Travis presents at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in Richmond!

Travis spent April 13^th-15^th in Virginia with MTSU’s Student Organization for the Advancement of Research (SOAR) at NCUR 2026, where he presented a poster on his research about undergraduate biology students’ perceptions, learning, and communication of vaccines!

SOAR is an undergraduate student organization at Middle Tennessee State University committed to promoting undergraduate research. As part of this mission, SOAR encourages members to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), an annual meeting of student scholars from all disciplines in higher learning. The program serves as an opportunity for undergraduates to share their research and creative activities and to participate in career-readiness events. The SPS Lab’s own, Travis Ray, was among 19 SOAR members who presented at NCUR in Richmond, Virginia last week. He shared his work investigating how undergraduate biology students think, learn, and communicate about vaccines. We’re proud of you, Travis!

The Barnes SPS lab presents at MTSU 2026 Scholars Week!

Members of the Barnes Social Perceptions of Science lab presented at the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, the College of Education, and the university-wide scholars week events!

Undergraduate student Donye Asberry presented a poster on biology students’ learning, perceptions, and communication about race within the context of genetics and evolution education.

And he won the undergraduate category of the College of Education poster competition! Congratulations, Donye!

Undergraduate student Travis Ray presented a poster on biology students’ learning, perceptions, and communication of vaccines.

And he won 1^st place in the undergraduate category of the College of Behavioral and Health Sciences poster competition at the university-wide event on Friday! Congratulations, Travis!

Undergraduate student J. Hayes presented a poster on a project done by the Science Communication Education Research Network (SCERN) to identify barriers and solutions to teaching science communication in undergraduate science courses.

And she won 2^nd place in the undergraduate category of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences poster competition at Friday’s university-wide event! Congratulations, J!

Ph.D. student Rahmi Aini presented a poster about using the Nature of Science (NoS) as a framework for understanding students’ perceptions of conflict and compatibility between science and societal issues.

And she won 3^rd place in the graduate category of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences poster competition at the university-wide event on Friday! Congratulations, Rahmi!

Ph.D. student Kate Coscia presented a poster on a literature review of over 3,000 articles describing science communication trainings.

And Kate won 1^st place in the College of Basic and Applied Sciences Ph.D. student poster competition! Congratulations, Kate!

The presenters enjoyed a celebratory pizza picnic on Monday afternoon with the rest of the SPS Lab at MTSU—PI Liz and Post-docs Mary and Sumaiya.

Liz speaks at ComSciCon and SciTalk in Portland!

Liz headed to the Pacific Northwest this week to give the Keynote talk at ComSciCon about using conflict-reducing practices in science communication and to give a short talk on teaching students to use these practices at SciTalk!