Five Wayne State College students presented their rhetorical analysis papers at the Central States Communication Association conference over the weekend of April 3-6.
These five students included Catarina Siravo, Aedynn Graham, Hannah Keller, Charlie Kimsey and Jadyn Burenheide, who Teresa Morales, a professor of communication at WSC, said represent a spread of studies.
The CSCA accepts communication paper submissions from individuals ranging from undergrad to post-grad, and the annual conference gives an opportunity for people whose papers were accepted to present them.
Morales said all the papers had been written for her classes, and it was amazing all five papers that were submitted were accepted, because that usually does not happen for one school.
“That means that our students, of course, are writing highly competitive papers,” Morales said. “The rejection rate, whether you’re a faculty or a student, is fairly high. For the students, it was about a 28% acceptance rate.”
Morales said she was able to watch Burenheide present, and as she did, the realization of the richness and depth of what her students produced made her incredibly proud.
“I really was so happy that that student that gave that presentation, that wrote that paper, was one of ours,” Morales said. “It felt good.”
Graham, a public relations major, said her paper being accepted out of so many others was a huge honor.
“I heard they had to add, like, at least 10 to 20 more reviewers, and then they gave the reviewers three to four times more to review than they typically do,” Graham said. “It’s nice to know that you stood out enough among all of that. That had to be a lot of words to read, and still, to then come back to our papers, and my paper, it was really cool.”
Siravo, who will be heading to law school after graduation, said it was cool to have a paper accepted to a big conference as she is gearing up for graduation.
“It’s always really exciting to have a paper go to conference,” Siravo said. “I found out at CSCA that there were a lot of people who submitted papers who were not accepted. So, to know that I had a paper on the national level that was good enough to go, it’s not a, ‘Well, everyone who submitted a paper got in,’ it was, ‘No, we picked some of the best.’ So, it’s just a proud moment.”
Graham said presenting her paper and having discussions with other scholars about it was a cool learning experience.
“To present it to these people and see their reactions to the things that I’ve kind of gotten used to,” Graham said. “I can see their wheels turning as they see how my wheels had turned along the way, and so it’s just really cool to just watch their responses as I was talking.”
Siravo said she would encourage anyone who is thinking about submitting a paper to a conference to do so.
“It’s really scary and you have a lot of that imposter syndrome when you submit a paper for the first time,” Siravo said. “I just encourage people to get out of their comfort zone.”
