Congratulations to the 2025 Anne Pemberton Student Research and Creativity Award Winner!

Vanessa Anzola is a UNCW senior. Her project partner, Joey Thomas, is a UNCW junior. "Denise the Film" is a visual exploration of anxiety from the point of view of a college student (Marley). The film emphasizes Marley’s growth by learning to cope with anxiety, mirroring real-life mental health journeys. According to Vanessa Nubia, "We selected our topic of anxiety from personal experience with the desire to raise awareness of mental health through art, as people cannot see how it affects the mind from who experiences it. Joey, one of the writers on the project, struggles with anxiety on a daily basis and as a technique to handle he names his anxiety Denise. We are using personal experiences from ourselves and our friends who struggle with anxiety to tell this story, as well as methods for controlling and managing anxiety from mental health counselors on campus that we corroborated with scholarly articles." Come see Vanessa at the CSURF Showcase in UNCW Library on April 26!