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2025 Spring Research Conference

April 17, 2025 | All Day

Community | Faculty Success | Student Success

Join us on Thursday, April 17, 2025.

The School of Health Sciences is excited to announce its annual 2025 Spring Research Conference, centered on the theme “Innovation in Science, Health, and Wellness.” This dynamic event will showcase groundbreaking research through engaging keynote speakers and student-led presentations, highlighting advancements shaping the future of health and wellness. Join us as we celebrate innovation and discovery in the health sciences.

Details

The annual 2025 Spring Research Conference will be hosted at the Stephens College campus in Columbia, Missouri. 

This event is free and open to the public.

• Conference Agenda (Schedule Coming Soon!)
• Submit an Abstract (Link Coming Soon!)
  • Submissions will be accepted March 3, 2025 (Block 6), through April 1, 2025 (Block 7).

Keynote Speakers

Bio: Emily Pivovarnik, MM, LMPT, MT-BC, NICU-MT is a board-certified music therapist with over 5 years of clinical experience supporting pediatric patients, which particular emphasis on preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She is an alumna of Montclair State University and The Florida State University and is a research fellow of the National Institute of Infant and Child Medical Music Therapy. She is currently a PhD student in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University. Her research focus is neurodevelopment and music therapy interventions to improve outcomes for premature and high-risk infants.

Title of Presentation: Sensory Processing in Premature Infants: Implications for the Integration of Music Therapy and Developmental Care

ABSTRACT: The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) environment exposes premature infants with inadequate sensory experiences placing infants with immature neurological systems at highest risk for neurodevelopmental consequences and sensory processing disorders. Insufficient sensory stimulation in the NICU hinders the development and connection of neural circuits essential for the proliferation of multimodal stimuli such as somatosensory and auditory-linguistic information, necessary to support neurodevelopment and function beyond the NICU admission. The combined effect of the need for the infant to complete fetal development in the NICU and the environmental factors of the environment create a need to integrate developmentally appropriate interventions. This comprehensive review of literature synthesizes essential information pertaining to neonatal physiology and sensory processing development in preterm infants. An overview of the development of each sensory system will be provided, with a particular emphasis on the sensory processing changes that occur due to prematurity. Current evidence applying music therapy and other developmental support strategies will be covered providing clinicians working in the area with a clinically relevant and readily implementable toolkit to support premature and high-risk infants admitted in the NICU. In conclusion, evidence-based music therapy can be combined with other medical care to reduce the risks of sensory processing disorder for the developing premature infant.

Pivovarnik ES. Development of Sensory Processing in Premature Infants and Implications for Evidence-Based Music Therapy in the NICU. Neonatal Netw. 2022;41(4):189-199. doi:10.1891/NN-2021-0018

More Speakers Coming Soon!

We will be announcing additional keynote speakers very soon. Stay tuned!

Human Subjects Research

If you are completing a research study that requires approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) Committee, please click here to visit the Human Subjects Research webpage. Scroll to the bottom of the page to submit your IRB application. If you have any questions about the IRB process, email Dr. Haskins at mhaskins@stephens.edu.

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Want to present your work at the Conference? Starting March 3, 2025 (Block 6), you’ll be able to submit an abstract proposal, and a link will be added here to do so. Please submit your abstract by Tuesday, April 1, 2024 (Block 7).