Miami University

Miami University's student venture capital investment team won the U.S. Northeast Regional competition of the 2022 Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), qualifying them for the global finals at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The team competed against eight other finalists from around the world and placed in the top three.

Winners of Miami's Concerto Competition and the Composition Competition were featured in the Miami University Symphony Orchestra concert on Wednesday, May 1, at Hall Auditorium. "We are immensely proud to showcase the exceptional talents of our student musicians and composers in the season's finale concert," Ricardo Averbach, director of the symphony orchestra, said. "It will feature three world premieres - compositions by our composition winners. Miami is the only college in the country to have an established yearly composition competition for undergraduate students," Averbach said. This is the second year for the Composition Competition. Miami University Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition Winners Theadora Bowne, senior Music Performance major from Cleveland, will perform the first movement of Haydn's Cello Concerto in D major. Bowne was also a winner of the 2022 Concerto Competition. Cole Kubesch, junior Music Performance and Biochemistry double major from Cincinnati, will perform the first movement of Mozart's Oboe Concerto. Kubesch was also a winner of the 2022 Concerto Competition. Eric Riedel, senior Music Performance and Music Education double major from Bethel, will perform arias from operas by Handel, Donizetti, and Mozart. Composition Competition Winners Max Liber, senior French Horn Music Performance and Composition major, Arts Management co-major, and Emerging Technology in Business + Design minor from Libertyville, Illinois, won for his composition "To Paint the Bigger Picture." Gabe Manisco, senior Music Composition major from Oxford, won for his composition "A Trip to the Stars." Oscar Avila, junior Music Composition and Computer Science double major from Troy, won for his composition "Todo en Exceso." Dedicated to the memory of maestro Seiji Ozawa "Maestro Seiji Ozawa, an iconic figure in the world of classical music, left an indelible mark on the orchestral landscape through his unparalleled artistry and dedication to the craft," Averbach said. As a mentor to Averbach at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Ozawa's influence resonates deeply with the musicians of MUSO. A highlight of the concert was a performance of Beethoven's Egmont Overture, "a composition that held a special place in Maestro Ozawa's heart. It was the very piece he conducted at his last concert before his passing, on Nov. 22, 2022, with the Saito Kinen Orchestra. Despite his physical challenges, his passion for music shone through as he conducted from a wheelchair, with the performance broadcast live to Koichi Wakata, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station," Averbach said.

Miami University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition winners

The Howe Center for Writing Excellence poetry contest asked Miami student writers to reflect on what "Hope and Rebirth" mean to them, especially in the current moment.

Miami University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition winners

Interior Design student Alli Brooks has won 2nd place in the 2020 Robert Bruce Thompson Annual Student Light Fixture Design Competition. The $2,500 Award of Distinction was made to Alli Brooks for her custom-designed light fixture, "Nocturnal." Intended for application to the roofs of bus shelters and other outdoor public environments, the product combines a skylight with a light-emitting diode (LED) light source to form an integrated natural and artificial light source.

A team of students from Miami's Farmer School of Business and the College of Arts and Science took on students from around the world to win the analytics portion of the 2020 Teradata Analytics Challenge.

Artwork created by students from Miami University Regionals has been selected to be displayed on electrical boxes throughout Middletown as part of the Perk-Up Middletown project. The public art project, which is sponsored by the City of Middletown, the Rotary Club of Middletown, the Middletown Arts Center and Miami University Regionals Middletown Campus, is intended to create pride in the visual aesthetics of the downtown area while showing that Middletown is a vibrant and exciting destination for visitors and residents alike.

The Miami University Bateman team has received an Honorable Mention in the Public Relations Student Society of America's (PRSSA) national case study competition. The 5-member team consisted of strategic communication majors LeeAnn Burczynski, Marisa Sulek, Graham Leu, Sarah Myers, and Ava Dasari, who all worked for most of this school year to research, plan, implement, and evaluate a strategic public relations plan to submit to the competition. Visiting instructor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film Shara Clark, APR was the team's adviser.

More than 50 graduate students participated in Miami University Graduate School's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition earlier this semester in the traditional face-to-face format. The 10 finalists competed April 28 in the final round, which, like most other events during these Stay-Safe-Ohio days, was held remotely. Rose Marie Ward, interim associate provost and dean of the Graduate School, said "I am so proud of the students. Our 10 finalists had to adapt to the new remote environment and be able to present a complex topic without any audience participation." The 3MT is a research communication competition for graduate students, held at universities worldwide. It challenges participants to present their research in just 180 seconds, in an engaging form that can be understood by an intelligent audience with no background in the research area.

Students from the architecture + interior design and mechanical engineering departments at Miami University collaborated in the 2020 Solar Decathlon on April 18-19, 2020. The teams planned to travel to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, to present their projects last week. The trip was canceled, but they were able to present their final proposals in a virtual event where they won the top award for Attached Housing and was awarded Grand Jury Winner in the residential division.

The Solar Decathlon Design Challenge, formerly called Race to Zero, is an annual competition open to students from collegiate institutions worldwide. The competition encourages students to work with builders, developers, community leaders, and other industry partners to meet stringent design requirements and create marketable, affordable concepts. Teams compete in a range of residential and commercial project types. Jurors evaluate projects in ten contest categories: Energy Performance; Engineering; Financial Feasibility & Affordability; Resilience; Architecture; Operations; Market Potential; Comfort & Environmental Quality; Innovation; Presentation. Sixteen Miami students from architecture and mechanical engineering majors collaborated in the 2019 Race to Zero competition studio. The studio fielded two teams in the first phase of the competition. In February, their progress entries were selected to be among the 48 finalist teams representing 34 institutions from the U.S. and internationally. The Miami students presented their final proposals at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) April 13-14 in Golden, Colorado. Miami's team won top awards in their divisions: Elementary School team - 1st Place; Attached Housing team - Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement.

Miami kinesiology and health students Jared Bottger, Sarah Brown, and Taylor Roof received the first place trophy at the Midwest Chapter of American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Quiz Bowl Championship held in Grand Rapids, MI, on November 9th. The team, selected by the kinesiology faculty members, competed against approximately 20 other college teams in a Jeopardy-style tournament on physiology and sport medicine topics. On top of the trophy, the Miami team also won a paid trip to the ACSM national conference to represent the region in late May. In addition to the competition, 40 Miami students, both undergraduate and graduate, attended the conference with most presenting their research through oral or poster presentations. Dr. Cardyl Trionfante planned and organized Miami's trip and participation, which was also attended by numerous kinesiology faculty members including Helaine Alessio, Kevin Ballard, Randal Claytor, Ron Cox, Kyle Timmerman, and Mark Walsh. http://miamioh.edu/ehs/news/2018/11/knh-acsm-winners.html

A team of three Miami athletic training students won the Ohio Athletic Trainers' Association (OATA) Student Symposium Quiz Bowl on Saturday, January 20. The team consisting of seniors Alex Mueller, Audrey Van Auken, and Abby Weiland became the first Miami University team to win the Quiz Bowl since 2007. The OATA Quiz Bowl was hosted by Ohio State and is a Jeopardy-style competition where fourteen Ohio athletic training programs compete against each other. As the Ohio winner, the team will go on to the Great Lakes Athletic Trainers' Association (GLATA) Quiz Bowl in mid-March to compete against other GLATA athletic training programs (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). If they win GLATA, they go on to compete in the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) Quiz Bowl in June.

Miami University Student Wins National Journalism Award