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Funded Research

Students as Scholars

This page shows details of individual student projects, arranged by department(s) and/or offices in which the research occurred. Each entry describes the project, the outcomes, and a statement from the student about the research experience.

Thera Dal Pra Iversen (2017)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (4, 2017)

I am applying for Dana Research Assistantship Spring 2017 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from UCSD, University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, and Wesleyan. "gender/sexuality/italy" publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries. The first issue was published in May 2014. I am now seeking funding to hire two (2) advanced students in Spring 2017 to support my work in the preparation of the fourth annual issue of g/s/i (2017). The Assistant Editors will work with me on all the stages of the publication process. They will collect and store the received articles in Google Drive and Dropbox, assist me with source checking, engage in email exchanges with the contributors and the reviewers, copyedit, proofread, and check the format of a selection from the received submissions, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. They will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will instruct the Assistant Editors in the preliminary steps of the copy editing and mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The candidates I identified, Thera Iversen and Delphine Dall'Agata, have sophisticated writing skills both in English and Italian, extended knowledge of contemporary Italian culture and literature, interest in the writing process, and motivation for both the field of research and the job. They will have the chance to read, listen to, or watch the submissions and their revisions, follow the peer-editing process in the academic environment, and collaborate with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking. Their collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will perfect their technological skills and give them a broader sense of the cultural impact and great potential of the digital humanities in the scholarly community..

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Orelia Elizabeth Dann (2005)

Manuscript preparation for: Symbolism and Modern Urban Society, and Art, Culture and National Identity in Fin-de Siecle Europe

I would like to apply for a New Dana Assistantship for this academic year for the job of "manuscript preparation." The primary manuscript in preparation for the fall term is Symbolism and Modern Urban Society, a book (c. 600 typescript pages) under contract to Cambridge University Press, due December 2002. The book's text is completed, but much work remains on endnotes, bibliography, rechecking facts, and especially obtaining and organizing all illustrations (there will be nearly 200, all of which must go to Press with photographs, copies, and permissions). For these remaining tasks, an assistant would be conducting library and web research, copy editing and proofreading, locating illustrations, organizing bibliographic entries, and handling formal correspondence with various museums and collections around the world. A secondary project for the fall term would be helping to proof the galleys of another book that I have co-edited, on Art, Culture and National Identity in Fin-de-Siecle Europe, also for Cambridge, which is currently in press. Because this book contains only two chapters written by me plus ten other chapters by ten different authors, the proofing should also involve correspondence with the other authors, rechecking illustration captions, etc. with them. If the galleys arrive by November as promised, then they too would be due in December.

Term Funded:Fall 2002
Professor: Sharon Hirsh


Sarah Emily Hoch (2005)

Processing Instruction in the content-based Language Classroom

Processing instruction (PI) seeks to alter L2 learners' inefficient cognitive strategies by structuring input that promotes form-meaning connections in the developing system (VanPatten, 1996, 2003). Previous studies on grammatical structures in French, Spanish, and Italian show the positive effects of PI for grammatical structures that are identified as causing an processing problem for L2 learners (VanPatten, 2003). As regards the acquisition of the passive voice, observations from a qualitative pilot study by Duperron suggest that intermediate L2 learners, in accordance with the First Noun Strategy extend onto the passive voice in French the ongoing investigation of PI's role on learners' grammar acquisition. My project also includes the development of pedagogical material that delivers PI activities in the L2 content-based environment.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Lucile Duperron


Erin Nicole Kauffman (2006)

Modernism's Everyday Object

This book will investigate the role of the household object - from overlooked quotidian items to enshrined objects of induced nostalgia - in the visual arts of Western Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. It will trace the significance of the common household object in avant-garde painting and sculture from Post-Impressionist interiors and still lives (of Neo-Impressionists, Symbolists, and Cezanne) through Fauve interiors, and culminating in Cubist and Dada constructions and the readymades of Duchamp. It will explore why these objects held such fascination for artists living and working in fast-paced modern metropolises. Reacting to a variety of social impulses related to urbanization, mechanization, and consumerism, while adhering to new aesthetic theories dealing with space, sensation, and empathetic response, artists embraced domestic objects as complex, and often conflicted, signifers of art's social and even spiritual goals.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Sharon Hirsh


Nora Marisa Mueller (2005)

Manuscript preparation for: Symbolism and Modern Urban Society, and Art, Culture and National Identity in Fin-de Siecle Europe

I would like to apply for a New Dana Assistantship for this academic year for the job of "manuscript preparation." The primary manuscript in preparation for the fall term is Symbolism and Modern Urban Society, a book (c. 600 typescript pages) under contract to Cambridge University Press, due December 2002. The book's text is completed, but much work remains on endnotes, bibliography, rechecking facts, and especially obtaining and organizing all illustrations (there will be nearly 200, all of which must go to Press with photographs, copies, and permissions). For these remaining tasks, an assistant would be conducting library and web research, copy editing and proofreading, locating illustrations, organizing bibliographic entries, and handling formal correspondence with various museums and collections around the world. A secondary project for the fall term would be helping to proof the galleys of another book that I have co-edited, on Art, Culture and National Identity in Fin-de-Siecle Europe, also for Cambridge, which is currently in press. Because this book contains only two chapters written by me plus ten other chapters by ten different authors, the proofing should also involve correspondence with the other authors, rechecking illustration captions, etc. with them. If the galleys arrive by November as promised, then they too would be due in December.

Term Funded:Year 2002
Professor: Sharon Hirsh


Amanda Nicole Nierva (2018)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:
Professor:


Eliza Rose Park (2011)

Young Writers Program for English Language Learner (ELLs) - Summer 2010

In conjunction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, Pennsylvania, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs). Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2010 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. Research findings may make significant contributions to the fields of secondary English education and teacher preparation - particularly related to ELL literacy instruction - due to the unique collaboration of teacher educator/pre-service teacher in the approach to designing and implementing this study. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how YWPs may influence adolescent ELLs' (1) varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; (2) literacy skills in their first and/or second language; and (3) contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Harris Risell (2016)

The Pulp Magazines Project

Harris will continue marking up the project's 300 digital issues in both RDF and TEI - XML standards - compliant formats for the enhanced organization of, and access to, existing materials.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Patrick Belk


Bakary Samasa (2019)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:
Professor:


Thanh Thien To (2011)

Improving the Quality of the Assignment of Students to First-Year Seminars

Many post-secondary academic institutions in the United States have a First-Year Seminar Program. These seminars are designed to support the success of new incoming first-year students by combining writing, research and active discussion among small groups of students. At Dickinson College, students are required to select six seminars they find interesting from a list of approximately 42 seminars. The college then attempts to assign each student to a seminar on their list, while maintaining course capacities. Using standard commercial optimization software, we develop an approach that not only solves this basic assignment problem, but also seeks to balance both the gender and number of international students in the seminars. In addition, we utilize Monte Carlo simulation to study how the number of seminars each student is required to select affects the likelihood that a feasible assignment exists.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Richard Forrester


Eric Thomas Vogt (2017)

The Effect of Isoprenoid Depletion on the Inflammatory Response of Blood Cells

In autoinflammatory disease, the innate immune system is overly active and therefore generates inflammatory molecules under circumstances that normally would not warrant such activation. The increased activation of the innate immune system causes episodes of general inflammatory symptoms including fever, joint pain, rash, and fatigue. Most autoinflammatory diseases are caused by mutations in genes that control the innate immune system and are therefore categorized by genetic mutation. One group of autoinflammatory diseases, collectively called Mevalonate Kinase Deficiency (MKD), is caused mutations in the mevalonate kinase (MVK) gene, which is responsible for the production of isoprenoid compounds. These isoprenoid molecules are involved in many different cellular processes including cell division, movement, and communication with the environment. This project aims to understand the cellular mechanisms by which alterations to isoprenoid levels causes inflammatory symptoms. Investigation into how isoprenoids control inflammation provides valuable information for treating inflammatory diseases.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Erik Fowler Williams (2018)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:
Professor:


ALLARM

Danielle Marie Cioce Ferguson (2008)

Burma Environmental Curriculum Development and Implementation

ALLARM has a unique opportunity to apply its work to an international context and to engage two ALLARM students in the process. ALLARM has been asked by EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights organization, to enhance the environmental curriculum for their capacity building school (Burma EarthRights School located in Chiang Mai, Thailand) for Burmese community leaders. This twelve month school's strengths lay in its human rights, international law, and democracy development curricula but lack a strong environmental curriculum. In the first year of collaboration, ALLARM will conduct research and develop teaching materials focused on farming, copper mining, and gold mining. ALLARM students and director will conduct research this fall, travel to Thailand to pilot the curriculum while conducting additional on-the-ground research, and finalize the curriculum for use by Burmese communities and the Burma EarthRights School. ALLARM is requesting support from R&D for the two ALLARM students' research and travel.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Julie Vastine


Vallie L Edenbo (2002)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Lauren Imgrund


Jack Wolbach Treichler (2008)

Burma Environmental Curriculum Development and Implementation

ALLARM has a unique opportunity to apply its work to an international context and to engage two ALLARM students in the process. ALLARM has been asked by EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights organization, to enhance the environmental curriculum for their capacity building school (Burma EarthRights School located in Chiang Mai, Thailand) for Burmese community leaders. This twelve month school's strengths lay in its human rights, international law, and democracy development curricula but lack a strong environmental curriculum. In the first year of collaboration, ALLARM will conduct research and develop teaching materials focused on farming, copper mining, and gold mining. ALLARM students and director will conduct research this fall, travel to Thailand to pilot the curriculum while conducting additional on-the-ground research, and finalize the curriculum for use by Burmese communities and the Burma EarthRights School. ALLARM is requesting support from R&D for the two ALLARM students' research and travel.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Julie Vastine


Africana Studies

Quinnelle Lilian Gomez (2010)

Caribbean Media Representations

The research project examines the representation in the media of Caribbean society in general, and specifically, of changes in the nature of interpersonal relations, attitudes toward the construction of national identities and national culture, and the relationship of the independent nation to former colonial powers and contemporary transnational dynamics that are viewed as evidence of cultural imperialism. The Dana Research Assistant will work with me to develop an archive of materials related to the study of Caribbean societies, identities, politics and performances. This will consist of work in the following areas: Cataloging and coding material that has been collected on videotape from television in Trinidad; Sorting, coding and filing newspaper clippings from Trinidad and Tobago; and Creating an Endnote database of media materials and scholarly sources that will be used in the production of bibliographies for journal articles and book manuscripts that I will be developing in the next several years.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy


Myriam Elizabeth Smith (2021)

Tricks of the Mind or Metabolic Dysperceptions?:(Dis)Figuring Fantasies of Black Male (Corpo)reality

This work considers the ways in which orthomolecular dietary philosophy-the belief that there is a "close relationship between diet and mental health -figures in Victor LaValle's portrayal of the morbidly obese, paranoid schizophrenic narrator of his novel, The Ecstatic or, Homunculus. To inform my analysis, I plan to explore contemporary discussions about pharmaceutical versus nutraceutical (food as medicine) prescriptions for mental health as well as theories of wellness that sustain societal perceptions about the link between race and fatness. By so doing, I hope to substantiate my hypothesis that LaValle is using his fat, schizophrenic narrator to show that when neither the black male's mind nor his diet is disciplined-as expressed through the (dis)figuring of the black male corpus--, he is fantasized in the mainstream public's mind, as the ecstatic, a strange, hypermasculine purveyor of real-world horror. This false assessment of black male corpo(reality) is thus revealed as a trick of society's mind, not of the schizophrenic narrator's.

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Lynn Johnson


Naji Nazima Thompson (2019)

Psychodietetics and the Anxieties of Wellness in the African American Literary Imagination

Psychodietetics and the Anxieties of Wellness in the African American Literary Imagination is an interdisciplinary study that shifts attention away from soul food and black hunger as primary themes with which to explore the intersections of food and Black literary studies and redirects scholars toward cognitive food associations that could enrich our understandings of African Americans' meditations on personal and political dis-ease and wellness. The multi-generic texts (slave narratives, short stories, and novels) that I highlight unveil the presences of these meditations in what I term psychodietetic narratives. Psychodietetic narratives articulate the interconnectedness of food, behavioral expressions of human anxieties/ideologies, and the perceptions and performances of wellness within socio-political milieus and family structures. Drawing on psychoanalytic, African American literary, and food studies theories, I demonstrate how African American authors' deployment of food imaging and psychodietetic narratives develop the relationship between African American mental health and racial uplift agendas.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Lynn Johnson


American Studies

Sarah Elizabeth Barr (2011)

Manuscript revision project: "Home and Other Myths: A Lexicon of Queer Inhabitation"

This project explores the idea of "home" in contemporary queer lives, with home describing not only social, familial, national, and political spaces, but a psychic location as well. Drawing from Holocaust theorist Jean Amery's definition of home as the provision of comfort, security, and belonging, I argue that home occupies a central place - conceptually, ethically, politically, and literarily - for queer people. This project examines the ways in which queers have been cast out from various structures of home, and the pervasive types of violence that accompany these forcible dislocations. I expect to send this work out as a book proposal to Duke University Press, a prominent publisher in the field of queer studies by the end of May 2011. My intentions are to contribute to the fields of Queer Studies and American Studies through an analysis of narratives of belonging, identity, and cultural ethics, while also mentoring Sarah Barr in research methodology.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Laura Grappo


Keson Torell Bullock-Brown (2019)

The Resurgence of Scientific Racism in the 1970s

I am seeking a Dana Assistantship for Fall 2017 for my project "The End of White Care: US Liberalism in the 1970s." The particular component of the project in which I'll be engaged this coming semester is cataloguing and analyzing research materials I've collected over the past two years. These include a large volume of secondary sources (scholarly books and essays) as well as a trove of documents from the Smithsonian, Stanford, Princeton, and Howard archives, mostly concerning the resurgence of scientific racism in the 1970s.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: J Cotten Seiler


John Edward Costango (1993)

Student Co-direction of the Writing Component of the FOCUS program

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: John Bloom


Samuel Nathan Drabkin (2016)

The Socially Dead and the "Improbable Citizen": Cultural Transformations of Haitian Citizenship

This chapter is part of my on-going book project, "The Socially Dead and the "Improbable Citizen": Cultural Transformations of Haitian Citizenship". The book provides a rich textual analysis of the power of the visual field and the complex relationships that exists between violence, domination, and liberation. "The Socially Dead and the "Improbable Citizen" employs visual analysis to illuminate the effective power of images and the ways that imagery has a causal relationship to meaning making and what those meanings might tell us about the visual processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition. In four distinct chapters, I analyze painting, photography, film, and comics to expand the scholarship on contemporary Haitian diasporic artistic production and representation. This is a request to fund research assistance for the concluding chapter, "Brother Voodoo: Doctor Strange Love" which focuses on black diasporic superhero character, Brother Voodoo, a Haitian freedom fighting houngan created in 1973 by Marvel Comics. His character emerges during the American "Blaxploitation" film genre period, joining a series of omnipotent and sexually accomplished black heroes. Brother Voodoo's supreme powers; however, were linked to his familial relationship with the dead and his mystical abilities. In this chapter, I provide an interpretive engagement using this comic book character to emphasize the ways in which Brother Voodoo follows in the premise of the early 20th century plays and films that visualized the impenetrable darkness and grotesque "otherness" of Haiti and its people, which I analyze in the introductory chapter of the book.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Jerry Philogene


Giancarlo Daniel Duffy (2014)

Visual Cultures of Internet Islamophobia: Transnational Memes and International Politics

"Visual Cultures of Internet Islamophobia" is intended to address a visual and transnational research gap in studies of Islamophobia. Part of a larger book project, this research explores anti-Muslim memes and images that travel online via social networking sites, such as Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, and Pinterest. The first stage of the project, supported by a Fall 2012 Dana Research fellowship, involved online research on the English-language Internet to archive and code Islamophobic images, cartoons, and memes that are user-generated and circulate online in vernacular networks. In Spring 2013, my research will interrogate whether and how these images are received in Arabic-, Farsi-, and Turkish-speaking communities online. My preliminary research on countercultural Turkish Facebook groups identified some interesting uses for such images by Turkish atheist communities, such as translations, strategic cropping, and re-posting. The project will test the hypothesis that, given the abundance of offensive images online, outrage and protest, overemphasized through the discourse of "Muslim rage" by the Western media, cannot be the only way in which Muslims respond to Islamophobic digital media.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Perin Gurel


Mary Ann Eggers (2013)

Visual Cultures of Internet Islamophobia

Visual Cultures of Internet Islamophobia is part of an on-going book project on transnational folk representations of Islam, tentatively titled Beyond Islamophobia. The research, intended to address a visual gap in studies of Islamophobia, explores anti-Muslim memes and images that travel online via social networking sites and email chains. The study recognizes the role images play in furthering negative feelings against Muslims and those who "look" Muslim. In addition to its emphasis on visual culture, this study is also unique in its focus on fluid folk cultures, as opposed to fixed media, published popular works, or intellectuals' accounts. Thus, it seeks to uncover the role played by vernacular, person-to-person, if anonymous, communication in the spread of "Islamophobia" in the United States and beyond. The Dana Research Assistant for this project will be responsible for conducting Internet-based research, data-compilation, and indexing.

