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Research and Creativity Day Turns 20: A Celebration of Undergraduate Work Decades in the Making

A group of University of Mary Washington theatre students began applying powder, color and gloss to a fellow student’s face. They contoured cheekbones, defined eyes, shaped brows and lips, and incorporated aging lines, scars and dirt. After fine-tuning features, enhancing texture and layering on some final touches, the student was transformed into a character, looking completely unlike themselves.

Professor of Geology Grant Woodwell was fascinated.

“It’s the most fun when you encounter something you don’t know about and you become the student in the process,” said Woodwell, recalling a year-end theatre demonstration. “There’s a lot of technical components to stagecraft makeup that I would have been completely unaware of, so that was a memorable thing to see.”

That sense of discovery is at the heart of Mary Washington’s Research and Creativity Day, a campuswide celebration of scholarly research and creative endeavors students have been cultivating, alongside faculty mentors, throughout the academic year. UMW celebrates the event’s 20th anniversary this year with a week of departmental presentations, exhibitions and performances that shine a spotlight on how far the day has come.

The story of how it began involves a conference, a carpool and a realization. In 2007, Woodwell and his colleague John Morello, then associate provost for academic affairs and professor of communication, hit the road together to attend a national gathering in Washington, D.C., focused on undergraduate research at large universities.

At many of those institutions, Woodwell noted, it simply wasn’t the norm for undergraduates to work directly alongside faculty. At Mary Washington, it already was. “That was clearly the culture here,” said Woodwell, who joined the faculty in 1986. “We thought it was quite ordinary.”

What the two brought back from that conference was an idea – a day dedicated to celebrating undergraduate research. The first Research and Creativity Day was held on a Friday afternoon in April 2007, with poster sessions lining the corridors of duPont Hall and presentations spilling into what was then called Woodard Campus Center. Around 100 students participated.

“There was a question about whether we could pull it off,” Morello said. “I remember being very gratified that we did – but I never really knew if it would have staying power.”

It did. After a successful first year, they committed to a second, then a third, and by the time Morello stepped back from direct involvement – handing off his duties to Woodwell and Professor of Spanish Ana Chichester – the event had taken on a life of its own.

The name itself was deliberate. Morello believed simply calling it “research” would have been too narrow for the range of student work already underway. Alongside the sciences and social sciences, he thought work in subjects like studio art, theatre, music, art history and others should be highlighted.

“It was intentionally designed to be broadly representative of the wide range of work being done by our students,” Morello said.

What was once a single, focused afternoon, now spans multiple buildings and, this year, an entire week of events. “It’s grown almost exponentially since its modest beginnings,” Woodwell said. “It now involves every department on campus and hundreds of students every single year.”

Director of Undergraduate Research Betsy Lewis took over coordination of the event during the uncertainty of 2020, “jumping into the fire,” as she put it, and has led it ever since. “Twenty years ago, they put a name and a day to something that had already been happening for several years,” Lewis said. “It has allowed it to really grow.”

This year’s celebration includes oral and poster presentations, art exhibitions, a communications symposium, a startup pitch competition, theatre and musical performances, along with an opening reception in the University’s recently established Research and Creativity Collaborative in Simpson Library.

The Collaborative, launched last year, serves as a hub for student scholarship and artistic work, linking students with resources, mentorship and opportunities to advance their projects. To Lewis, it’s also simply a “fancy name for our office of undergraduate research – a beautiful, cozy space with student artwork and comfy couches, open to anyone to hang out, study or connect.”

Last year, after years of hearing her talk about the event, Lewis’s husband decided to attend Research and Creativity Day for himself. “He was blown away,” she said. “He was really impressed with the work the students were doing, and I think everybody else who comes will be too.”

That reaction, Lewis said, is what the day has always been about – parents, friends, staff and faculty from completely different disciplines, all turning out to support students who have spent a year, and often more, chasing questions that matter to them.

“Research is the purest form of education,” Morello said. “Because the student is defining for themselves the project they’re interested in, the questions that need to be answered, why it’s important – and putting their own time and effort into it, not because it’s on the syllabus and they have to do it, but because they’re genuinely interested.”

Research and Creativity Day events take place the week of April 20 – 24. For a full schedule, visit the 2026 Research and Creativity Day website.