As I started thinking about life after Witt, I realized how prepared I am because of the opportunities and relationships I’ve cultivated here. I have had the chance to study abroad, start a student organization, and now my newest adventure: research.

Coming into my senior year, I had a semester that was quite honestly my hardest at Wittenberg. Last semester was my first semester back from studying abroad with the Witt in Wittenberg, Germany, program and I was taking all upper-level course in my major.

One of these courses was Communication 300z: Social Scientific Methods. Essentially, this class was about learning how to read and understand research, as well as learn how to do research. Through the course, each student had to create a research question and look up academic articles and research about that topic. The final paper that we turned in for the course was a methods section that explained how you would do this research and what steps you would follow.

As the course began to wind down into this paper, the professor teaching Comm 300z, Dr. Kelly Dillon, encouraged all of us that if we, as students, had an interest in actually carrying out this research we should come and meet with her about how we could accomplish it.

I was skeptical about doing undergraduate research since it was something I had never aspired to do, but it seemed like an opportunity worth spending half an hour investigating, especially since Dr. Dillon spoke so passionately about it.

So I did. I went to Dr. Dillon and spoke with her about doing the research, and she explained that with the work I had already done in the Comm 300z course, I could do an independent study project without overwhelming myself. We talked about being able to use the research experience for applying to graduate school, as well as being able to submit it for presentation at communications conferences.

For me, the pros outweighed the cons of giving myself even more work to do, and so I declared that I wanted to do an independent research project.

After the holiday break, as the second semester of the 2017-2018 school started, I began working with Dr. Dillon during weekly meetings. During these meetings, we more clearly defined our research topic and how we planned to measure it. Our research focuses on media effects and cultivation of television. Following this additional planning, we began to take steps toward submitting my research proposal for approval by the university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB checks the methods of proposed research to make sure that there are no ethical issues.

There is a lot of work that goes into doing research before you even submit something to the IRB. Dr. Dillon has been there through the whole process, so she guided me through the process, whether it was adding questions, finding new surveys to add data, or showing me how to complete the training for responsible research. She has been so patient and available to discuss not only topics related to our research but about life as well.

Even with all of the incredible things I have been able to do at Wittenberg the most incredible part of my four-year experience has been the people -- peers who inspire me and professors who feel like friends.

Katherine E. Bunsold ‘18
Major: Communication
Minor: East Asian Studies and Cinema Studies
Hometown: Berkeley, IL