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Perin Gurel


Nasim Fekrat (2013)

Visual Cultures of Internet Islamophobia: Transnational Memes and International Politics

"Visual Cultures of Internet Islamophobia" is intended to address a visual and transnational research gap in studies of Islamophobia. Part of a larger book project, this research explores anti-Muslim memes and images that travel online via social networking sites, such as Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, and Pinterest. The first stage of the project, supported by a Fall 2012 Dana Research fellowship, involved online research on the English-language Internet to archive and code Islamophobic images, cartoons, and memes that are user-generated and circulate online in vernacular networks. In Spring 2013, my research will interrogate whether and how these images are received in Arabic-, Farsi-, and Turkish-speaking communities online. My preliminary research on countercultural Turkish Facebook groups identified some interesting uses for such images by Turkish atheist communities, such as translations, strategic cropping, and re-posting. The project will test the hypothesis that, given the abundance of offensive images online, outrage and protest, overemphasized through the discourse of "Muslim rage" by the Western media, cannot be the only way in which Muslims respond to Islamophobic digital media.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Perin Gurel


Mariah B Finkelstein (2017)

The Perfect Skin: Race, Materiality, and the Spectacular Invention of Visibility

This book project explores the ways in which artists of African descent have used diverse materials to illustrate the textured and tactile nature of skin to represent race. It uses the work of contemporary painters and sculptors to explore how the concept of "race" is understood as part of an epidermal schema (according to Frantz Fanon) to express the modality of the visual and difference. In the introductory chapter, I draw on racial theory, visual culture, and art history to examine the tensions between the visual and skin asking what does it mean to consider skin as an agent capable of reflecting and visualizing racialized consciousness and corporeality. The skin, in a black context, has been in modern times a master signifier for the specificity, the particularity, of race. It is the object projected by what Fanon and Paul Gilroy call "epidermalization." It is the sign for race understood purely within scopic sight and the skin as the object of a specularizing gaze. Through the critical analysis of visual art and different art genres, this essay will explore the various narratives of the skin and how the epidermalization of race has shaped contemporary understandings of black identity.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Jerry Philogene


Johanna Marie Fleming (2015)

Project One: Fat Studies Scholarship; Project Two: Girl Scouts of America

I am applying for a Dana research assistant for the 2014-2015 academic year. This research assistant will help me with fact checking and citation verification for three articles related to my work in fat studies: one on fat studies and pedagogical approaches; one on fat stigma and mother blaming; and one on fat, beauty, and concepts of the "natural" in fat activism of the 1970s and 1980s. This research assistant will also work with me to develop a full literature review and annotated bibliography for my new work on the history of the Girl Scouts of America.

Term Funded:Spring 2015
Professor: Amy Farrell


Aaron Stuart Hock (2015)

The Socially Dead and the "Dead Citizen": Cultural Contestations of Haitian Citizenship

I am requesting the support for a Dana Research Assistantship to transcribe four three-hour taped artists' interviews conducted as research for my current book manuscript, The Socially Dead and the "Dead Citizen": Cultural Contestations of Haitian Citizenship. The introductory chapter of the book, in part explores the historical and contemporary artistic and visual narratives that have been created about Haiti beginning in the early 20th century, examining how these narratives have framed the understanding of Haitian citizenry and national citizenship. In addition, the book explores how the visual field informs the ways in which Haiti and Haitian aesthetic culture and practices are understood in the global cultural community. In four chapters, I present readers with films and plastic arts by artists of Haitian descent who invert the historically deleterious framing of Haitian subjectivities. By using the visual field as a place to recontextualize images and the idea of citizenship, my project highlights the works of these Haitian diasporic artists and explores the creative process, ideas, and techniques that undergird the production of self-representation. During a College-supported research trip in Miami, Florida this summer, I conducted artists' interviews with Edouard Duval-Carrie, Vickie Pierre, Adler Guerrier, and Crystal Pearl. These interviews are necessary resource materials for the introduction and the third chapter of the book, which focuses on these specific artists and their work. Once the interviews have been transcribed, I can then use the materials to complete the third chapter and send three chapters to academic presses by the beginning of 2015. In the past, I have used Jason Denaburg, an American Studies student. He has previously transcribed two two-hour artist's interviews and is aware of the careful and thorough nature of this assignment. During our conversations, Jason expressed an interest in oral history and cultural history. Given his interests, I approached him for my initial transcribing project. His transcriptions were methodical and instrumental in the completion of a recently published essay. Along with expanding his knowledge of diverse ethnic and artistic cultures in the United States, by working on this project, Jason is developing his qualitative research skills that emphasize the importance of structured or unstructured interviewing as a critical methodology. This Dana Research Assistantship provides Jason with the opportunity to learn about one aspect of data preparation.

Term Funded:Spring 2015
Professor: Jerry Philogene


Gretchen Kemp Mielke (2006)

Fat America: A Cultural Study of Stigma, Weight Loss and the Fat Acceptance Movement

During the 2002-2003 academic year, I have conducted significant research and writing on my manuscript Fat America: A Cultural Study of Stigma, Weight Loss, and the Fat Acceptance Movement. Before the end of the summer I will send out a completed introduction, chapter outline and prospectus to agents and publishers who have expressed interest in my book. Currently over sixty percent of the U.S. population is medically defined as overweight or obese, a figure that alarms both medical practitioners and the general public. The purpose of Fat America is to elucidate the cultural myths and metaphors surrounding fatness - particularly the historical roots of our animosity - as well as the highly contradictory approaches of two camps who seek to cure our problems with obesity. In the first group are those who, since the late 19th century up through the present have, advocated diets, surgery, drugs and psychotherapy to make us thinner. In the second camp are the much less well-known, but highly eloquent, fat activists. This more recent group of women and men push for an acceptance of the fat body, an end to discrimination, and a rethinking of what constitutes health. I argue that it is only through such an exploration - of fat "stigma" and fat "cures" - that we will be able to move forward in our thinking about our national crisis over obesity.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: Amy Farrell


Leah Judith Shafer (2014)

A Difference That Makes No Difference: Making Race Not Matter in Postwar America

I am excited at the prospect of working with Leah Shafer (AMST 2014) as my Dana Research Assistant for the Spring 2012 semester. The project for which I seek her assistance is called A Difference That Makes No Difference: Making Race Not Matter in Postwar America. Specifically, I will ask her to gather and organize prinary evidence and secondary sources on the formation of race as an ideology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book-length study draws on several bodies of evidence to show from a variety of angles an endeavor undertaken by powerful American political, legal, media, educational, religious, and social institutions from the 1940s to the present: crafting and propagating a public sensibility that I call "aracialism." Aracialism offered a utopian vision of a liberal polity in which race ceased to be a determinant of Americans' life chances. Aracialism's signal element, however, was (and remains) its superficiality: its architects mostly sought to "disappear" race rather than to confront and redress the structural inequalities race served to normalize.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: J Cotten Seiler


Jillian Audrey Smith (2004)

Republic of Drivers: Automobility and the Formation of the American Self

At present, I am writing a book proposal for submission to publishers by the end of the semester. The study, tentatively entitled "Republic of Drivers: Automobility and the Formation of the American Self," will show how the figure of the driver has provided a practical model for the dominant conceptions of individual selfhood in American intellectual and political culture, and will evaluate the consequences of that model. The automobile, connected explicitly by its advocates to discourses of American individualism has enjoyed a remarkable primacy in American transportation policy since the mid-twentieth century. I contend that this primacy has been subsidized by a liberal-capitalist regime that has privileged driving, as a salutary practice. Specifically, I argue that driving - highway driving in particular, with its sensations of freedom and anonymity and its procedural limitations - has functioned as a metaphor for American citizenship, with deleterious consequences to democracy.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: J Cotten Seiler


Maretta Rose Sonn (2016)

Project One: Fat Studies Scholarship; Project Two: Girl Scouts of America

I am applying for a Dana research assistant for the 2014-2015 academic year. This research assistant will help me with fact checking and citation verification for three articles related to my work in fat studies: one on fat studies and pedagogical approaches; one on fat stigma and mother blaming; and one on fat, beauty, and concepts of the "natural" in fat activism of the 1970s and 1980s. This research assistant will also work with me to develop a full literature review and annotated bibliography for my new work on the history of the Girl Scouts of America.

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Amy Farrell


Rebecca Leigh Spiering (2003)

Norton Critical Edition of "O Pioneers!"

I have been asked to edit a Norton Critical Edition of Willa Cather's O Pioneers! The Norton Critical Editions gather a variety of contemporary contextual materials - - historical, cultural, economic, aesthetic - as well as important critical essays, along with the text of the novel. This is a prestigious and well-known series. This will be the first Norton edition of a novel by Willa Cather. I can use a research assistant most creatively and fully in tracking down appropriate contextual materials that will illuminate the historical contexts that shaped the production and the reception of Cather's novel. It will be necessary both to find and to read a range of possible sources before deciding on a final selection. For example, possible contexts for reading the novel include: the closing of the frontier; the experience of immigrant groups from France, Sweden, and Bohemia in Nebraska in the late nineteenth-century; early responses to Walt Whitman's poetry (the title is from Whitman); populist movements in the 19thc Midwest; popular entertainment (including opera and traveling plays) in the 19th century Midwest; Cather's autobiography; the place of the American writer and the role of American literature in the early 20th century; the suffrage movement; early reviews of the novel; later references to Cather's Nebraska by American writers; Nebraska's celebration and veneration of Cather at the present moment, contrasted to the reception of her work in Nebraska in the early 20th century.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Sharon O'Brien


James Yarnall Watson-Krips (2010)

The Impact of Automobility on Chinese Society, 1920-Present

This project is a historical study of automobility in China from the early twentieth century to the present. Building on and adding an international dimension to my book Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in the United States, 1895-1961 (forthcoming 2008 from the University of Chicago Press), I plan to conduct research on the transformations past, present, and future wrought by the automobile in China. I am particularly interested in how the sensations of personal freedom and agency created by driving will affect Chinese political culture. My hypothesis is that driving, and the middle-class prerogative of car ownership, will bring about a liberalization in Chinese society, and that the freedom of the driver will lead to a demand among the growing Chinese middle class for other, perhaps more substantive and explicitly political, types of freedom.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: J Cotten Seiler


Wuji Zeng (2012)

Chinese Automobility and U.S. Rhetorics of Identicality

Since the 1980s, China has developed its own apparatus of automobility, an interlocking set of economic, social, philosophical, legal, political, aesthetic structures and psychological dispositions that facilitate and normativize automobile use. This project analyzes the U.S./Western positioning of automobility as inevitably politically transformational. I plan to argue that, despite anxieties over an automobilized China's growing appetite for resources (particularly petroleum) and potentially catastrophic greenhouse gas output, the political valence of automobility-its supposedly manifest capacity to engender liberal political subjects-earns Chinese automobility the strong endorsement of most mainstream media in the United States. A diverse range of sources asserts automobility to be doing a sort of missionary work, fostering feelings of individual autonomy, agency, and choice that will eventually impact the Chinese state and society, rendering them "identical: to those of the United States. Zuji Weng will be able to access and translate the Mandarin-language sources (newspapers, magazines, and websites, as well as scholarly work) that will enrich the narrative of Chinese automobility beyond the optimistic and nationalistic sentiments expressed by most U.S. sources.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: J Cotten Seiler


Anthropology

Leslie Thigpen Archer (1993)

Ethnobotany of North Baffin Island Inuit

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Kristen Borre


Jenny R Caruso (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Kjell Enge


Jenny R Caruso (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Kjell Enge


Katherine W Clark (2012)

Preliminary Analysis of the Human Skeletal Remains from Neale's Landing (site 46WD39), Blennerhassett Island, West Virginia

I am applying for a Dana Research Assistant for spring 2012 to support a student to collaborate with me on the preliminary analysis of the human skeletal remains from a prehistoric archaeological site, Neale's Landing, West Virginia, that is on loan to the Department of Anthropology from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). If funded, the Dana research assistant and I will conduct preliminary analysis of the human skeletal remains to determine the minimum number of individuals that are represented in these burials, their age and sex composition, and their health and disease profiles using standard human osteology analytical procedures. The results of this investigation will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and will ideally lead to future student-faculty research projects of the human skeletal remains from this site.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Karen Weinstein


Eric Scott Diehl (1997)

Social Stratification Among the Yi of SW China

Social Stratification Among the Yi of SW China

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Ann Hill


Eric Scott Diehl (1997)

Social Stratification Among the Yi of SW China

Social Stratification Among the Yi of SW China

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Ann Hill


Luke Thomas Donohue (2012)

Preliminary Analysis of the Human Skeletal Remains from Neale's Landing (site 46WD39), Blennerhassett Island, West Virginia

I am applying for a Dana Research Assistant for spring 2012 to support a student to collaborate with me on the preliminary analysis of the human skeletal remains from a prehistoric archaeological site, Neale's Landing, West Virginia, that is on loan to the Department of Anthropology from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). If funded, the Dana research assistant and I will conduct preliminary analysis of the human skeletal remains to determine the minimum number of individuals that are represented in these burials, their age and sex composition, and their health and disease profiles using standard human osteology analytical procedures. The results of this investigation will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and will ideally lead to future student-faculty research projects of the human skeletal remains from this site.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Karen Weinstein


Christopher Edward Gagne (1998)

Behavior and Ecology of Chimpanzees in SE Cameroon

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Ellen Ingmanson


Kaitlin Mae Irvine (2010)

Hereditary Status Groups and Neoliberal Reforms in Ethiopia

This proposal is for a Spring 2008 Dana Research Assistant to assist with my book proposal concerning political and economic changes and the everyday lives of people in hereditary status groups in Ethiopia, stemming from my 2001-2002 fieldwork. The book proposal will comprise a prospectus, draft introduction, and four sample chapters, which I will submit for review by the end of the spring semester or the summer of 2008. Southern Ethiopia is characterized by hereditary divisions between dominant farmers and despised traders and craftworkers (including blacksmiths, hideworkers, weavers, and potters). Whereas scholars have characterized these categories as "castes" and assumed their historical persistence, my research examines their contingency and entanglement with forces of political economy. The Dana Research Assistant will work with me to locate and request sources, update and annotate a master bibliography, and crosscheck interview transcripts, audio recordings, field notes, and photographs from the Ethiopia fieldwork.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: James Ellison


Erin Lucia Mead (2005)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Kjell Enge


Erin Lucia Mead (2005)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Kjell Enge


Ashley Anne Morse (2007)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Kjell Enge


Amy Marie Oechsner (2010)

Geoarchaeology at Joara and Fort San Juan: Colonialism and Household Practice at the Berry Site, North Carolina

Support for a Dana Research Assistantship is requested to assist in the final analysis of geoarchaeological samples derived from a significant 16th century Native American and Spanish Colonial archaeological site. An interdisciplinary research team demonstrated that the Berry site, a 12 acre Mississippian Period site dating to the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. is likely that of Fort San Juan and Joara, the center of an important Chiefdom where Juan Pardo's soldiers resided for a year in 1567. The fort includes at least five burned structures which offer a unique opportunity to examine a well preserved archaeological context where native people were dominant to Europeans, as the Spanish were significantly out numbered and dependent on the natives for food and hospitality for a year. The Dana Research Assistant will contribute to the larger study by analyzing microartifact samples from the floor of the burned structures to interpret how they were used and by whom.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Sarah Sherwood


