Every spring, Washburn hosts Apeiron, an event that allows students, either individually or in groups, to showcase their research, scholarship, and creative activities in a setting similar to a professional meeting. 

Students are welcome to share their scholarly work from any field of study in the form of poster exhibits, oral presentations or exhibitions/ performances. 

This year, Apeiron is scheduled for April 19 and will be host to students from a variety of studies such as nursing, social work, business, mathematics, sociology, theatre and English. 

“The best way to think of it is a conference on campus that students can present above and beyond scholarly work, above and beyond what we would see in a regular classroom,” said Shaun Schmidt, associate proffessor and Apeiron chair. “We have folks from all areas across campus: graduate, undergraduate, all levels are welcome. It is a great way to ‘raise the scholarly atmosphere on campus.”

For her Apeiron presentation, Tara Wallace, a social work graduate student is presenting a body of work about her research on self care for professionals students. She completed a survey with 91 students about the importance and their knowledge of self-care. 

“For example, I as  a full-time student, full time employee with 15 hours of academics, 40 hours of work  and at least 25 hours of internship in a week, it can get stressful,” said Wallace. “As a lot of my peers and I have discussed and one of the things that I always go back to is ‘What am I doing to deal with that? What am i doing to exercise self care? My study proved that not many of students do.’ ”

She hopes to team up with a community organization to further educate individuals and even businesses on the importance of self care in order for people to be able to function better at work. 

“I am considering publishing the paper and Apeiron will provide a bigger platform and audience for me to share my work,” said Wallace. “It will be a good experience for me and will expose my work to a diverse group of individuals so that I can get some feedback and critique.” 

For more information, visit http://www.washburn.edu/academics/apeiron/index.html.