Point Park University Students Showcase Research and Projects at 2025 Fall Forum Monday, December 15, 2025

Point Park University gave students a chance to showcase their recent undergraduate research projects at the Fall Forum on Dec. 5, 2025.

Among a sea of colorful cardboard displays in Lawrence Hall, students chatted with the university community about topics and fields of interests that were special to them. Throughout the event, students discussed everything from university life to relevant topics in their future career fields.

"The Fall Forum allows us to end the fall term with a celebration of undergraduate academic and creative work," said Jessica McCort, director of the Honors Program. "We have been excited to see the event grow every year, with more students presenting and more attending to support their classmates and friends.”

For students like Riley Beight, a senior in the sports, arts, entertainment and music (SAEM) business program, the passion shared by himself and other students particularly stood out throughout the day. For his own project, “The Evolution, Business, and Psychology of Music Festivals,” Beight incorporated several lessons he learned about the music industry and hands-on learning experiences to present his findings.

“During the developing period of the SAEM capstone, we wanted to find ways to engage the audience with more than just music,” Beight said. “To do this, I researched the history, evolution, case studies of failures and successes in festival history and how crowd behavior shapes a festival. After researching, I applied the research into our event and found ways that make the music festival more of an immersive experience.”

A similar passion for innovations is what drove Charlie Hosek, an English major who is also minoring in creative writing and education, to begin investigating ways to launch a literary magazine known as Pulse at Point Park. Working with Divine Eyth and Vince Smykal, Hosek says that they started discussing ways to give students opportunities to be published.

“My classes have helped, especially my workshop classes as they will mention literary magazines and the submissions process often,” they said. “I will say, this project has helped in the classroom too because it's gotten everyone talking about submitting to various lit journals and magazines because we've been coming up with our own submission criteria.”

When presenting this at the Fall Forum, they were excited to see students showing an interest in Pulse Literary Magazine. 

“It was fun presenting the project during the poster session,” Hosek said. “We had a handful of people scan our QR codes and as a new literary magazine, every single person showing interest felt super exciting.”

This won’t be the only opportunity that students have to showcase their work, as a similar event is being planned for the spring semester as well. Organizers hope to have even more students present, as well as get more eyes on the amazing work these students achieve throughout their time at Point Park.

“We're already looking ahead and planning the upcoming Spring Symposium, so if you are a faculty member who would like to see your students present or you're a student who is looking for a place to showcase your work, reach out and we'll make sure to include you," McCort said. 

This semester’s forum included projects from over 70 students in total. Capstone presentations included presentations from the following students:

Honors Capstone Presentations

• Anna Fitzgerald
• Austin Riggs
• Harleen Dhasi
• Gillianne Stewardson
• Annie Harris
• Madyn Harris
• Riley Beight
• Jordann Versaw
• Lydia Zarefoss
• Julia Stutzman
• Tavia Soverns
• Kateri Johnston
• Ayana Davis
• Jessica Schneider
• Angelee RiAll
• Mia Jamerson

School of Education Capstone Presentations

• Bella Magliocco
• Caitlin Murphy
• Courtney Parrish
• Gina Pietropaolo

More About: political science, education, civil engineering, dance, research, psychology, English, Department of Literary Arts, Honors Program