SJC and Colloquium Day

Saint Joseph's College had its Colloquium Day on Tuesday. On Colloquium Day some students give presentations on research that they have done and other students present posters of work they have done. It is meant to be much like an academic or scholarly convention.

A year ago I went to a convention in Portland that was the sort of event that Colloquium Day is meant to replicate on a small scale. (I do not recall what it was for--I was there to babysit, not to attend meetings.) Below is a picture of a small part of the poster exhibit.

Below is a closer look at one poster.

It costs about $100 to get a nice poster done, and the common way to do one is to go to Kinkos and have them print it on their big printers. People can prepare the poster in a variety of computer programs, including PowerPoint.

I did not see any posters at Saint Joe's that looked like they had been printed at Kinkos, but I was impressed with the exhibit below. The poster,  titled "The Relationship of Deer Beds and Available Shelter," described research conducted near the sewage treatment plant.

I had to ask the student who did this where she got the deer head. It turns out that she stuffed it herself. When she was a senior in high school, she took a class in taxidermy. Her brother shot the deer and she stuffed it for her taxidermy class. She also said that one girl approached her exhibit without seeing the deer head, turned around, met it at close distance, and screamed. She could not get over the idea that someone could kill a deer and then stuff it. (Obviously, she is not from around her. And maybe she thinks that meat comes from grocery store and has never wondered where the grocery store gets it.)

Today is April 15, a day that has a lot to do with taxes and not much to do with taxidermy. But taxidermy was as close to taxes as I could get this year.