Two CSUB students earn top awards in CSU Student Research Competition

Hannah McKinzie and Garrett Hentges both placed in their categories

By California State University, Bakersfield

May 12^th, 2022

Two California State University, Bakersfield students were recently recognized at the state level for the research they’ve conducted at the university.

Hannah McKinzie and Garrett Hentges both placed in the CSU Student Research Competition, which was held virtually by San Francisco State University from April 29-30. As part of the competition, participating students had to create eight-minute videos explaining their research and respond to questions after the videos were shown.

“I really didn’t think it was going to happen,” McKinzie said. “There were people there who really edited and produced their videos very well, where with mine it was just me talking, so I didn’t expect it at all.”

McKinzie earned first place in the Humanities, Arts and Letters category for her presentation “Humor and Housewives in the Postwar United States.” Hentges received second place in the Engineering and Computer Science category for his presentation titled “Odd-Even Flexible Router for High Performance Network-on-Chips.”

“At first, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get first place,” Hentges said. “It was weird being so close, but then I realized it was still a crazy accomplishment to get second place. It felt good for the research to have paid off and for it to be appreciated by other people.”

Hentges, who is graduating this month with his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, said he wanted to focus his research on computer chips because they have become a major issue in the industry that needs to be resolved.

“All the devices we use have chips in it, processors that exchange messages throughout the device,” he said. “As we try to make these faster, we have to put more and more transistors on these chips, but when you have all these transistors, it can cause delays.”

McKinzie is a graduate student pursuing her master’s in history. She wanted to focus on the women’s rights movement of the 1960s for her research to dispel the notion that the women who participated in the movement were only united by a shared sense of anger.

McKinzie combed through old issues of Ladies’ Home Journal, the longest-running women’s journal, to find letters, political cartoons and more to support her research.

“When many people think about feminism, they do often think of women being angry,” she said. “Anger is a normal emotion for feminists to feel, but what I’ve found is that women gathered in large numbers also due to a shared sense of humor, and this humor created an intimacy between women. It was important for me to discuss the lighter aspects, the more human aspects, of feminism.”

Presenting the research

Both McKinzie and Hentges faced challenges in preparing their videos for the competition. McKinzie, who lives in Tehachapi, said she struggled with recording her video due to her WiFi working improperly. She also had difficulty memorizing what she wanted to say in her video, ultimately opting to improvise rather than rely on a script.

“I think my presentation was more natural because I wasn’t able to memorize my lines, so the end result was me kind of going off the cuff,” she said. “A lot of the other students had their scripts nailed down. I thought I was going to lose, but I think it might have been one of the reasons I did win. I didn’t have editing software. I didn’t have cool transitions. It was just me talking about my research.”

Hentges said the competition itself wasn’t as difficult as meeting deadlines for presenting his research.

“One of the biggest challenges was the deadlines we had set for ourselves. I started my research last May and had to be able to present it by December. Hitting those time frames and deadlines was difficult, but I had a lot of support from faculty.”

Despite the challenges, McKinzie and Hentges said it was a great experience doing the competition, both on an academic level and on a personal level.

“It was awesome,” Hentges said. “Being able to answer questions, think critically, being able to present yourself in a public setting — it helps you learn skills and tools that you should have in the real world. I think what set me up most for the future was being able to present my research on a greater level than I already have.”

McKinzie said participating in the CSU Student Research Competition gave her more confidence about her research. She said she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she did in the competition without the support of her professors.

“I’m proud that I was able to come back to CSUB and tell my professors that I won first place. It makes you feel good as a student,” she said.

McKinzie said she is also honored to be able to not only represent CSUB at the state level with the competition but also bring more attention to the university by winning in her category.

“It makes me proud to be able to do that for CSUB and my professors, especially since we don’t have the same opportunities and resources as some of these other schools I won against,” she said. “It was cool seeing all this research from these other students. It opened my eyes to a lot of different ideas. I hope it continues for a long time to come.”