Bradley Ryan Roller (2012)

Analysis of Data from the 2011 Tanzania Field School: Health and Nutrition in an Interconnected World

This proposal requests Dana research assistant funding to employ Mr. Bradley Roller from July 18th to August 26th to help organize and analyze data from our 2011 ethnographic field school in Tanzania. Professors Weinstein and Ellison, both of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, take Dickinson students to eastern Africa to teach them fieldwork methods in a rural community. The field school examines how rural people's subsistence, economic activities, and health are connected with broad political and economic changes. The Dana-funded assistant would help analyze fieldwork data, permitting us to present findings at conferences, in publication, and in grant proposals.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: James Ellison


Mindy Suzanne Rupley (2008)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Kjell Enge


Mindy Suzanne Rupley (2008)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Kjell Enge


Gabrielle A Russo (2006)

Body proportions and human biological diversity in pre-Contact Americas

This proposal requests funds to support a Dana research assistantship for student-faculty research in biological anthropology. The research project seeks to compare body proportions of ancient human skeletal remains from diverse environments in the Americas in order to assess the degree of biological diversity present within these populations. The student research assistant will be responsible for identifying, locating, and extracting osteological data from published sources, conducting literature reviews of the archaeological populations that form the basis of this project, and, with faculty supervision, collecting primary data from human skeletal remains. This research project will contribute to the growing scholarly literature about biological adaptations in human prehistory in general and in pre-contact North and South American populations in particular. The outcome of this project includes a student-faculty coauthored presentation at a national anthropology conference.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Karen Weinstein


Christina Joy Terrazas (2008)

Anthropology Internship funded by W.M. Keck Foundation

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Karen Weinstein


Wuji Zeng (2012)

Translating and Interpreting China's Southwestern Frontier

The research assistantship proposed here builds on my sabbatical research in fall 2009 on frontier violence and social integration in China. I am requesting six weeks support for Wuji Zeng to do the following: 1) to locate primary, somewhat unorthodox sources in Chinese on China's southwestern frontier in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, in particular, memoirs, diaries, reports (the raw, eye-witness research reports usually submitted to gov't agencies), Guomindang reminiscences, local stories and folklore, etc.; 2) to compile an annotated bibliography of these sources for my review, a selection of which we will translate; 3) translation of a long recorded interview in a local dialect of Chinese made during my sabbatical; 4) completion of a 10-page essay by Wuji on Nuosu-Han relations, including their respective view s on "race" and "ethnicity," based on the materials he has read and translated. Wuji is an anthropology major (and my advisee) interested in issues of race, prejudice, and nationalism.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Ann Hill


Anthropology, Archaeology

Daniel Ezekiel Ehrlich (2013)

Auditory Exostosis and Enamel Hypoplasia in the Human Skeletal Remains from Neale's Landing, Blennerhessett Island, West Virginia

A Dana research assistantship will aid my investigations of two specific pathological conditions in the human skeletal remains from Neale's Landing, Blennerhesset Island, West Virginia. First, I plan to prepare a journal article that reports the presence of bilateral auditory exostoses, a rare and unusual pathological condition in the archaeological record of the Ohio River Valley that signifies repetitive immersion in cold water and illuminates the riverine-based diet of this ancient population. Second, I plan to investigate the high rate of infant mortality in this population by examining the prevalence of enamel hypoplasia, developmental defects of tooth enamel that result from nutritional stress during infancy and young childhood. My students and I will then present the results of the enamel hypoplasia study at the 2014 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Karen Weinstein


William Hardy Kochtitzky (2016)

NASA GCCE Grant: Agricultural & Ecological Impacts of the Tiwanaku State on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia (AD 400-1150) and Climate Change & Ancient Agricultural Production on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia

Agricultural & Ecological Impacts of the Tiwanaku State on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia (AD 400-1150) and Climate Change & Ancient Agricultural Production on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Maria Bruno


Chloe Monet Miller (2015)

NASA GCCE Grant: Agricultural & Ecological Impacts of the Tiwanaku State on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia (AD 400-1150) and Climate Change & Ancient Agricultural Production on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia

Agricultural & Ecological Impacts of the Tiwanaku State on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia (AD 400-1150) and Climate Change & Ancient Agricultural Production on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Maria Bruno


Amanda Grace Santilli (2017)

Understanding 3000 Years of Landscape Creation in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes through Mapping and Geographic Information Systems on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia

Funds are sought to support an initial landscape-archaeology mapping project in the summer of 2016 that will contribute to a larger investigation into long-term-human-environmental relationships in the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia located in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes. Maria Bruno (Anthropology/Archaeology), GIS specialist James Ciarrocca (LIS), and Earth Science major Amanda Santilli ('17) will use high-precision survey equipment to map approximately 500m swaths of land surrounding two major archaeological sites - Chiripa and Kala Uyuni - starting at the lakeshore and extending up to the top of the Taraco hills (approximately 2000m). These maps will not only encompass the known archaeological features of the two sites, but will also reveal any other human-made features in the surrounding area (such as raised fields, harbors, and causeways) as well as important natural features including streams, springs, clay quarries, etc. These detailed maps will then be placed into developing Geographic Information System (GIS) database to serve as a foundation for the larger project aiming to investigate Taraco landscape use and creation related to social, political, economic, and environmental variables over the 3000-year history of human occupation of the peninsula through archaeological, paleoclimatological, ethnographic, and historic datasets.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Maria Bruno


Christopher Henry Wolf (2014)

Auditory Exostosis and Enamel Hypoplasia in the Human Skeletal Remains from Neale's Landing, Blennerhessett Island, West Virginia

A Dana research assistantship will aid my investigations of two specific pathological conditions in the human skeletal remains from Neale's Landing, Blennerhesset Island, West Virginia. First, I plan to prepare a journal article that reports the presence of bilateral auditory exostoses, a rare and unusual pathological condition in the archaeological record of the Ohio River Valley that signifies repetitive immersion in cold water and illuminates the riverine-based diet of this ancient population. Second, I plan to investigate the high rate of infant mortality in this population by examining the prevalence of enamel hypoplasia, developmental defects of tooth enamel that result from nutritional stress during infancy and young childhood. My students and I will then present the results of the enamel hypoplasia study at the 2014 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Karen Weinstein


Anthropology, Community Studies Center, Sociology

Alexander B Bossakov (2020)

The "Stay-Behinds": Village Labor and Sustainability in the New Era of Migration in Rural China

Change in China's urban areas is dramatic, as cityscapes emerge from suburban rice paddies. But China's rural areas, as well, reflect the impact of globalization, especially as villagers leave home for work in towns and cities. Much of the research on rural China today focuses on these t-migrants, whose labor and remittances have injected cash into the rural economy, spurring the growth of new homes and new levels of consumerism in the countryside. However, stay-behinds continue to work in village fields, go to village schools, and maintain the village's numerous temples and ancestral tombs. It is seldom asked how their largely unpaid work matters in the headlong rush, under government direction, to wage work and urbanization. We focus on two important dimensions of village work, agriculture and religion, as indices for gauging the extent to which China's villages also have a role to play in China's contemporary society and economy. Current research on China's rural villages usually asks what migrants have contributed economically to villages and sociocultural change in rural life. We take a different tack: in the midst of changes to village economies and community life, especially since the beginning of migration out of the village in the early 1990s, we ask how the work of villagers who do not migrate - usually the elderly, mothers, and children - contributes to the sustainability of the local farming ecology and of village cultural traditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose, Ann Hill


Rachel Gross (2019)

The "Stay-Behinds": Village Labor and Sustainability in the New Era of Migration in Rural China

Change in China's urban areas is dramatic, as cityscapes emerge from suburban rice paddies. But China's rural areas, as well, reflect the impact of globalization, especially as villagers leave home for work in towns and cities. Much of the research on rural China today focuses on these migrants, whose labor and remittances have injected cash into the rural economy, spurring the growth of new homes and new levels of consumerism in the countryside. However, stay-behinds continue to work in village fields, go to village schools, and maintain the village's numerous temples and ancestral tombs. It is seldom asked how their largely unpaid work matters in the headlong rush, under government direction, to wage work and urbanization. We focus on two important dimensions of village work, agriculture and religion, as indices for gauging the extent to which China's villages also have a role to play in China's contemporary society and economy. Current research on China's rural villages usually asks what migrants have contributed economically to villages and sociocultural change in rural life. We take a different tack: in the midst of changes to village economies and community life, especially since the beginning of migration out of the village in the early 1990s, we ask how the work of villagers who do not migrate - usually the elderly, mothers, and children - contributes to the sustainability of the local farming ecology and of village cultural traditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose, Ann Hill


Muhajir Subuur Lesure (2020)

The "Stay-Behinds": Village Labor and Sustainability in the New Era of Migration in Rural China

Change in China's urban areas is dramatic, as cityscapes emerge from suburban rice paddies. But China's rural areas, as well, reflect the impact of globalization, especially as villagers leave home for work in towns and cities. Much of the research on rural China today focuses on these migrants, whose labor and remittances have injected cash into the rural economy, spurring the growth of new homes and new levels of consumerism in the countryside. However, stay-behinds continue to work in village fields, go to village schools, and maintain the village's numerous temples and ancestral tombs. It is seldom asked how their largely unpaid work matters in the headlong rush, under government direction, to wage work and urbanization. We focus on two important dimensions of village work, agriculture and religion, as indices for gauging the extent to which China's villages also have a role to play in China's contemporary society and economy. Current research on China's rural villages usually asks what migrants have contributed economically to villages and sociocultural change in rural life. We take a different tack: in the midst of changes to village economies and community life, especially since the beginning of migration out of the village in the early 1990s, we ask how the work of villagers who do not migrate - usually the elderly, mothers, and children - contributes to the sustainability of the local farming ecology and of village cultural traditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose, Ann Hill


Meaghan Emily McBride (2019)

The "Stay-Behinds": Village Labor and Sustainability in the New Era of Migration in Rural China

Change in China's urban areas is dramatic, as cityscapes emerge from suburban rice paddies. But China's rural areas, as well, reflect the impact of globalization, especially as villagers leave home for work in towns and cities. Much of the research on rural China today focuses on these migrants, whose labor and remittances have injected cash into the rural economy, spurring the growth of new homes and new levels of consumerism in the countryside. However, stay-behinds continue to work in village fields, go to village schools, and maintain the village's numerous temples and ancestral tombs. It is seldom asked how their largely unpaid work matters in the headlong rush, under government direction, to wage work and urbanization. We focus on two important dimensions of village work, agriculture and religion, as indices for gauging the extent to which China's villages also have a role to play in China's contemporary society and economy. Current research on China's rural villages usually asks what migrants have contributed economically to villages and sociocultural change in rural life. We take a different tack: in the midst of changes to village economies and community life, especially since the beginning of migration out of the village in the early 1990s, we ask how the work of villagers who do not migrate - usually the elderly, mothers, and children - contributes to the sustainability of the local farming ecology and of village cultural traditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose, Ann Hill


Pema Tashi (2020)

The "Stay-Behinds": Village Labor and Sustainability in the New Era of Migration in Rural China

Change in China's urban areas is dramatic, as cityscapes emerge from suburban rice paddies. But China's rural areas, as well, reflect the impact of globalization, especially as villagers leave home for work in towns and cities. Much of the research on rural China today focuses on these migrants, whose labor and remittances have injected cash into the rural economy, spurring the growth of new homes and new levels of consumerism in the countryside. However, stay-behinds continue to work in village fields, go to village schools, and maintain the village's numerous temples and ancestral tombs. It is seldom asked how their largely unpaid work matters in the headlong rush, under government direction, to wage work and urbanization. We focus on two important dimensions of village work, agriculture and religion, as indices for gauging the extent to which China's villages also have a role to play in China's contemporary society and economy. Current research on China's rural villages usually asks what migrants have contributed economically to villages and sociocultural change in rural life. We take a different tack: in the midst of changes to village economies and community life, especially since the beginning of migration out of the village in the early 1990s, we ask how the work of villagers who do not migrate - usually the elderly, mothers, and children - contributes to the sustainability of the local farming ecology and of village cultural traditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose, Ann Hill


Jingwen Zhang (2020)

The "Stay-Behinds": Village Labor and Sustainability in the New Era of Migration in Rural China

Change in China's urban areas is dramatic, as cityscapes emerge from suburban rice paddies. But China's rural areas, as well, reflect the impact of globalization, especially as villagers leave home for work in towns and cities. Much of the research on rural China today focuses on these migrants, whose labor and remittances have injected cash into the rural economy, spurring the growth of new homes and new levels of consumerism in the countryside. However, stay-behinds continue to work in village fields, go to village schools, and maintain the village's numerous temples and ancestral tombs. It is seldom asked how their largely unpaid work matters in the headlong rush, under government direction, to wage work and urbanization. We focus on two important dimensions of village work, agriculture and religion, as indices for gauging the extent to which China's villages also have a role to play in China's contemporary society and economy. Current research on China's rural villages usually asks what migrants have contributed economically to villages and sociocultural change in rural life. We take a different tack: in the midst of changes to village economies and community life, especially since the beginning of migration out of the village in the early 1990s, we ask how the work of villagers who do not migrate - usually the elderly, mothers, and children - contributes to the sustainability of the local farming ecology and of village cultural traditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose, Ann Hill


Anthropology, International Studies

Stephanie Marie Mazur (2017)

Immigrants and their families from South America

Ethnographic research focusing on immigrants and their families from South American countries who now live and work in the city and province of Mendoza, Argentina.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor:


Archaeology

Sarah Alison Eisen (2015)

Dickinson's G.I.S./3-D Mycenae Project

An archaeological excavation and publication of such complexity and scale requires interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and high-end digital technology. A key component for effective research and publication is the Mycenae G.I.S. geodatabase. This complex geodatabase will be designed to combine several spatial and non-spatial interfaces in order to facilitate the study of horizontal spatial distribution and vertical stratigraphic sequence of ruins and finds, and help investigate the dynamics between the cultural remains and the natural environment. Concurrently, the buildings and the valley of the Lower Town will be digitally 3-D modelled by specialists; 1,000 artifacts will be selected, 3-D scanned, studied at the Mycenae museum, and uploaded in the G.I.S. database by Sarah Eisen (Dickinson student, archaeology lab assistant) under my direct supervision. Both digital projects will be hosted on the Dickinson website to become pioneer research platforms for scholars worldwide as well as valuable teaching and learning tools. (a) Both digital projects will facilitate our archaeological research at Mycenae immensely; they will also accompany and enhance the printed publications of our excavations at Mycenae. Furthermore, these digital projects will become a ground-breaking, live, dynamic, and interactive digital publication beyond the printed volumes, as they will be continuously maintained, modified, and expanded by our students with new data and scholarly interpretations.(b) Both digital projects will become valuable teaching and learning tools. Our students will be actively involved at every stage of their development: creation, maintenance, expansion, thus enhancing their skills in digital applications in archaeology and their critical thinking in interpreting archaeological contexts. Both digital projects will also benefit our curriculum, since they will be used as teaching tools in G.I.S. classes and will be fully integrated in the new senior seminar, a core course for the archaeology major (ARCH 390 "Advanced Studies in Archaeology: Ancient Cities: Mycenae").

