Westminster hosts Undergraduate Scholars Forum

Anakin Bush/Fulton Sun
Zac Imel, keynote speaker of the 2023 Undergraduate Scholars Forum at Westminster College, speaks about his company, Lyssn.io. Westminster students presented their research and findings throughout the day on Thursday.
Anakin Bush/Fulton Sun Zac Imel, keynote speaker of the 2023 Undergraduate Scholars Forum at Westminster College, speaks about his company, Lyssn.io. Westminster students presented their research and findings throughout the day on Thursday.

Westminster College held the 2023 Undergraduate Scholars Forum Thursday, allowing students to present findings from their research.

Over 100 students from 16 academic programs at the college presented papers, posters and multimedia projects.

The keynote speaker of the USF was Zac Imel, who graduated from Westminster in 2001. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology and religious studies from the college.

He also served in the Skulls of Seven and was in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. In 2003, he earned his master's degree counseling psychology from the University of Missouri. He earned his PHD in counseling psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009.

Imel is a professor in the counseling and counseling psychology program in the department of educational psychology and adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Utah.

Imel's speech was "From Liberal Arts to Empathetic Robots." He spoke about Lyssn.io, a company which he is the co-founder and chief science officer.

Lyssen.io is a "technology company focused on using artificial intelligence to assess and improve psychotherapy practices," Mary Majerus, director of teaching and learning, said in her introduction.

One topic he spoke about was a bot Lyssn.io is working on, and compared it to the popular ChatGPT bot. The bot they are working on is focused on counseling. It aims to provide shorter, more specific answers to questions in a way similar to a counselor.

Imel said LyssnGPT provides answers that are more open-ended and reflection based. This is opposed to ChatGPT which often has a rambling answer, he added.

"Instead of just training it on the full internet, which is how ChatGPT works, and getting all of the random stuff on the internet, we've trained it on millions and millions of therapist statements that have been labeled for different active listening skills...," Imel said. "So we constrain the model and shape it to where it responds in particular types of ways."

After Imel's speech, he took questions from the crowd.

The second speech at the opening session for USF was from three Westminster students.

Becca Zile, Zoe Merkel and Riley Heiliger presented their speech "Understanding the Unseen: Appreciating Life Through Anatomy."

In the speech, they talked about working with two human donors and the experiences that provided. In working with the two donors, the students discovered cardiovascular disease, polycystic kidney disease and scoliosis.

Throughout their research, they found one underlying symptom for the conditions they found to be depression

"While depression is not seen physically, it can truly be debilitating for those that are living with it," Zile said. "Better understanding depression and mental disorders in general can help those exceed in life."

The three presenters took questions after their speech.

The opening session concluded with the presentation of various academic awards.

Sessions ran at Westminster 10:30 a.m.-4:15 p.m. The sessions covered a large variety of topics, including technology and warfare, wellness and psychological safety, political science and engineering models.