Opportunities Abound

jeremy slovin

"There are so many opportunities here, both in and out of the classroom," says Jeremy Slovin '18, who is using his First-Year Opportunities grant to study water samples from three Florida sites. Photo by Carl Socolow '77.

New grant offers first-year students an early chance to get outside the classroom

by Tony Moore 

If the driving force behind going to college could be boiled down to one word, it might be opportunity. It’s what every student seeks when beginning that four-year academic experience, and it’s what every student hopes awaits at the other end.

For first-year students Marina Morton (undeclared), Alxis Rodis (political science, law & policy) and Jeremy Slovin (environmental science, economics), a new stripe of opportunity just arrived in the form Dickinson’s First-Year Opportunities Grant. The $500 award is new this year, and it encourages first-year students to conduct field research early in their Dickinson careers.

“I have always been interested in lobbyists' jobs, but I don't know that much about their day-to-day work,” says Rodis, who will use the grant to fund a weeklong internship with Triad Strategies, a lobbying and strategic-communication firm in Harrisburg, Pa. “This opportunity gives me a chance to get a taste of the lobbying industry firsthand and see if it’s something I would really like to pursue in the future.”

The grant is open for application in the fall and spring, but the process is a little different each semester: Fall applicants come from a group selected by their First-Year Seminar (FYS) professors, while any first-year student with a 3.7 GPA or above can apply for the spring award.

The application process begins with discussions between students and their FYS professors, another faculty member or a college dean. Then the students’ proposals are developed and refined for submission with the help of Associate Provost Shalom Staub.

Slovin will use the grant to get involved with something he’s been thinking about since a trip to his grandparents house in Florida. “Ever since visiting the Everglades and seeing just how much water dominated the environment there, I have been fascinated by how different aspects of the environment affect water quality and its role in an ecosystem.”

He’ll be comparing water from three Florida sites—a man-made pond in a residential development, a canal that feeds into a nature reserve and a canal that leads to the Atlantic Ocean—looking both for differences among the sites and any changes at each site over time in terms of phosphorus levels, nitrogen levels and pH.

“Doing research is definitely something that I want to do while here at Dickinson,” he says. “So I thought that this would be a great opportunity to get started early.”

Morton took a closer look at sustainable residential homebuilding over spring break at the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show. “I have a particularly strong interest in green home design due to the growing need for sustainability and efficiency in the world today,” she says. “This project will help me gain key insights into sustainable design from experts in my fields of interest.” 

All three students cite spillover from what they’re learning in the classroom as something that drew them to their projects, but Rodis hits on something that feels distinctively Dickinson.

“I'm on Dickinson's Mock Trial team and a tour guide in the Liberty Cap Society, and I am in training to be a Writing Center tutor," she says. "Everyone here is encouraged to get involved in whatever they're passionate about, regardless of whether it aligns with their major or not.”

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Published March 10, 2015