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Christofilis Maggidis


Chrysanthe Maggidis (2016)

Mycenae Project

Mycenae Project

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Christofilis Maggidis


Chrysanthe Maggidis (2016)

Mycenae Project

Mycenae Project

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Christofilis Maggidis


Solai Nikole Sanchez (2015)

Agriculture and the Tiwanaku State (AD 500-1100) on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia

The study of ancient agricultural systems provides insight into how past human populations interacted with their environments to develop diverse agricultural technologies, as well as also how social and political institutions shaped these interactions The proposed Dana Research Assistantship for Summer 2014 would support a student to help analyze archaeological plant samples from the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia that pertain to a period in which the region's first state, Tiwanaku (AD 500-1100), developed. This new information will permit Prof. Bruno to examine if and how agricultural production changed under the influence of the state compared to the autochthonous developments she documented for agricultural intensification during the earlier Formative period (1500 BC-AD 500). Such a study contributes to broader archaeological inquiries into the environmental, technological, and socio-political dynamics of ancient agricultural systems and early complex societies world-wide.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Maria Bruno


Art & Art History

Fiona Olivier Clarke (2019)

The Medicine of Art: Disease and the Aesthetic Object in Gilded-Age America

In 1901, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens proclaimed in a letter to Will Low, "Health--is the thing!" Though recently diagnosed with intestinal cancer, Saint-Gaudens was revitalized by recreational sports and 'out-of-door things' he pursued in response to his illlness, having realized mid-career "there is something else in life besides the four walls of an ill-ventilated studio," as he wrote to Low. "The Medicine of Art" puts such moments center stage to consider the role of health and illness in the way art was produced and consumed. It is the first book-length study to address the place or organic disease--cancer, tuberculosis, syphilis--in the life and work of Gilded-Age artists. It demonstrates how well-known works of art by artists such as John Singer Sargent, Abbott Thayer and Augustus Saint-Gaudens were marked by disease, arguing that art itself functioned in medicinal terms for artists and viewers in the late nineteenth century.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Elizabeth Lee


Fiona Olivier Clarke (2019)

The Medicine of Art: Disease and the Aesthetic Object in Gilded-Age America

In 1901, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens proclaimed in a letter to Will Low, "Health--is the thing!" Though recently diagnosed with intestinal cancer, Saint-Gaudens was revitalized by recreational sports and 'out-of-door things' he pursued in response to his illlness, having realized mid-career "there is something else in life besides the four walls of an ill-ventilated studio," as he wrote to Low. "The Medicine of Art" puts such moments center stage to consider the role of health and illness in the way art was produced and consumed. It is the first book-length study to address the place or organic disease--cancer, tuberculosis, syphilis--in the life and work of Gilded-Age artists. It demonstrates how well-known works of art by artists such as John Singer Sargent, Abbott Thayer and Augustus Saint-Gaudens were marked by disease, arguing that art itself functioned in medicinal terms for artists and viewers in the late nineteenth century.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Elizabeth Lee


Wesley John Lickus (2017)

Ese'Eja Cultural Mapping

To quote ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, "It isn't the Jaguar that's the most endangered species in the Amazon, it's the indigenous peoples and those uncontacted tribes that have the answers to questions that we have yet to ask." This collaborative multidisciplinary project encompasses a variety of efforts that center around the Ese'Eja Nation, an indigenous fishing, hunting, and gathering people located in the Madre de Dios (Amazonian region) of Peru. The objectives include the documentation of the life of the Ese'ja through cultural mapping and PhotoVoice, the formation of a Plan de Vida - a strategic community planning document, and the creation of educational programming for Ese'Eja schools, surrounding communities, and internationally distributed through the ACEER's award winning Amigos Program. Cultural Mapping: The Ese'Eja are facing challenges to their culture and traditional ways of life like most indigenous groups in Amazonia. In joining with the community to tell their story, and capture their worldview, conservation ethic, and their plight, it is the researchers goal to perpetuate a shift in thinking about indigenous people, like the Ese'Eja, who are often marginalized, invisible, and powerless. Cultural mapping involves documenting indigenous cultural practices and the native people's land ethic, including their deep knowledge of, and spiritual connection to, the local ecosystem. GPS coordinates will document the traditional boundaries of their 1.2 million hectares of ancestral lands in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. An already awarded National Genographic Legacy Grant will help pay for a documentary hardback book, with various accompanying digital media components, about the Ese'ja Nation. Copies will be printed in Spanish for local distribution and in English to be distributed globally. Proceeds from sales will be used as a source of sustainable funding to continue ACEER's educational programming. To coincide with the unveiling of this book in fall of 2016, a traveling exhibition of documentary and fine art photographs, videos, interactive maps and historical and cultural artifacts will open at the prestigious Old College Gallery at the University of Delaware.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Andrew Bale


Clara Marie Roth (2021)

Idaho Refugees and Diaspora

Idaho like many US states has a history of Native American Indians being displaced from their original homeland, as well as a history of embracing refugees and immigrants from around the globe. The first wave of refugees legally arrived from Southeast Asia under the Indochinese Refugee Assistance Program established by Idaho Governor John Evans. In 1975 multiple Southeast Asian countries supported by the U.S. were overthrown resulting in hundreds of thousands of people escaping Southeast Asia to evade execution. We have reached a critical point with these aging and heroic refugees, if we do not act now, this aging population will be gone and their firsthand accounts will be lost forever. We need to learn about their escape, journey, arrival and ultimate success in the US and their stories must be recorded and shared locally, nationally and globally. Disseminating their stories will help educate current and future refugees and aid in their acclamation process and current US citizens will gain an understanding as to why people are forced to abandon their country of origin. We plan to share their stories through four main multimedia channels/avenues including a fine art style hardback book, an exhibition (including photographs, video and audio), a participatory website and lecture/workshop series.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Andrew Bale


Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Aboluwade O Ayodele (2005)

Determination of Disinfection By-Products (DBP) from the chlorination of macro-molecules and bio-molecules in drinking water supplies. Dr. Brian Halsall, University of Cincinnati

It has been shown that chlorination of certain proteins is a major factor in atherosclerosis. Chlorination of water supplies is a convenient and economical form of disinfecting drinking water supplies. Water chlorination breaks down macro-molecules and bio-molecules and kills pathogens and other microorganisms in the water. This results in an accumulation of a wide variety of Disinfectant By-Products (DBP). Despite the popularity of disinfecting water supplies with chlorine, the actual mechanisms involved in the disinfection processes are widely unknown. Chlorine dissociates in water to yield Hypochlorous acid and Hypochlorite. These and chloramines are the main oxidizing species that produce the varios DBP. Some of these DBP have been identified and recognized as having carcinogenic propeeties and reproductive and developmental effects on animals. A study of the chlorination of proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids will provide great insight into the nature of the various DBP present in our drinking water supplies and also allow us to identify and predict the DBP inn our drinking water supplies. We will be determining the mechansims involved in the chlorination processes of various macro-molecules and bio-molecules in different environmental conditions that reflect the various water conditions at different stages of water purification and distribution.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Kayla Bendinelli (2019)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Michael Roberts


Megan Christine Blair (2002)

Identifying molecules for the treatment of diabetes

In working with Dr. Jeffrey Toney in the Endocrinology and Chemical Biology department of Merck Research Laboratories, I will be exposed to a multidisciplinary approach to drug discovery. I hope to explore new techniques to identify small molecules for the treatment of diabetes. This internship will involve finding new technologies that offer higher sensitivity and do not use radioactivity. If successful, the new technology could be applied to high throughput screening (HTS) of Merck's chemical collection. HTS has proven to be a highly valuable approach to quickly identifying potential compounds which possess specific biochemical activity. The most active compounds can then be tested in whole cell assays, and, if specific and highly potent, can be tested in animal models of human disease. As an intern, I will attend project team meetings and will present my results to regular departmental review of projects. I also hope to present my findings at a national meeting.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor:


Shannon Marie Bonner (2019)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Michael Roberts


Aaron Dale Brumbaugh (2014)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU):Purification and Analysis of the MJ1598 Protein from Methanocaldococcus jannaschii

Purification and Analysis of the MJ1598 Protein from Methanocaldococcus jannaschii. This research experience complements the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology curriculum in a variety of ways; however, chief among these is the introduction to methods common to the field. Through developing familiarity with the application of growth curve analysis, various chromatographic methods, and polymerase incomplete primer extension (PIPE) cloning, I will acquire a greater understanding of the biochemical principles and theories underlying these methods. Furthermore, I will be able to further immerse myself in the analytical practices inherent in the fields of biochemical and molecular biological research, while simultaneously developing the critical thinking skills necessary for success in these fields. Ultimately, this experience will allow me to utilize the wealth of information I have gained through my academic work within the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major, while also building upon it by expanding my knowledge of bacterial physiology, archea, and biochemistry. It is my aim that this experience will synergistically work with my Dickinson education to prepare me to enter the field of biochemistry.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Susan Sights Buckenmaier (2016)

Myotoxic and neurotoxic effects of prolonged application of local anesthetics...

The internship I have been offered through the Defense & Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Management (DVCIPM) is one that is conducting research in an area that I find fascinating and that ties into what I have learned over my first year at Dickinson, my major and what I hope to do as a future officer in the military. I am an ROTC cadet on campus and have declared as a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major. Working in a military research setting would help prepare me for my eventual career as an Army Officer employed in the medical branch of the military. The project will be done with pigs, and I will be finding out if the nerve catheters and drugs used to treat pain in the hospital are indeed safe. This is necessary because at Walter Reed these catheters and drugs are used for longer periods than anywhere else in a civilian hospital, and to date there is no evidence that they do not cause any damage in the muscle and nerve tissue after such a prolonged use. I will be placing and using the same catheters and drugs in pigs the same way as they are normally used in patients. After a few weeks the research team will functionally and histologically evaluate if there is any damage to the surrounding muscle and nerve. Because these procedures are going to be very similar to those done to patients, I think I will find this research very interesting, and will be able to experience anatomy, and how biology and physiology works firsthand. This relates closely to my major because it deals with a chemical process being preformed on an animal model system, and how the reactions affect the biology of the pig on a molecular level. I hope to be able to apply the information I have learned through my biology and mathematics and apply this new knowledge to both the lab work and evaluation portions of the exploration and gain experience for future classes and my eventual career as an officer. I think that through this experience I will develop invaluable skills and will be able to cultivate my love of science and research.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Jessica Lynne Caban (2011)

Australia (biology, biochemistry and molecular biology)

Australia (biology, biochemistry and molecular biology)

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor:


La Niece Nicole Carpenter (2016)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Michael Roberts


Rinaldys Javier Castillo (2017)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - In vivo evolution of a viral RNA

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: David Kushner


Thanprakorn Chiramanewong (2013)

Cellular Response of Leukemia Cells to an Alkyne-Modified Parthenolide Derivative

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Aaron A Cook (2015)

Purification and Characterization of BAG5

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Robert James Cox (2014)

Effects of macrophage migration inhibitory facto (MIF) on bladder smooth muscle and fibroblast cell survival

Effects of macrophage migration inhibitory facto (MIF) on bladder smooth muscle and fibroblast cell survival

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Gabriel J DiNatale (2014)

Profiling chemotherapeutic-resistant tumor cells

This summer, I will be interning in the Lauffenburger laboratory performing research in the field of cancer biology. My work will entail the study of chemotherapeutic-resistant tumor cells. This specific area of cancer biology research is particularly important because a large proportion of cancer fatalities are due to relapse. These relapses come as a result of the gross killing of the majority of tumor cells, while the few chemotherapeutic-resistant cells remain. These small numbers of cells does not cause many pathogenic complications; however, the cells can propagate and cause disease that is untreatable, and fatal in most cases. Understanding the genetic makeup of these problematic cancer cells can pave the way for targeted treatment that may ultimately lead to total anti-cancer treatments.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Gabriel J DiNatale (2014)

Cellular Effects of Parthenolide Analogs

Term Funded: 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Brianne Marie Dudiak (2016)

Effects of Aspirin on Fatty Acid Beta-Oxidation

This research asks several questions about the effect of aspirin on several proteins involved in fatty acid beta-oxidation, particularly long-chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase (LCAD) and very-long chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase (VLCAD), and how the aspirin-treated proteins affect the fatty acid oxidation process as a whole.

Term Funded:Summer
Professor:


Samuel A Eaton (2017)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jessica Nicole Edenfield (2016)

Metaplastic Breast Cancer: A Retrospective Chart Review of Molecular Profiling Results and Outcomes

Metaplastic breast carcinoma (MBC) is a rare type of cancer making up approximately 0.5-5.0 percent invasive breast cancers. Characterized by its high-grade carcinoma with heterogeneous metaplastic components, metaplastic breast cancer is usually triple negative for estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2. They also exhibit metaplastic transformation of the glandular epithelium to non-glandular mesenchymal tissue. This cancer can further be classified into five categories; matrix-producing carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, spindle cell carcinoma, carcinosarcoma, metaplastic carcinoma with osteoclastic giant cells. Compared to Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, MBC results in poorer prognosis. MBC has a greater chance of initial spreading to lymph nodes and exhibits more aggressive pathological traits. The study is a systematic investigation designed to contribute to generalizable knowledge. The study aims to identify a correlation with disease progression and determine molecular profiles. The study will partner with The Institute of Translational Oncology for the purpose of detecting if molecular profile suggests potential therapies. Data will be collected in a deidentified fashion. Any data published or presented will be done so in summary only.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Damien Garbett (2003)

Study of Epidermal Growth Factor and Ca2 Efflux in Mammalian Oocyte

My summer internship will involve researching the roles of epidermal growth factor (EGF) and Ca2 effluxes from mammalian oocytes and cumulus cells. This will be my first opportunity to conduct lab research outside of a class setting. The research will be conducted with Dr. David Gross in the Lederle Graduate Research Center at the University of Massachusetss in Amherst. My role in this research will involve performing cell cultures, fluorescence microscopy, and various other biochemical techniques. Working in the lab will enhance my understanding of molecular biology and biochemistry in addition to providing me with valuable lab experience. Also, because the lab personnel consists only of Dr. Gross, myself, and one other post-grad student; I will spend my time in lab conducting meaningful tasks, not trivial chores. Overall this research opportunity will provide me with experience and knowledge that will help me achieve my ambitions of working in a pharmaceutical laboratory.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor:


Alma Daniela Garcia Perez (2017)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - Defining functional regions of Turnip crinkle virus satellite RNA C

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: David Kushner


Beth Ellen Gern (2002)

Demonstration of the scaffolding function of the protein Ksr in linking Raf, ERK, and MEK in the MAP kinase signaling pathway./Role of the Scaffolding Protein Ksr in Activation of the MAP Kinase Pathway.

The MAP kinase pathway is a major intracellular signaling pathway which links growth hormone binding to changes in gene expression and results in an increase in cell proliferation. Three important proteins which serve to help activate this pathway are the proteins Raf-1, MEK and ERK 1/2. Recently the scaffolding protein Ksr has been shown to link these proteins together into a functional complex that binds to phosphatidic acid. This study will examine the effect of site-specific mutagenesis of Ksr on the ability of this protein to serve as an activating scaffold for Raf, MEK and ERK. The results should provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular proliferative responses.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor:


Breanna Sophie Goldner (2014)

Protein Engineering of Molecular Chaperone BAG5

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Jennifer Kay Hibben (2014)

NSF 0918624: Collaborative Research/RUI: Evolution of satC RNA with Turnip Crinkle Virus RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3 portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5 portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI-s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Cassandra Elizabeth Holbert (2016)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jonathan William Jackson (2014)

Microwave Ritter Reaction

Term Funded: 2012-13
Professor: R David Crouch


Adam Lee Kaminski (2015)

Shear-thinning hydrogels

Kaminski spent 10 weeks over summer 2014 at the University of Pennsylvania's biomaterials laboratory, where his research focused on shear-thinning hydrogels that are used to treat heart failure. "I was co-author for a paper that was published in the journal Biomacromolecules," says the biology major, noting that he's been invited to return to the same laboratory this summer and will use his scholarship stipend to cover the costs associated with this research opportunity.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Kelly E Keenan (2015)

Characterizing the Transport of Mg2 via the SLC41A1 protein

Characterizing the Transport of Mg2 via the SLC41A1 protein

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Kira Marie Krivy (2005)

The role of centrosomal NuMA in multipolar spindles in cancer cells. Dr. Williams Saunders Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh.

