Campus News: The Week of Nov. 26

Nov. 26---- Eastern Connecticut State University hosted the Northeast Regional Undergraduate Research, Scholarly and Creative Activity Conference of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges on Oct. 28-29. The conference provided a platform to display the work of 49 students from six liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, including a number of Eastern students. Among these students was Maria Lara Sandoval of Marietta, a senior majoring in Business Administration. Lara Sandoval's project, titled "Collaborative Research: Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Big Data Analytics in Healthcare" was a Poster Session and was supervised by Steve Muchiri and Fatma Pakdil. Lara Sandoval's abstract reads: This study focuses on analyzing trends in readmission and length of stay of pneumonia patients between 2010 through 2014 on a national scale, using the Nationwide Readmissions Database provided by the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project in the U.S. The study also examines the impact of LOS on the likelihood of hospital readmission, emphasizing discharge disposition and patients' underlying conditions. It also illustrates various readmission trends depicted by patients under different payers, medical comorbidity, and discharge disposition. COPLAC is a group of 29 public liberal arts colleges across the country, of which Eastern is a member. Presenters spanned a variety of fields and disciplines from the analysis of children's horror films to the effects of social media on users' behaviors.