Adriana Gebe has been awarded the 2022 Student Excellence Award by Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus.
Gebe, from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, will graduate this month with a bachelor of science degree in psychology. She is recognized for her undergraduate research project, “How is Perceived Sense of Control Related to Student Stress and Academic Performance,” completed under the supervision of Aris Karagiorgakis, assistant teaching professor in psychology.
“What was remarkable about this project is that Adriana used herself as motivation to better understand why some students persevere in school and why others don’t,” said Karagiorgakis. “What she found in the literature didn’t capture her experience, so she looked at sense of control as a potential interesting variable for research because that better fit with her personal experience.”
In April, Gebe was selected for the opportunity to present her work at the 2022 Annual Laurel Highlands Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference, hosted by the Psychology Department at Saint Francis University.
Her research was recognized by the University Libraries with third-place in the 2022 Excellence in Information Literacy Awards, and she also received third place in the Spring Learning Fair for an additional research project, “Can Virtual Reality Be Used to Successfully Treat Agoraphobia?”
Gebe was presented with a cash award of $1,000 and will have her name engraved on a permanent plaque on campus. She plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career as a clinical psychologist.
The two finalists each received a cash award of $500 — Maggi Bubonovich, for her research on the effect of consumerism on Hopi culture and arts; and Jacob Levendosky, for his research on the antimicrobial properties of household supplies.
Student Excellence Award
The Penn State Fayette Student Excellence Award was established to encourage scholastic excellence and to recognize academic achievement by Fayette campus students. The Award is administered by the Undergraduate Research Committee and sponsored by the campus Advisory Board.
Eligible students must have completed at least 30 credit hours at the Fayette campus within the past four academic years and have achieved a cumulative GPA of at least 3.67. Students may receive the award only once.
Submitted papers are assigned a point value, from 0.00 to 4.00, and the authors of the three highest scored papers advance to the colloquium, where they are similarly scored for the quality of their presentations. The finalist with the highest overall score is selected.