Chromosomes are normally segregated during mitosis with very high fidelity. Loss of individual chromosomes typically occurs at less than one in a hundred thousand cell divisions. This high accuracy is ensured by the spindle apparatus, a transitory microtubule-based structure that appears and disappears in eukaryotic cells during cell division. Defects in spindle function, such as the occurrence of multipolar spindles, can lead to a much higher frequency of chromosomes loss or nondisjunction. The genomic instability resulting from these spindle defects may increase the likelihood that the defective cell will become a cancerous cell or lead to birth defects in the next generation. Recent research has determined that a reduction of NuMA with RNAi expression knockdown leads to the elimination of multipolar spindles in cancer cells. This project will utilize immumofluorescent microscopy, construction of DNA expression vectors, and RNAi inhibition of gene expression to specifically investigate whether the overexpression of centrosomal NuMA alone is enough to cause multipolarity.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Ho An Lau (2018)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Michael Roberts


Kayleigh Elisabeth Makoid (2016)

Searching for Aneuploid Tolerance Genes

Aneuploidy, or the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes, is a hallmark of cancer. Past findings have indicated that despite the deleterious effects of aneuploidy, it is a well-tolerated phenomenon within cells (Schoenfelder et. al., 2014). In fact, the Fox Laboratory at Duke University showed that there is no change in the structure or function of the papillar cells of the drosophila hindgut when aneuploidy is increased ten-fold. Thus, it was hypothesized that there is a response that allows papillar cells to thrive despite aneuploidy. A genome-wide deficiency screen was set up in order to detect aneuploid tolerance.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Abigail Olivia Marriott (2016)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Michael Roberts


Dana R McGregor (2002)

Yeast Two-Hybrid Interactions Between NAC Proteins and other Trsncription Factor Encoding Genes in Arabidopsis

This research project is being performed as part of a Europe-wide initiative to determine the function of transcription factors in the plant Arabidopsis (the project is termed REGIA which stands for Regulatory Gene Initiative in Arabidopsis). Transcription factors (TFs) are proteins which regulate the expression (transcription) of DNA genes into messenger RNA which is then translated into proteins. Knowing the function of TFs will help decifer how this plant controls the expression of its genes. This specific project focuses on the NAC family of TFs and the yeast two-hybrid method will be used to help determine their function. The project will use cDNA cloning and PCR technology in order to produce the constructs needed for the two-hybrid assay. The work will be performed at the John Innes Center, one of the best plant molecular biology institutes in the world.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor:


Egmidio Medina (2018)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Michael Roberts


Alexander James Myers (2019)

An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Michael Roberts


Sahil Rajivshiv Nayyar (2016)

Optical simulation of metal nanostructures using the discrete dipole approximation

Plasmonic metal nanostructures are used in many areas of industry due to their interesting optical properties. Among these is Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS), a method of chemical imaging that relies on the optical focusing properties of "rough" nanostructure surfaces to enhance overall chemical signals. The ability to perform rational design of these nanostructures, in which they are engineered to perform specific tasks, requires a method of predicting their optical properties given a certain geometry. In this paper, we present the results of a study using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA); a numerical method that treats arbitrary geometries as a finite array of ideal dipoles to solve for the overall optical properties. We applied this method to single spheres, ellipsoids, homodimers, and heterodimers composed of various configurations of the noble metals (gold, silver, and copper). We were specifically interested in predicting their extinction spectra and near electric field enhanceent; properties that are important in their SERS-based applications. The results were in close agreement with other theoretical methods, such as the quasistatic approximation, for simple geometries such as spheres and ellipsoids of low aspect ratio, with increasingly differing behavior predicted for ellipsoids of higher aspect ratios. We were able to observe some interesting effects in more complicated geometries, such as the "hot spots" observed in dimers, and multiple plasmon resonances within extinction profiles observed for heterodimers. We hope that the results of this work prove useful in practical laboratory applications that make use of nanoparticles' unique optical behavior.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Christine Brooke Neville (2014)

Investigation of Actin Nucleation Factors and Cytoskeletal Structure in Mouse Melanoma Cells

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: John Henson


Faith Melissa Peluso (2003)

Interactions between virus and hairpin promoters in the Turnip Crinkle Virus

The turnip crinkle virus (TCV) is a RNA virus with a number of small subviral RNAs associated with it. The subviral RNAs depend on the main viral enzymes to replicate. One specific subviral RNA strand contains the TCV virus and another set of genes called satC, both of which are replicated by the main virus, starting at a region called the promotor region. When the hairpin promoters for satC and TCV are switched, it affects the ability of TCV to replicate them and produce symptoms in plants. Occasionally though, a TCV virus is found to be replicating well, possibly due to a second site mutation elsewhere in the virus. This project is to attempt to discover where the mutation is in the viral RNA. To accomplish this goal, a full length copy of the mutant virus will be cloned and transcripts produced in the lab used to inoculate plants. If the virus produces symptoms, the original clone will be sequenced to find the mutation. Since there will likely be a number of mutations, each will be reengineered into the original TCV with the 3-prime end of satC virus. This information will be used to create a model to determine if the section containing the mutation is interacting with the hairpin promoter on the 3-prime end to cause the virus to replicate better.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor:


Jennifer L Picarsic (2003)

Development of Gene Tissue for Early Lung Cancer using novel invitro model of lung cancer

The Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative (PTEI) is an engineering growth project, which is playing a key role in the advancement and education of biomedical research, both locally and internationally. In 1997, the PTEI established a summer internship program for undergraduate students from Southwestern Peensylvanian counties, for students who are persuing future caeer goals in medicine, engineering, research, or related fields. Each intern is paired with his/her research mentor at one of PTEI's six funded hospitals or universities. During the 10-week internship (contingent upon receiving HHMI grant), I would be working with Joseph M Pilewski, MD of the Unviersity of Pittsburgh Biomedical Center. I would engage in research focused on using gene vectors in an originally designed in vitro lung caner model of normal and malignant lung cancer cells, to test for genes that could abolish malignant cells while preserving the normal cell lining.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor:


Nicole Elizabeth Price (2015)

Molecular Biology Research, Handelsman Lab

I will be working in the Molecular and Developmental Biology department at Yale University with a faculty mentor and a post-graduate student. I will be helping to conduct research on cow manure, trying to find a new class of antibiotics that could help prevent further spread of a deadly disease called mestasis. Mestasis is a disease most commonly found in cows, but being that humans are heavely dependent on cows for meat and dairy products, this disease has been transmitted to a large number of the human population. Our research question explores whether or not the bacteria from the cow manure will continue to grow in the presence of the penicillin it is treated with.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Melissa Beth Rifkin (2018)

Quantifying Phototoxicity: Singlet Oxygen Production of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Octanol

The correlation between a compound's tendency to generate reactive oxygen species and its photo-induced toxicity to aquatic organisms is well documented. In this study, singlet oxygen production by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was measured in octanol and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), bio-relevant solvents, to assess their potential to affect the health of aquatic species subjected to natural oil seeps or man-made oil spills. A spectrophotometric assay used p-nitrosodimethylaniline (RNO) bleaching to measure the amount of singlet oxygen generated by photoirradiated PAHs. Anthracene had the highest rate of RNO oxidation, indicating the most singlet oxygen production, while benzo(a)pyrene had the lowest. These findings can be applied to analyze marine life and their likelihood of survival when in contact with certain PAHs.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Jennifer M Rothberg (2006)

The Diadenosine Polyphospatase "Invasion" homolog in Agrobacterium Tumefaciens. Dr. Suzanne O'Handley, Rochester Institute of Technology

Despite the rare use of compensating payments, economists continue to document many possibilities for improving the welfare of all, if only those people who face a direct loss could be compensated. We hypothesize that compensation is only paid when losers of a policy changes are politically powerful and have strong reason to expect future profits from the existing policy to decline.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Jennifer Kristina Rush (2015)

Role of DNA Methyltransferases in the Proliferation of Cancer Cells

The purpose of this project is to determine the role of certain DNA methyltransferases in the proliferation and metastasis of breast cancer. The significance of this project is to more fully understand the catalysts of cancer metastasis. Even if the hypothesis is not supported, it will provide useful information to better understand these diseases. This endeavor will further our understanding of the types of DNA methyltransferase found specifically in cancer cells and will help other researchers develop better targeted treatments through this knowledge.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Jennifer Kristina Rush (2015)

The role of NgBR in regulating ER positive breast tumor resistance to chemotherapuetic drugs

Last year, I completed a research project also looking at the metastasis of breast cancer and influential factors in the process. This project nicely complements the previous one and allows me to use my current knowledge to further the understanding in this groundbreaking field. It also fits well with my major because I will be using several critical approached commonly used in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology field. Some of the assays and methods I will be performing include cell culture, cell viability assays (trypan blue staining and hemocytometer use), cell apoptosis assays (TUNEL staining or Annexin V staining), and Western blot analysis..

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Elizabeth Kwon Ruszak (2006)

Chloromethylprotease inhibitory effects of HPV infected keratinocytes

It has been recently discovered by Dr. Glawson's Laboratory that a chloromethylketone inhibitor of chymotrypsin-like protease activity, which we had previously described as a relatively selective inhibitor of the nuclear protease, has very potent inhibitory effects on keratinocytes infected with high-risk HPV in raft culture. It now has shown that an important target of the protease inhibitor is actually a family of ATP-dependent, DEAD-box helicases. This summer research will be focusing on documenting the covalent inactivation of a model helicase, the large T-antigen of SV40, defining the modification site, and developing an assay for measurement of helicase activity in nuclear extracts of HPV-infected cells.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Rizwan Mohamed Saffie (2014)

The Importance of Fucosyltransferases in Breast Cancer Metastasis

Worldwide, cancer is now the leading cause of death. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer after lung cancer, the fifth most common cause of cancer death, and the leading cause of cancer death in women. The global burden of breast cancer exceeds all other cancers and the incidence rates of breast cancer are increasing. In cancer progression, there is the development of a primary tumor and the eventual emigration of cancer cells into the circulatory system and distant tissues and organs. This cancerous spread is called metastasis. It has been found that different cancers prefet to invade certain tissues and organs- a phenomenon called organotropism. Breast cancers often spawn metastatic colonies in the brain, liver, bones, and lungs. Metastasis is responsible for a large burden of morbidity and mortality among cancer patients. In fact, only about 10% o cancer deaths are attributable to primary tumors. The remaining 90% o deaths are due to cancerous growths (metastases) that are discovered at sites relatively far away from the locations of their primary tumors. The five-year survival of patients with distant metastatic disease is low and once detected, metastatic breast cancer is incurable. Despite this, there are few therapies that specifically target metastatic disease. Further scientific understanding of the underlying mechanisms and pathways of metastasis is essential to facilitate the development of new therapeutic strategies.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Eileen Shen (2014)

Investigation of Actin Nucleation Factors and Cytoskeletal Structure in Mouse Melanoma Cells

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: John Henson


Kirsten Marissa Simpson (2005)

Molecular biology and NMR to study retroviral genome recognition and packaging of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Dr. Mike Summers, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD

The lab that I have been offered a position at is the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The lab is the Howard Hughes Medical Institue of UMBC and is run under Dr. Mike Summers. This lab works with the HIV virus and their efforts lie in the area of understanding the protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions that occur as retroviruses assemble in infected cells. They focus on the interactions to better understand the viral genome so that they can develop new drugs to help treat the virus. I will be conducting molecular biology and NMR to study retroviral genome recognition and packaging of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The lab has recently been focusing on the Gag protein since all retroviruses encode a Gag precursor polyprotein that functions in the recognition of viral RNA and in the assembly of virus particules. They have encoded many proteins already and I will be helping to assemble more proteins in the virus. This is a huge opportunity for me to learn more about nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and computational methods that address protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions. This is also a great opportunity for me to help the biology community in general. There is also an opportunity to attend a conference in San Diego, CA at the end of August. The conference will be focused on proteins and protein-protein interactions.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Jerone Tyler Stoner (2015)

Determining the Significance of ZNF217 Overexpression Leading to Metabolic Shifts and Breast Cancer

Determining the Significance of ZNF217 Overexpression Leading to Metabolic Shifts and Breast Cancer

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Alicia Tang (2006)

The role of Pin1 in Regulation of p63, a p53 protein related to human tumorigenesis

The tumor suppressor protein p53 takes part in regulation of cell proliferation as well as apoptosis. P63 is in the family of p53, and it is vital for stem cell regeneration and embryonic development as well as coding for many various proteins. P63 is correlated with cancer development and with any extra production of certain specific p63 isoforms will be associated with human tumorigenesis. The purpose of this project is to find the role of Pin 1 in regulation of p63.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Katri Elizabeth Thiele (2015)

Genomic characterization of corticotropin-releasing hormone in preterm birth

Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) is largely known for its role in the stress response, signaling for downstream production of cortisol along the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Aside from this role, though, studies have found that CRH is expressed at high levels in the human placenta during pregnancy. Placental CRH expression, detectable from the early second trimester, increases exponentially throughout gestation, peaking at the onset of parturition. This research can contribute to deeper understanding of the physiological mechanisms behind preterm birth, which are still largely enigmatic. Preterm birth, affecting about 1 of every 8 babies in the United States, is one of the leading causes of infant illness and mortality, making research in this field a high priority to protect the lives of future generations. Learning to think critically about research questions is an essential aspect of becoming a scientist. The ability to ask these questions and consider approaches in order to answer them is the basis of successful research, and clinical research is the basis of medicine. It has been incredibly interesting participating in research that is so clinically relevant, as scientists and, especially physician-scientists, are able to help so many people, and have the mandate from society to do so. During my time here, I also shadowed physicians in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where I was able to witness the presence of preterm birth in infant illness and realize the applicability and importance of my research topic and research in general.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Katri Elizabeth Thiele (2015)

Cellular heat shock response in human osteosarcoma cells

This past summer I explored the cellular heat shock response in a lab out of Turku, Finland. Using immunofluorescence techniques we visualized the heat shock response across time points in human osteosarcoma cells. Specifically, the focus was on the formation, growth and proliferation of nuclear stress bodies, which form upon cellular proteotoxic stress. In order to treat the cells and create the means for microscopy, techniques such as pipetting, stressing and culturing cells were used. In parallel, western blots were performed in order to examine the behavior of HSF proteins involved in the process. In a separate experiment, real time, or quantitative, PCR was performed often to explore target gene expression dependent upon heat shock treatments and presence of non-coding satellite III RNA. Here techniques such as pipetting, making solutions and preparing PCR plates were used. All experiments were very helpful for learning laboratory etiquette and techniques, including planning and preparing for my own experiments as well as putting them into action and, eventually, analyzing results. This was very relevant to my biology major as I am very interested in research as well as the behavior of the human body upon exposure to stress.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Katri Elizabeth Thiele (2015)

Purification and characterization of putative giant viral prolyl-4-hydroxylase enzymes.

I am acting as research intern in Professor Thierry Hennet's laboratory in the University of Zurich's Institute of Physiology. I am conducting experiments which explore a particular enzyme in certain Giant Viruses. I am attempting to express these proteins in E. coli bacteria, purify them, and assay their enzymatic activity in an attempt to discover whether they are present, and involved in collaged synthesis in Giant Viruses. This research is relevant to human medicine, as its final aim is to explore the productivity of these enzymes in collagen synthesis in later attempts to explore controlled collagen synthesis, which may aid in the treatment of human connective tissue disorders. I am learning a lot in the way of molecular biology and biochemistry, as well as exploring research in a laboratory as a potential future career. This research is being done under the University of Zurich's Biology Undergraduate Summer School of 2013, which involves weekly seminars and journal clubs in order to improve our abilities to read about, discuss and analyze scientific data and papers. This was a program for which I applied and was accepted along with about 19 other students, out of about 400 applicants worldwide. It is an international program, so I am interacting with many students from different countries and continents in a foreign environment. It truly is, thus far, an intellectually and culturally stimulating experience which I am enjoying immensely.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Phung Tieu Vuong (2012)

Pro-neurotrophin/p75 receptor pathway and the recovery process post traumatic brain injury

Pro-neurotrophin/p75 receptor pathway is suggested to mediate cell death and long term depression in the brain. Previous work has shown that p75 receptor expression increased following lateral fluid percussion injury, suggesting the involvement of pro-neurotrophin/p75 receptor pathway in the recovery process post-traumatic brain injury. Using lateral fluid percussion (LFP) injury as model of traumatic brain injury (TBI), loss of cells by apoptosis, motor and cognitive deficits were measured in p75 receptor mutant mice. Apoptotic cells were quantified with caspase3 immunohistoChemistryistry. Motor deficit was measured using Rotarod test. Cognitive deficit was measured with Morris Water Maze test. Moderately injured p75 knockout mice showed a reduction in the number of apoptotic cells in the cortex at one day post injury compared to wildtype injured animals. Moderately injured p75 heterozygous mice showed improved performance on both motor and cognitive tasks compared to wildtype injured mice at one day post injury but not at later time points. Our results suggest the negative role of pro-neurotrophin/p75 receptor pathway in the early recovery process after LFP injury in mice.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Taylor Nicole Weilnau (2014)

Evaluation of a novel OBGYN residency interview process to assess emotional intelligence

The purpose of the study is to compare behavioral event interviewing with more traditional interview methods with the goal of assessing resident applicants empathy, teamwork, and self-knowledge; three critical components of Emotional Intelligence(EI). A secondary goal of this research is analyze letters of recommendation and past experience with respect to EI and see if they correlate with the results from the interview process analysis. The specific vocabulary EI qualities that will be investigated are empathy, teamwork, and self-knowledge. The significance of this study is to identify a more innovative assessment process for future professional and emotional competencies required for successful residency within the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology. My research role is the creation of a database for extracted quantitative data and assistance in the statistical analysis of data, additionally, I have been CITI trained and certified by LVHN as eligible to research. This research does have the intent of being published. My experience also includes exposure to OBGYN practice in both surgical and clinical settings, and the methods of research within clinical settings. The research conducted contributes to the fields of Public Health, Graduate Medical Education, Medicine, and Healthcare Administration. This does not necessarily relate to my major field of Biochemistry, but rather my career intentions involving the Biomedical/Medical and Healthcare field.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Eleonore P Werner (2006)

Clone, express, purify and determine function of CaFpg protein. Susan S. Wallace, University of Vermont.

