Research Rewards

Each spring, more than 100 students showcase their work at Simpson’s Research & Creativity Symposium. Their presentations feature a wide range of academic disciplines and co-curricular endeavors —Highlighting work completed over a semester, or longer, time frame.

At the 2023 symposium, one team of six students presented “Rage Against the Machine: ChatGPT’s War on Higher Education.” Formation of the team and subject matter resulted from an organic, open process empowering students to conceive and create their own project in a class taught by Professor of Management Mark Green.

“I enjoyed the free flow of it,” said Kegan Trebilcock ’26, a member of the ChatGPT research team. “Professor Green literally just tossed us into it — we weren’t even in groups for the first month. The whole class just researched topics of interest and then as our ideas came together, we just figured out [our team] and what to do.”

The ChatGPT research team featured a dynamic mix of first years to seniors, representing majors and minors from accounting, business management, marketing and political science. Over the course of the semester, the group developed a strong chemistry for efficiently and effectively tackling the project.

“A lot of it was just figuring out workload management,” said Trebilcock. “When you have a group like ours, everyone is going to be capable of different things. We just needed to organize in a way that got the right people to the right position to make it work.”

“I think a lot of confidence came with that process and how we broke it all down,” said group member Eldred Boria ’25. “We all had our roles. Then we just worked as a group to combine everything and put it all together.”

Professor Green says semester-long project endeavors like the one completed by the ChatGPT team are invaluable in helping students connect course work with what occurs in an actual business setting. As they move through their projects, Green sees remarkable growth in his students.

“They experience first-hand the classic stages of team development that they learn in various management courses. At the end of the day, everyone brings something unique to the table and the result is a ‘win-win’ all the way around.”

“I felt like the project was beneficial as a whole,” said Dylan Holland’25. “Working in groups on long-term projects is something we’re all going to experience in our careers. So this is definitely going to help us in the future.”

(Photo above, Left to Right) Kegan Trebilcock ’26, Dylan Holland ’25 and Eldred Boria ’25 were part of a student research team in Professor of Management Mark Green’s class that presented at Simpson’s 2023 Research & Creativity Symposium. Group members not pictured: Dylan McChesney ’23, Mallory Burkhart ’23 and Hannah Foster ’25.