentations, discussions and showcases throughout the day. Come support SUU’s faculty, staff and students as they showcase their work over the past year. 

Provost Bradley Cook stated of the broad showcase of academic endeavor, “We don’t do enough of celebrating the talent we have on our campus. We have faculty and students writing books, engineering projects, writing and publishing papers, traveling the world to present research and yet our own community doesn’t know about it.

Cook went on to say that the benefit of the Festival of Excellence is to help students develop the skills of accomplishing and presenting a project.

He said, “Gives them a chance to prepare a project, though it comes with some discomfort it’s a safe environment for students to learn in.”

This year's Festival will open with a Plenary Session—an opening ceremony of sorts—at 9 a.m. in the Centrum Arena, featuring President Scott L Wyatt, Provost Bradley Cook, Professor David Berri and senior dance education major Heidi Hertig. 

Door prizes will be given out and all those in attendance are eligible to win. Prizes include an iPad Mini and gift cards to the SUU Bookstore.

From there, the day's showcases are organized into five major categories of interest: leadership, outdoor engagement, community engagement, creativity and global engagement. Each session will consist of concurrent sessions, poster sessions and creative works.

A variety of research and performing and visual arts presentations will be shown throughout the remainder of the day until 3:45 p.m. During the lunch break, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., Festival of Excellence Bingo will be conducted in the Living Room, located within the Sharwan Smith Student Center.

Along with the Plenary Session door prizes, current students are eligible to participate in Passport Prizes, which allows students to be involved with multiple presentation areas throughout the day. By attending session lectures, presentations and displays, passport cards are marked and depending on the amount of stamps received different awards are available to be won. Possible prizes include an iPad Mini, a beach cruiser pedal bike, and gift cards to the SUU Bookstore.

To see a detailed schedule of all presentations and locations, visit www.suu.edu/academics/provost/excellence. 

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