Damage to DNA molecules can be caused by free radicals. The damage caused by free radicals can be substantial in some cases and can lead to cancer. However, DNA has a mechanism called Base Excision Repair that can fix the damage that free radicals cause. Base Excision Repair is a very complex process involving many different proteins. The CaFpg protein (part of the Fpg/Nei family) is one of the many proteins working in the Base Excision Repair mechanism in eukaryotes outside of plants and vertebrates. The CaFpg protein is found Candida albicans, which is a known pathogen. The goal of my project will be to clone, express, purify and determine the function of the CaFpg protein. Upon completion of the project we will have better insight into how the pathegen functions, a better understanding of the substrate specificity of the CaFpg protein and information about the evolution of the Base Excision Repair mechanism since C. albicans is small not very complex organism.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Mathematics & Computer Science

Ryan David Deeds (2010)

Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The research project will address the question: What are the molecular differences between human leukemia cells and differentiated human blood cells? Profs. Roberts and Forrester will direct the team of 6 students in research combining molecular biological and computational methods to elucidate the differences between the "cancer" genetic program and the "normal cell" genetic program utilizing the human leukemia cell line HL-60. Changes in genetic programs will be determined using DNA microarray analysis as the leukemia cells are induced to assume normal cell properties in culture. A variety of bioinformatics tools will then be applied to the large data sets generated to uncover the molecular mechanisms in play and to model and predict changes in gene activity that mediate the cancer to normal cell conversion. The ultimate goal of this project is to more fully understand the genetic differences between normal and cancer cells and, in the process, identify new targets for chemotherapy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Senaka Yoshio Ratnayake (2010)

Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The research project will address the question: What are the molecular differences between human leukemia cells and differentiated human blood cells? Profs. Roberts and Forrester will direct the team of 6 students in research combining molecular biological and computational methods to elucidate the differences between the "cancer" genetic program and the "normal cell" genetic program utilizing the human leukemia cell line HL-60. Changes in genetic programs will be determined using DNA microarray analysis as the leukemia cells are induced to assume normal cell properties in culture. A variety of bioinformatics tools will then be applied to the large data sets generated to uncover the molecular mechanisms in play and to model and predict changes in gene activity that mediate the cancer to normal cell conversion. The ultimate goal of this project is to more fully understand the genetic differences between normal and cancer cells and, in the process, identify new targets for chemotherapy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Adnan Zahir Solaiman (2010)

Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The research project will address the question: What are the molecular differences between human leukemia cells and differentiated human blood cells? Profs. Roberts and Forrester will direct the team of 6 students in research combining molecular biological and computational methods to elucidate the differences between the "cancer" genetic program and the "normal cell" genetic program utilizing the human leukemia cell line HL-60. Changes in genetic programs will be determined using DNA microarray analysis as the leukemia cells are induced to assume normal cell properties in culture. A variety of bioinformatics tools will then be applied to the large data sets generated to uncover the molecular mechanisms in play and to model and predict changes in gene activity that mediate the cancer to normal cell conversion. The ultimate goal of this project is to more fully understand the genetic differences between normal and cancer cells and, in the process, identify new targets for chemotherapy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Emily Marie Swain (2010)

Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The research project will address the question: What are the molecular differences between human leukemia cells and differentiated human blood cells? Profs. Roberts and Forrester will direct the team of 6 students in research combining molecular biological and computational methods to elucidate the differences between the "cancer" genetic program and the "normal cell" genetic program utilizing the human leukemia cell line HL-60. Changes in genetic programs will be determined using DNA microarray analysis as the leukemia cells are induced to assume normal cell properties in culture. A variety of bioinformatics tools will then be applied to the large data sets generated to uncover the molecular mechanisms in play and to model and predict changes in gene activity that mediate the cancer to normal cell conversion. The ultimate goal of this project is to more fully understand the genetic differences between normal and cancer cells and, in the process, identify new targets for chemotherapy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Amy Louise Williamson (2010)

Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The research project will address the question: What are the molecular differences between human leukemia cells and differentiated human blood cells? Profs. Roberts and Forrester will direct the team of 6 students in research combining molecular biological and computational methods to elucidate the differences between the "cancer" genetic program and the "normal cell" genetic program utilizing the human leukemia cell line HL-60. Changes in genetic programs will be determined using DNA microarray analysis as the leukemia cells are induced to assume normal cell properties in culture. A variety of bioinformatics tools will then be applied to the large data sets generated to uncover the molecular mechanisms in play and to model and predict changes in gene activity that mediate the cancer to normal cell conversion. The ultimate goal of this project is to more fully understand the genetic differences between normal and cancer cells and, in the process, identify new targets for chemotherapy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Biodiesel Project

Sarah Elizabeth Gold (2010)

From Waste to Co-Product: Finding Value in Crude Biodiesel Glycerol

The Dickinson College Biodiesel Project proposes to research and develop economically viable outlets for the crude glycerol byproduct that results from the production of biodiesel fuel from vegetable oils. To complete this study, Dickinson College will partner with Keystone Biofuels Inc., a new company based in the Harrisburg Keystone Innovation Zone. Crude biodiesel glycerol (CBG) is a "waste" that is produced in significant quantities by every biodiesel refinery, yet the market price for this material is very low due to an international glut. In the volatile, highly competitive biodiesel industry, the race is on to develop innovative, marketable outlets for this material in order to improve the profitability of renewable fuels production. The Dickinson College Biodiesel Project will research two specific outlets in this proof of concept study: use of CBG as a feedstock for anaerobic biogas digesters for waste-to-energy conversion and production of industrial liquid soap from CBG.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Matthew Steiman


Andrew Woodward Kamerosky (2010)

From Waste to Co-Product: Finding Value in Crude Biodiesel Glycerol

The Dickinson College Biodiesel Project proposes to research and develop economically viable outlets for the crude glycerol byproduct that results from the production of biodiesel fuel from vegetable oils. To complete this study, Dickinson College will partner with Keystone Biofuels Inc., a new company based in the Harrisburg Keystone Innovation Zone. Crude biodiesel glycerol (CBG) is a "waste" that is produced in significant quantities by every biodiesel refinery, yet the market price for this material is very low due to an international glut. In the volatile, highly competitive biodiesel industry, the race is on to develop innovative, marketable outlets for this material in order to improve the profitability of renewable fuels production. The Dickinson College Biodiesel Project will research two specific outlets in this proof of concept study: use of CBG as a feedstock for anaerobic biogas digesters for waste-to-energy conversion and production of industrial liquid soap from CBG.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Matthew Steiman


Kelly Elizabeth Maurer (2010)

From Waste to Co-Product: Finding Value in Crude Biodiesel Glycerol

The Dickinson College Biodiesel Project proposes to research and develop economically viable outlets for the crude glycerol byproduct that results from the production of biodiesel fuel from vegetable oils. To complete this study, Dickinson College will partner with Keystone Biofuels Inc., a new company based in the Harrisburg Keystone Innovation Zone. Crude biodiesel glycerol (CBG) is a "waste" that is produced in significant quantities by every biodiesel refinery, yet the market price for this material is very low due to an international glut. In the volatile, highly competitive biodiesel industry, the race is on to develop innovative, marketable outlets for this material in order to improve the profitability of renewable fuels production. The Dickinson College Biodiesel Project will research two specific outlets in this proof of concept study: use of CBG as a feedstock for anaerobic biogas digesters for waste-to-energy conversion and production of industrial liquid soap from CBG.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Matthew Steiman


Biology

Johnnie Allison Abell (2015)

Influence of the FGF and Wnt signaling pathways on the formation of the cardiac inflow tract.

Influence of the FGF and Wnt signaling pathways on the formation of the cardiac inflow tract.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Jason Alan Ader (2007)

Determination of the role of ergosterol in viral RNA replication complex

Viruses are gene poor; the host that the virus infects therefore contributes many functions towards the process of viral replication - the copying of the viral genetic material. Positive-strand RNA [( )ssRNA] viruses include significant human pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the coronavirus that causes SARS. These viruses can be difficult to study in the laboratory setting. My lab studies brome mosaic virus, a ( )ssRNA virus that naturally infects plants. The lab uses Baker's yeast as an alternate host for BMV.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Jason Alan Ader (2007)

Characterizing specific properties of the newly identified SARS coronavirus proteins 7a and 7b

According to the World Health Organization, the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS, in 2003 resulted in 8,098 infections and 774 fatalities in the human population. It is now known that SARS is caused by the infection of a coronavirus, a specific kind of RNA virus. This summer, I plan on researching this coronavirus while interning with Dr. Pekosz at Washington University School of Medicine. Specifically, I will be using techniques such as PCR mutagenesis and in vitro translation to study two newly characterized SARS coronavirus proteins, 7a and 7b. I will be responsible for determining the mechanism of translation of the open reading frame (orf) 7a and orf 7b, as well as determining the ability of 7b to interact or insert into membranes. This internship will not only deepen my understanding of the scientific method, but it should also produce valuable information regarding the deadly SARS coronavirus.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Bria Symone Antoine (2016)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Charles Zwemer


A Atandi Anyona (2010)

Evolutionary Developmental Biology of Snake Head Shape

Evolutionary Developmental Biology of Snake Head Shape

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Scott Boback


A Atandi Anyona (2010)

Amphibian Populations and the Environment

Amphibian Populations and the Environment

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Harold Wingert


Nathaniel LeMaster Armistead (2013)

Identification of Sexually Dimorphic Cells in the Mouse Retrotrapezoid Nucleus

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Mary Niblock


Nathaniel LeMaster Armistead (2013)

Analysis of Myo19 in Purkinje neurons and cSMAC formation rate analysis in Jurkat T cells

This spring semester I had my first real research experience. During the first few weeks, I was very unsure of what I was actually going to be doing and even towards the middle, I could not say exactly where I was going to finish for the semester. During this process, I have learned many techniques that will help me this summer and possibly in the future. Before spring break, I learned how to do minipreps, learned cell culture technique, how to plate cells, how to do transfections, how to lyse plasmids, how to run western blots, how to do an assay, and learned how to image blots. Since spring break, I focused mostly on western blots and RT PCR in an effort to determine if knockdown could be achieved with any of the transfected short hairpins. During the last week, one of the western blots was exposed to too much primary antibody and I was not able to see any results. Fortunately, the semester did not end there. Later in the week I was able to run RT PCR again and was able to determine that there is a possibility of significant knockdown from the shRNA 629 and an even better knockdown with the combination of shRNA 629 and 625. The results from the RT PCR were confirmed in the western blot performed by Professor Quintero. I learned a lot this past semester and am glad to be able to end on a positive note. After reflection, despite all of the time and work that I thought I was doing, I really was not able to do very much because of the large learning curve involved and school work. It will be very interesting to see how much I can actually get done this summer at NIH. From this experience, I realized that I have enjoyed lab work, but also I realized that molecular biology is still pretty far over my head. After learning all of the new techniques I have a better understanding of the subject, and the experience was extremely helpful in being able to actually understand what I was learning in my cellular biology course. This summer I have begun doing research with Dr. Hammer at NIH. I am examining cerebral purkinje neurons to determine if Myo19 localizes to the mitochondria and if so, to what extent. I am using advanced microscopy techniques and have learned a lot. I have also learned embryonic mouse cerebral dissection techniques. I am performing this research because it is a continuation of last semester and will assist in characterizing Myo19 function. Because culturing purkinje neurons takes a long time in order for them to mature enough to be imaged, I am also examining microcluster movement in Jurkat T cells. To do this, we are artificially creating lipid bilayers in order to attach the Jurkat cells for analysis during microscopy. I am specifically examining the effect of Celiobrevin D on the rate of cSMAC formation in an attempt to determine whether actin or dynein is responsible for the microcluster movement. This is important because there are currently two new papers which have been published that have stated opposing discoveries. I am using Celiobrevin D because it is responsible for inhibiting dynein function and will be using a non functioning version of the drug as a control. I am very excited to continue research this summer and hope to be able to finish these two projects by the end.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Nathaniel LeMaster Armistead (2013)

Identification of Sexually Dimorphic Cells in the Mouse RTN

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Mary Niblock


Nathaniel LeMaster Armistead (2013)

Characterization of Myosin-XIX (MYO19), a Novel Actin-Based Motor

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Tonia Renee Ashline (1995)

Neurochemical regulation of development and behavior in marine invertebrate larvae

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Anthony Pires


Elizabeth Caruso Austin (2014)

Qualitative and Quantitative Survey of Vessels in Close Proximity to Cetaceans in Coastal Waters of MA

For this internship I will be using field-research methods to examine the health and behavioral patterns of whales in the Gulf of Maine over 12 weeks in the summer of 2013. Due to the nature of the organization, I do not know the exact scientific question that I will be examining. However, after tentative and preliminary conversations with my supervisor I hope to continue work that has been done on a project entitled, "Review of vessel strike impacts on endangered humpback whales: An evaluation of non-lethal collision rates from scar-based photographic data." I will be trained to identify species of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and other aquatic mammals. I will learn to qualify behavioral patterns and sequences. This data will be recorded in ID catalogues along with location, environmental condition, water quality and boat traffic notes. I will be trained in specific photographic technology and to identify individual animals using visual markers. I will record their overall body condition and health, their location, and behavioral patters. Water quality analysis will be completed on the boat using a salinity indicator and other field testing equipment. It is the job of the intern to be the observer and to record specific measure at the discretion of the research scientist. I may also be asked to videotape behavior, or monitor trash and boats in the surrounding ocean. I will collect data from vessels that depart from 6-7 varying locations in Massachusetts. All data must be logged into a spreadsheet that is turned in at the end of the day. A specific Acer laptop with a programming package is used on the boats. Photo sheets must be filled out for each of the individual pictures taken so that they can be correlated with individual animals and entered correctly into the database. I will be a second naturalist on board and assist the primary researcher in their project. I will be assigned a specific researcher and project upon arrival. At this point it is too early to tell what specific factors I'll be monitoring. Half of the week is spent on the boats and the remaining half is spent in the office for data entry and analysis. I will transfer over the data that was collected during the boat days, verifying its accuracy and precision, and correlating the most recent findings with earlier findings. Health files for individual whales will be updated based on sightings in the field. I will also do background and outside literature research to supplement my topic. With the assistance of the research scientists, the data will be analyzed and formulated to expand upon long-term projects. From boat strike scars to analysis of entanglements to whale-human interaction frequency, all of the research questions have strong and significant impacts on the field of marine biology. All of the projects that are undertake at WDC contribute greatly to our understanding of marine biology, of whale social and behavioral ecology, marine mammal health patterns, oceanographic conditions, migratory patterns, and human influences on natural ecology. This is a highly underdeveloped area of science and is currently seen as a frontier for discovery. In the scheme of governmental and legislative action, our findings may help influence legislation to protect the endangered species of whale and other marine mammals, and to enforce poachers and polluters with stronger fines and repercussions. As a pre-veterinary student, this research project is of particular academic and professional interest to me. It offers me an opportunity to explore marine biology,which isn't ordinarily offered at Dickinson. This internship helps be bridge my academic and personal interests while simultaneously exploring a potential career path.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Tareq Azad (2012)

