CCAM Mentored Student Research and Creative Activity winners. A couple awardees could not be at the ceremony in person and so attended via video call. From left to right: Grace Johnson, Kelsey Clodfelter, Megan Leight (faculty) on video call, Daney Brookover, Joe Lupo (faculty), Morgan Calvo, Andrew Kohn (faculty), Qiaohui He, Irene Guerra Rudas on video call and Mary Grace Johnson (faculty).
The 2026 faculty/student winners of the WVU College of Creative Arts and Media Exhibit of Mentored Student Research and Creative Activity explored the intricacies of scenic design, medical conditions represented through art, Latin American composers’ contributions, genre-defying musical work and using AI to identify hieroglyphics on Mayan vessels.
The CCAM Exhibit of Mentored Research and Creative Activity recognizes exceptional work conducted by the College’s students under the guidance of faculty members, including exhibitions, performances, publications and scholarly research.
“This exhibit celebrates the breadth and depth of student creative activity, research and scholarship at the College of Creative Arts and Media, and the dedicated mentorship of our faculty,” said Mikylah Myers, Associate Dean of Research and Creative Activity for the College.
Several of this year’s research projects were also presented at the WVU Spring Research Symposium, as well as at national conferences, including the 2026 National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
The winners, listed below, were selected by a jury panel including the College's dean, associate deans, and directors of the four schools and Art Museum of WVU. Prizes of up to $1,500 were awarded to each.
Undergraduate Winners
First Place: “Theatrical Scenic Artistry: The Power of the Paintbrush”
Student: Daney Brookover
Faculty Mentor: Tamara Honesty
Color palettes and aesthetics play a key role in conveying a show’s tone and style. “Theatrical Scenic Artistry: The Power of the Paintbrush” details a scenic artist’s process of matching exact color tones and textures to the paint elevations provided in order to bring the scenic designer’s vision to life.
Honorable Mention: “Under Stone, Bone, and Pressure: Marfan Syndrome Through the Lens of Lithography”
Student: Morgan Calvo
Faculty Mentor: Joseph Lupo
“Under Stone, Bone, and Pressure: Marfan Syndrome Through the Lens of Lithography” is the artist’s exploration of living with Marfan Syndrome, specifically the contrast between the societal expectations of being a woman and the reality of being a woman with Marfan Syndrome.
Graduate Winners
First Place: “Introducing Latin American Music to the Violin Repertoire ‘Hall of Fame’”
Student: Irene Guerra Rudas
Faculty Mentors: Mary Grace Johnson and Erin Ellis
“Introducing Latin American Music to the Violin Repertoire ‘Hall of Fame’” assesses works written for violin by Latin American composers for pedagogical significance and organizes them into graded levels to help violin instructors use these pieces in their lessons and performances.
Honorable Mention: “Neither Fish nor Fowl? - Intergeneric Explorations of Form, Aesthetics, and Reception in Schumann’s ‘Symphonic Etudes’”
Student: Qiaohui He
Faculty Mentor: Andrew Kohn
“Neither Fish nor Fowl? - Intergeneric Explorations of Form, Aesthetics, and Reception in Schumann’s ‘Symphonic Etudes’” argues that “Symphonic Etudes” exemplifies cross-genre experimentation during the Romantic era, caught between the identities of etude, variation and symphonic writing.
Collaborative Winner
First Place: “Drifting into Dresden: Using the Codex to Expand our A.I. Maya Database”
Students: Kelsey Clodfelter, Grace Johnson and Andrew Bonner
Faculty Mentor: Megan Leight
“Drifting into Dresden: Using the Codex to Expand our A.I. Maya Database” aims to develop an artificial intelligence model that can recognize and segment hieroglyphic blocks in scanned images of Mayan vessels, with the ultimate goal of training the AI to identify and isolate regions of interest within these images. This phase of the project scraped the Maya Vase Database (Mayavase), and researchers manually annotated all images to create a gold-standard dataset. The next phase of the project will expand to new primary sources, including images from the Dresden Codex.
The full College of Creative Arts and Media Exhibit of Mentored Research and Creative Activity was featured during WVU Research Week, April 6-10. To view the 2026 exhibit, visit https://creativeartsandmedia.wvu.edu/current-students/grants-and-scholarships/exhibit-of-student-research-and-creative-activity/2026-projects.