NSF 0918624: Collaborative Research/RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3 portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5 portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI's RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: David Kushner


Jenna Marie Badgley (2004)

NSF 0336716 RUI Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of induced pathogen resistance in seagrasses

Enzyme biomarkers for seagrass stress

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Gregory Walter Barnes (1991)

Genetic Substructure in Natural Populations of Woodchucks

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Janet Wright


Robyn Lyn Barrett (2001)

Investigating a "Smoking Gun" to Allegheny Woodrat Populations

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Janet Wright


Alessandro Giovanni Bartoletti (1997)

The Role of high reperfusion oxygen tensions in kidney dysfunction

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Sara Elizabeth Baszczewski (2006)

Integrated Protein Informatics for Cancer Research

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Paul Richard Battaglia (1999)

Spectrophotometric Analysis of the Enzymatic Activation of Alpha-Terthienyl by the Peroxidase- Catalyzed Oxidation of Indoleacetic Acid

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Jeannette Marie Bauko (2001)

Molecular Cloning of AP-1 Target Genes Mediating Human Leukemia Cell Differentiation

We have established a human leukemia cell model system for studying cellular specialization (differentiation) and cancer cell growth regulation. These two apparently different phenomena actually share underlying mechanisms. The rapidly dividing, non-specialized leukemia cells can be induced in culture to differentiate into macrophage cells. Accompanying this differentiation is cell division arrest. Thus, the system can be analyzed in two ways; (1) elucidation of the molecular events leading to macrophage specialization, and (2) elucidation of the molecular events which "re-transform" rapidly dividing cancer cells into a non-dividing, normal cell type. An early event in the process is the activation of the transcription factor AP-1 which regulates the expression of other genes. We hypothesis that AP-1 "turns on" genes which lead to macrophage differentiation and cell division arrest. The goal of the purposed research is to isolate and identify those AP-1 target genes which mediate these effects. These experiments have only recently become possible due to the development of a new technique, "chromatin immunoselection."

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Michael Roberts


Matthew Ryan Beamer (2011)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3 portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of SatC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PIs RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Michael Edward Benson (2012)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Stephanie Kalena Bernasconi (2013)

Impacts of climate change on grazing fishes near Myora Springs, North Stradebroke Island, Australia.

Impacts of climate change on grazing fishes near Myora Springs, North Stradebroke Island, Australia.

Term Funded:spring 2013
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Justin James Bichler (2003)

Population dynamics and Growth requirements of Euprhorbia purpurea, the glade spurge

Euphoria purpurea or glade spurge is a rare swamp wildflower still known to exist at only about 30 sites, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Over the last seven years we have monitored populations at three of the six PA sites: at Lambs Gap In Perry Co., at Mt. Holly Marsh Preserve, and at Hunters Run (map on next page). Whitaker students and I conducted surveys of two additional PA sites (Goat Hill and Cowans Gap) in 1999 and 2000, in conjunction with State Parks and Bureau of Forestry personnel and with Nature Conservancy botanists. Because both populations appear to have declined alarmingly, we worked with these groups to erect fences to exclude deer at both sites and have obtained permission to intensify our population monitoring and our attempts to rear seedlings from these two sites. This summer I hope to 1) continue long-term monitoring at all five sites, 2) conduct a thorough search to locate additional plants that we think exist at Goat Hill, 3) obtain and analyze soil samples from all five sites to help us better understand the species' requirements, and 4) experiment to determine the best conditions for rearing seedlings, not only of this species but of two rare goldenrod species. We have begun using our long-term data set to document effects of deer on the plants, and I would like to expand the data analysis this year to assess the effects of early senescence in some plants on their growth and reproduction in the following season.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Lily Margaret Bieber-Ham (2011)

Environmental Influences on Painted Turtles

Environmental Influences on Painted Turtles

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Scott Boback


Eric Anthony Biondi (2004)

Engineering yDBR mutants that bind but do not cut mRNA introns

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Elena Michelle Birnbaum (2011)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Julianne Elizabeth Bishop (2009)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Lauren Elizabeth Bishop (1999)

NIH- 1R15GM47693-01 Cytoskeletal Dynamics during Dell Shape Changes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: John Henson


Lauren Elizabeth Bishop (1999)

NIH- 1R15GM47693-01 Cytoskeletal Dynamics during Dell Shape Changes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: John Henson


Jesse Elliott Bissell (2017)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: John Henson


Susan Anne Blasi (2010)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Fall 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Samuel Neill Bogan (2016)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification:Collaborative Research: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Anthony Pires


Samuel Neill Bogan (2016)

Impacts of ocean acidification on larval development and metamorphosis of Crepidula fornicata

A growing body of research has begun to characterize various impacts of ocean acidification on the physiology and ecology of marine taxa, notably, the inhibitive effects of acidification and increased alkalinity on the development of calcareous molluscs. The complex lifecycles of these organisms requires examination of how isolated periods of their life history vary in vulnerability to environmental stressors such as changes in seawater carbonate chemistry and pH. The severity of ocean acidification's impact across different early life stages has been delineated in a minimal number of taxa. Across a variety of species, environmental stressors inhibiting larval development garner strong carry-over effects on juvenile growth. It is necessary to understand whether growth inhibited by pH change during early life stages is exacerbated in a similar manner across other marine species or if it is possible for these negative effects to become attenuated proceeding impactful periods of development like metamorphosis. We cultured larvae of the planktotrophic gastropod Crepidula fornicata in seawater of pH 8.0 and 7.5 until they became competent for metamorphosis. Shells of larvae reared under the acidified condition grew at a rate 26.4 percent slower than larvae reared under the benign condition. We induced larvae to settlement and cultured newly metamorphosed Crepidula raised under benign and acidified conditions as larvae within both pH treatments during their juvenile phase. Juveniles reared under the 8.0 treatment that were exposed to pH 7.5 as larvae grew at a rate 24.7 percent slower than conspecifics reared under a pH of 8.0 as larvae and juveniles. Our findings indicate a significant larval carry-over effect on juvenile growth of Crepidula fornicata.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Anthony Pires


Shannon Marie Bonner (2019)

Communication Between Immune Cells in Inflammatory Disease

The innate immune system is the first line of defense against invading pathogens. Upon activation, cells of the innate immune system cause inflammation by the release molecules that work to coordinate a response from multiple cells in order to eliminate the threat. It has recently been established that one mode of communication is by small extracellular vesicles (EVs). Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is a component of bacteria such as E. coli and a potent inflammatory stimulus. In the case of sepsis, LPS enters the blood stream and causes systemic inflammation due to activation of immune cells in the blood. The role of vesicle communication in this process is not well understood. The major goal of this research is to increase our understanding of (1) vesicle release by immune cells following exposure to LPS and (2) delivery to target cells. This work will increase our understanding of cellular communication in inflammatory disease.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Elizabeth Anne Brandt (2013)

Population Ecology and Nest Site Selection in the Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta)

In contrast to most vertebrates which possess sex chromosomes, the gender of many reptile species is determined by the temperature experienced during the middle third of embryonic development. Painted turtles exhibit this strategy known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD); warm temperatures produce females, cool temps produce males, and intermediate temps produce both sexes. As average global temperatures increase over the next decade, an increasing number of female Painted turtles may be produced unless females adjust nest parameters to reduce their internal temperatures. In this study, we investigate the patterns of nest-site selection in a local population of Painted turtles in an attempt to discover the influence of local (roads, railroad tracks, buildings) and global (climate change) anthropogenic factors on the plasticity of this behavior. By recording and analyzing these variables, we will begin to understand how organisms respond to changes in temperature and therefore the biological consequences of global climate change.

Term Funded:summer 2012
Professor: Scott Boback


Jillian Loyer Brechbiel (2002)

Characterization of AP-1 Target Genes

The human leukemia cell line HL-60 can be induced to differentiate into macrophage-like cells. In the process, these rapidly dividing cancer cells eventually stop dividing. One of the early genetic events during differentiation is the induction of the transcription factor AP-1. Our hypothesis is that the induced AP-1 directs the activation of certain target genes which cause the cells to become macrophages and undergo cell division arrest. We have used a chromatin immunoprecipitation technique to isolate putative AP-1 target genes. The goal of this project is to fully characterize these candidate cell division control and macrophage-specific genes.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jillian Loyer Brechbiel (2002)

Characterization of AP-1 Target Genes

The human leukemia cell line HL-60 can be induced to differentiate into macrophage-like cells. In the process, these rapidly dividing cancer cells eventually stop dividing. One of the early genetic events during differentiation is the induction of the transcription factor AP-1. Our hypothesis is that the induced AP-1 directs the activation of certain target genes which cause the cells to become macrophages and undergo cell division arrest. We have used a chromatin immunoprecipitation technique to isolate putative AP-1 target genes. The goal of this project is to fully characterize these candidate cell division control and macrophage-specific genes.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Michael Roberts


Briana Latrice Brown (2016)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College: Sea Urchin Cells and Embryo

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: John Henson


Jamie Ray Bugel (2013)

Molecular Analysis of Human Leukemia

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts


Ethan Conor Burg (2020)

G protein regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the cleavage stage embryo

"The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: John Henson


Melissa Amber Burgess (2005)

Aging and stress hormones. Michael E. Rhodes, Ph.D., Center for Neurosciences Research, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA

During my ten-week internship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, I will continue to research the exploration of cholinergic subsystems in the brain by using drugs that stimulate specific components of cholinergic neurotransmission and hormones within an in vitro model, to understand their importance in females vs. males and, especially, in old vs. young animals. Additionally, I will observe and document HPA responses to negative feedback mechanisms to further investigate differences in HPA responses to old and young, female and male, animals. After completing my fellowship, I will be attending a poster conference at the University of California San Diego from August 6-8, 2004. Additionally, I am hoping to prepare a manuscript, summarizing my in vitro results, for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, as well as, to present my poster at the Society for Neuroscience conference held from October 23-27, 2004 in San Diego, California.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Melissa Amber Burgess (2005)

Sex differences in the brain and their influences on endocrine function.

During my ten-week internship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, I will research the importance of sex differences in the brain and how they influence the endocrine system. Eventually, insight about an organism's acceptance of neural and other engineered tissues can be developed through studying relevant sex differences in the brain and endocrine systems. This research will be of considerable importance to tissue engineering. This "regenerative medicine" is a rapidly growing field which will lead to improved patient care at less expense. My project will be investigating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis which is an important endocrine modulator of the body's response to stress. By extracting hypothalami, pituitaries, and adrenal glands from Sprague-Dawley rats and setting up an experiment using the HPA Axis Model (Fig. 1), I will be able to study hormone concentrations while using radioimmunoassays along with immunoradiometric assay. After completing my project, I will prepare a formal poster for presentation at the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative's Summer Symposium, as well as, submitting a one-page written summary to The Endocrine Society.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Carrie Jacobs Cafaro (2003)

Investigation of the Role of Photosensitization in Ultraviolet-B Induced Damage to the Photosynthetic Aparatus

Previous work in our laboratory has shown that ultraviolet-A radiation in combination with photosensitizers is capable of inhibiting photosynthetic carbon dioxide fixation in higher plants. Similarly, ultraviolet-B radiation in the absence of photosensitizers also leads to diminished rates of photosynthesis. However, the possible participation of photosensitizers in ultraviolet-B effects has not been investigated. Using chlorophyll fluorescence analysis techniques, we propose to test the hypothesis that certain metal ions, such as Cu(11), may be capable of mediating ultraviolet-B induced damage to the photosynthetic apparatus. This work will provide further insights into the potential effects that terrestrial organisms are likely to experience as a result of increased ultraviolet-B exposure resulting from atmospheric ozone thinning.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Carrie Jacobs Cafaro (2003)

Investigation of the Role of Photosensitization in Ultraviolet-B Induced Damage to the Photosynthetic Aparatus

Previous work in our laboratory has shown that ultraviolet-A radiation in combination with photosensitizers is capable of inhibiting photosynthetic carbon dioxide fixation in higher plants. Similarly, ultraviolet-B radiation in the absence of photosensitizers also leads to diminished rates of photosynthesis. However, the possible participation of photosensitizers in ultraviolet-B effects has not been investigated. Using chlorophyll fluorescence analysis techniques, we propose to test the hypothesis that certain metal ions, such as Cu(11), may be capable of mediating ultraviolet-B induced damage to the photosynthetic apparatus. This work will provide further insights into the potential effects that terrestrial organisms are likely to experience as a result of increased ultraviolet-B exposure resulting from atmospheric ozone thinning.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Scott Alan Campbell (2002)

Investigating spatial aspects of Allegheny Woodrat (Neotoma magister) Populations

I propose to work with a student collaborator to extend or complete several projects begun over the last four years to investigate the population biology and decline of the endangered Allegheny woodrat, Neotoma magister. Specifically, we will determine the status of the closest population to Dickinson; we will analyze habitat patches for a population model; we will re-check the status of a health threat to one population. Our results will flesh out a model of woodrat population dynamics that will help identify at what point population decline spells extinction.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Janet Wright


Scott Alan Campbell (2002)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2002
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Tracy Erin Campbell (2013)

Restoring P53 Function in Human Leukemia Cells

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Michael Roberts


Tracy Erin Campbell (2013)

Molecular Analysis of Human Leukemia

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts


John George Capano (2013)

Physiological Performance of Snakes During Constriction

n/a

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Scott Boback


John George Capano (2013)

NSF 1121529 IOS: Dynamic Thermal Physiology of Host-Parasite Interactions - Parasite Cyst Clearance Analysis Using Fluorescent Dye

INTELLECTUAL MERIT: Climate change is projected to influence the dynamics and distributions of many parasitic diseases of both humans and wildlife. Whether such changes will increase or reduce disease levels will depend on the differential thermal physiologies of parasites and their hosts. Available forecasts suggest that climate change will involve changes in both mean temperature and temperature variability, yet relatively little is known about how shifts in temperature affect parasite-host relationships. What few studies have examined the thermal biology of disease have focused on how changes in mean temperature affect the susceptibility of endothermic hosts to infection. However, the vast majority of free-living organisms are ectothermic, including many species of economic and ecological importance, and quantitative theory for how ectotherms and their parasites respond to unpredictable changes in temperature remains lacking. The overarching hypothesis underlying this proposal is that parasites acclimate to unpredictable temperature changes more rapidly than their hosts, leading to higher infection rates under variable-temperature conditions. PI Johnson and colleagues will use an integrated theoretical and experimental approach to address this gap in knowledge, using trematode infections in amphibians as a model system to parameterize and validate a model describing the thermal biology of ectotherm parasitism. Specifically, they will (1) develop a theoretical model describing how temperature variability influences parasitic infection in ectotherms, incorporating lags in thermal acclimation following temperature shifts, (2) parameterize the model developed in Objective 1 through a series of controlled-temperature laboratory experiments using trematode infections of tadpoles, and (3) validate the model by testing quantitative predictions for different timescales of temperature variability with a largescale mesocosm experiment. Importantly, beyond simply addressing changes in mean temperature, this model will include time lags in acclimation to new temperatures by both host and parasite. A key innovation will be the construction of a novel yet inexpensive incubator array to overcome limitations of many past experiments on climate change (i.e., pseudoreplication). Once developed, this integrated empirical and theoretical approach to host-pathogen thermal physiology can be easily extended to other disease systems. BROADER IMPACTS: The proposed research and public outreach will provide significant educational and societal benefits. Many economically important diseases, such as malaria and schistosomiasis, have ectothermic vectors or intermediate hosts, and disease is a constant threat to economically important plants and ectothermic animals (e.g., pollinators). The theory developed in this project will help improve our understanding of, and ability to control, these economically important diseases in the face of climate change. Furthermore, funding this proposal will provide educational opportunities at multiple levels. Postdoctoral Researcher Raffel will benefit from the opportunity to administer his first NSF grant, improving his chances of landing a faculty position in the current competitive job market. Both PIs will place an emphasis on educational public outreach with K-12 teachers through collaborations with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. The graduate student research assistants supported on this grant will participate actively in public outreach to K-12 students through the UC-Boulder School of Education's Science Discovery Program. Undergraduate research assistants will also be recruited from under-represented groups, giving them valuable experiential opportunities to conduct research and develop their own projects. PI Johnson and Dr. Raffel have each advised dozens of undergraduate researchers from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, many of whom have attended national scientific meetings and coauthored papers in professional journals.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Thomas Raffel


John George Capano (2013)

NSF 1121529 IOS: Dynamic Thermal Physiology of Host-Parasite Interactions

INTELLECTUAL MERIT: Climate change is projected to influence the dynamics and distributions of many parasitic diseases of both humans and wildlife. Whether such changes will increase or reduce disease levels will depend on the differential thermal physiologies of parasites and their hosts. Available forecasts suggest that climate change will involve changes in both mean temperature and temperature variability, yet relatively little is known about how shifts in temperature affect parasite-host relationships. What few studies have examined the thermal biology of disease have focused on how changes in mean temperature affect the susceptibility of endothermic hosts to infection. However, the vast majority of free-living organisms are ectothermic, including many species of economic and ecological importance, and quantitative theory for how ectotherms and their parasites respond to unpredictable changes in temperature remains lacking. The overarching hypothesis underlying this proposal is that parasites acclimate to unpredictable temperature changes more rapidly than their hosts, leading to higher infection rates under variable-temperature conditions. PI Johnson and colleagues will use an integrated theoretical and experimental approach to address this gap in knowledge, using trematode infections in amphibians as a model system to parameterize and validate a model describing the thermal biology of ectotherm parasitism. Specifically, they will (1) develop a theoretical model describing how temperature variability influences parasitic infection in ectotherms, incorporating lags in thermal acclimation following temperature shifts, (2) parameterize the model developed in Objective 1 through a series of controlled-temperature laboratory experiments using trematode infections of tadpoles, and (3) validate the model by testing quantitative predictions for different timescales of temperature variability with a largescale mesocosm experiment. Importantly, beyond simply addressing changes in mean temperature, this model will include time lags in acclimation to new temperatures by both host and parasite. A key innovation will be the construction of a novel yet inexpensive incubator array to overcome limitations of many past experiments on climate change (i.e., pseudoreplication). Once developed, this integrated empirical and theoretical approach to host-pathogen thermal physiology can be easily extended to other disease systems. BROADER IMPACTS: The proposed research and public outreach will provide significant educational and societal benefits. Many economically important diseases, such as malaria and schistosomiasis, have ectothermic vectors or intermediate hosts, and disease is a constant threat to economically important plants and ectothermic animals (e.g., pollinators). The theory developed in this project will help improve our understanding of, and ability to control, these economically important diseases in the face of climate change. Furthermore, funding this proposal will provide educational opportunities at multiple levels. Postdoctoral Researcher Raffel will benefit from the opportunity to administer his first NSF grant, improving his chances of landing a faculty position in the current competitive job market. Both PIs will place an emphasis on educational public outreach with K-12 teachers through collaborations with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. The graduate student research assistants supported on this grant will participate actively in public outreach to K-12 students through the UC-Boulder School of Education's Science Discovery Program. Undergraduate research assistants will also be recruited from under-represented groups, giving them valuable experiential opportunities to conduct research and develop their own projects. PI Johnson and Dr. Raffel have each advised dozens of undergraduate researchers from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, many of whom have attended national scientific meetings and coauthored papers in professional journals.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Thomas Raffel


John George Capano (2013)

Biomechanics of Ventilation in Boa Constrictor

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Scott Boback


La Niece Nicole Carpenter (2016)

Genetic Re-Programming of Human Leukemia Cells

Leukemia cell's phenotype are strongly attributed to their genetic makeup. The difficulty in reversing an Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) cell's phenotype, stems from the many alterations in gene expression. The method of Quantitative Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR) provided us with a set of genes that, when amplified, serve as a basis to understand the necessary gene expression for a cancer cell's seemingly immortality. The Early Growth Response family, specifically EGR-1, EGR-2, and EGR-3 only, are transcriptional regulators and have been shown to be upregulated in AML cells. Their upregulation has a repressing effect on the NGFI-A-Binding (NAB) proteins 1 and 2, transcriptional repressors, through a negative feedback loop. This feedback loop is partly responsible for a cell's progression through the cell cycle, even if there is DNA damage. While EGR-1 must pair with another member of its family to suppress the NAB protein's function, the use of the Clustered Regularly Interspace Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) method to knockout an EGR gene can interrupt that suppression. This summer we conducted a series of qRT-PCR reactions for the EGR family and NAB proteins in four cell lines; HL-60, THP-1, KASUMI-1, and KG-1. In these cell lines, we observed upregulation of EGR-1 and EGR-3 by 3 hours. We decided to conduct a CRISPR knockout of EGR-1 in HL-60 cells because its absence would inhibit the negative feedback loop and suppress transcription. Since then we have transfected bacteria with a vector containing overexpressed EGR-1 and allowed them to grow on selective media. Using these cells we have synthesized RNA and complimentary DNA, and will conduct qRT-PCR to test transfection success. We will then complete the CRISPR knockouts utilizing newly synthesized oligonucleotides for EGR-1, an endonuclease and a guide-RNA. Successful CRISPR knockouts are an important step in identifying new potential therapeutic targets in Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer M Carr (2006)

Scalloped Expression During Drosophila Embryogenesis

I am serving as the faculty mentor for Jennifer Havens '06, a Beckman Scholar. The Beckman Scholar Program supports student research with a faculty member for an academic year bracketed by two summers. Summer 2005 will be Jen's second summer in my laboratory. Because faculty stipends are not covered by the Beckman program, I respectfully request a stipend for our 10 weeks of work. Jen's proposal was approved and funded in April 2004. I have attached a copy of her proposal and my summary of her summer 2004 work.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Rinaldys Javier Castillo (2017)

Sequencing and Characterization of Novel Insect-Associated Yeasts

Many yeasts that live in symbiotic association with detritivorous beetles (whose main food source consists of dead and rotting woody plant material) are likely to exhibit novel mechanisms of carbon metabolism and have the potential to be useful for improved biofuel production. The proposed research seeks to fully characterize ten previously undescribed species of insect yeast symbionts through complete genome sequencing and gene expression analysis. The results of this analysis will implicate genetic features involved in initiation or maintenance of symbiotic association, as well as new genes responsible for carbon metabolism.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Dana Somers


Adam Daniel Cesanek (2010)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or Induced Sink Strength (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined. These studies include both correlative m

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Adam Daniel Cesanek (2010)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or Induced Sink Strength (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined. These studies include both correlative m

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Adam Daniel Cesanek (2010)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or Induced Sink Strength (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined. These studies include both correlative m

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Stuart Changoor (2013)

Molecular Analysis of Human Leukemia

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts


David Cheung (2006)

NIH 1R15GM60925-02 Mechanism and Regulation of Actin-based Retrograde Flow

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: John Henson


Christine Yun-Hee Choi (2016)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification:Collaborative Research: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Anthony Pires


Christine Yun-Hee Choi (2016)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification:Collaborative Research: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Anthony Pires


Raheem Ahmed Chowdhury (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - Application of Physics in the Study of Hemoglobin Disorders

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Emily T Cocores (2006)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Anthony Pires


Erin McShane Coleman-Cordes (2002)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2001
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Susan Ann Colilla (1990)

Development of a tool to isolate specific Genes in Aspergillus Nidulans

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Craig Jurgensen


Brian Joseph Corbett (1998)

Radiotelemetry study of experimental recolonization of an Allegheny woodrat population

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Janet Wright


Jason Scott Cordes (2002)

Investigating spatial aspects of Allegheny Woodrat (Neotoma magister) Populations

I propose to work with a student collaborator to extend or complete several projects begun over the last four years to investigate the population biology and decline of the endangered Allegheny woodrat, Neotoma magister. Specifically, we will determine the status of the closest population to Dickinson; we will analyze habitat patches for a population model; we will re-check the status of a health threat to one population. Our results will flesh out a model of woodrat population dynamics that will help identify at what point population decline spells extinction.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Janet Wright


Jason Scott Cordes (2002)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Michael Roberts


Russell Harmon Dabbs (2001)

Research on the population ecology of Euphorbia purpurea, or glade spurge

The project has three components, all involving the ecology of rare plant species. The first is our primary focus but I think the other two will provide good learning experiences as well. A.) Research on the population ecology of Euphoribia purpurea, or glade spurge, a globally rare swamp wildflower related to the poinsettia. There are only ca. 30 populations of glade spurge in existence, including six populations in PA; and it is considered threatened or endangered in each of the eight states in which it occurs. In Pennsylvania, students and I have monitored its status regularly at three sites since 1994 and have made occasional trips to the other PA sites with the DCNR and The Nature Conservancy. B.) Proprogation of two other wildflower species for future research and coursework. We will erect a deer exclosure plot at the Reineman Sanctuary and plant there several dozen individuals of Aster radula (rough-leaved aster) and Solidago speciosa (showy goldenrod) plants that are currently in flowerpots. The student and I will work together and will have assistance from Rob Martens of our department and from the sanctuary manager, Lee Schull. These two species are also endangered in PA. C.) Pollination of chestnut trees at the Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary, in collaboration with the American Chestnut Foundation. This involves bagging female flowers to prevent contamination by the wrong type of pollen, and then spreading male pollen from the desired parent tree onto the female flowers within the bags. It is part of a project to breed resistance from a devastating fungal disease, chestnut blight, into the American chestnut and thereby save that tree species from extinction.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Shannon Lilly Dauses (2005)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Shannon Lilly Dauses (2005)

Characterization of catalysis-deficient mutants of mouse debranching enzyme.

During the past year Dr. Kirsten Guss has continued to collaborate with Dr. Javier Lopez on a project entitled "Characterization of catalysis-deficient mutants of mouse debranching enzyme." Debranching enzyme targets the 2'-5' phosphodiester bond at the branch junction in the splicing lariat intermediate. The collaborative project involves the molecular cloning of three alleles of the gene that encodes the debranching enzyme (wild type and two mutant versions) to generate constructs for in vitro expression of the proteins.

Term Funded:Fall 2004
Professor:


Shannon Lilly Dauses (2005)

Characterization of catalysis-deficient mutants of mouse debranching enzyme.

During the past year Dr. Kirsten Guss has continued to collaborate with Dr. Javier Lopez on a project entitled "Characterization of catalysis-deficient mutants of mouse debranching enzyme." Debranching enzyme targets the 2'-5' phosphodiester bond at the branch junction in the splicing lariat intermediate. The collaborative project involves the molecular cloning of three alleles of the gene that encodes the debranching enzyme (wild type and two mutant versions) to generate constructs for in vitro expression of the proteins.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Shannon Lilly Dauses (2005)

Scalloped expression during Drosophila embryogenesis

During the early development of an organism, undifferentiated cells arrange into morphogenetic fields, distinct regions of cells that eventually give rise to specific tissues and structures in the adult organism. A vital part of this process is the region-specific expression of selector genes, genes that direct the development of specific developmental pathways. Expression of these genes is also seen outside of the morphogenetic field whose development they control, though the mechanisms that control regional specificity are unknown. In addition, the products of the same gene in different fields often have different functions. During this two-year project, we will study the expression of the selector gene sd within the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with a specific focus on the nature and mechanisms of regional specificity that are characteristic of the gene's expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Nicole Allegra Davidson (2013)

Utilizing American Toads for Agricultural Pest Management

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Scott Boback


Nicole Allegra Davidson (2013)

Impacts of climate change on grazing fishes near Myora Springs, North Stradebroke Island, Australia.

Impacts of climate change on grazing fishes near Myora Springs, North Stradebroke Island, Australia.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Nicole Allegra Davidson (2013)

Ecological and environmental consequences of nest site selection in the Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta)

In contrast to most vertebrates which possess sex chromosomes, the gender of many reptile species is determined by the temperature experienced during the middle third of embryonic development. Consequently, the sex ratio, a critical demographic parameter, is strongly influenced by changes in environmental temperature. As such, climate change can and will have major impacts on the survival of species which exhibit this strategy known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). In this study we will monitor environmental and ecological parameters which determine hatchling survival in the eastern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta). Nest temperatures will be obtained using miniature data loggers and a suite of environmental parameters will be recorded for each nest. By recording and analyzing these variables, we will begin to understand how females choose nest sites and how the environment, both current and future, can impact these populations. Therefore, our research will contribute to our understanding of the biological consequences of global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Scott Boback


Nicole Allegra Davidson (2013)

Ecological and Environmental Influences on Nest-Site Selection of the Painted Turtle

In Painted turtles, the temperature of the nest determines the gender of the hatchlings: warm temps result in female hatchlings while cooler temps result in male hatchlings. As a result, painted turtles are susceptible to climate change. We aim to understand how increases in average daily temperature may affect how females choose suitable sites to lay their eggs and whether these nests are successful in producing hatchlings. In this study, we investigate the patterns of nest-site selection in a local population of Painted turtles in an attempt to discover the interaction between local (roads, railroad tracks, buildings) and global (climate change) anthropogenic factors in determining the behavior of turtles and the survival of their offspring. By recording and analyzing basic parameters such as temperature, location, and exposure we will begin to understand how organisms respond to changes in temperature and therefore the biological consequences of global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Scott Boback


Jessica E Davis (2004)

Investigating the role of contractile forces in the cell motility of se urching ceolomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the complex collection of structural and motor proteins that mediates fundamental cell processes such as motility, division and signaling. Our recent work suggests that contractile forces, mediated by the interaction of the structural protein actin and the motor protein myosin, play an integral role in both coelomocyte motility and the overall structuring of cell's cytoskeletal organization. In order to more fully test this hyopothesis we plan to use both morphological and biochemical methods to attempt to determine the extent of actomyosin contractile forces in these cells. The results of this study should contribute to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell motility.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: John Henson


Jessica E Davis (2004)

Investigating the role of contractile forces in the cell motility of se urching ceolomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the complex collection of structural and motor proteins that mediates fundamental cell processes such as motility, division and signaling. Our recent work suggests that contractile forces, mediated by the interaction of the structural protein actin and the motor protein myosin, play an integral role in both coelomocyte motility and the overall structuring of cell's cytoskeletal organization. In order to more fully test this hyopothesis we plan to use both morphological and biochemical methods to attempt to determine the extent of actomyosin contractile forces in these cells. The results of this study should contribute to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell motility.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: John Henson


Jessica E Davis (2004)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

The aspect of the project undertaken involved a test of the ability of computer-based pattern recognition software developed in the Murphy lab to distinguish drug-induced changes in fluorescently labeled protein patterns in tissue culture cells. The fluorescent labeling was accomplished using either a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-based method or immunofluorescent staining. For GFP labeling, cells expressing a stable form of GFP labeling were provided by the Jarvik lab.

Term Funded:Fall 2003
Professor: John Henson


Jessica E Davis (2004)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

The aspect of the project undertaken involved a test of the ability of computer-based pattern recognition software developed in the Murphy lab to distinguish drug-induced changes in fluorescently labeled protein patterns in tissue culture cells. The fluorescent labeling was accomplished using either a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-based method or immunofluorescent staining. For GFP labeling, cells expressing a stable form of GFP labeling were provided by the Jarvik lab.

Term Funded:Spring 2004
Professor: John Henson


Rachel Elaine Davis (1998)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1998
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Lisa Marie DeLiso (2002)

Population dynamics and Growth requirements of Euphorbia purpurea, the glade spurge

Euphoria purpurea or glade spurge is a rare swamp wildflower still known to exist at only about 30 sites, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Over the last seven years we have monitored populations at three of the six PA sites: at Lambs Gap In Perry Co., at Mt. Holly Marsh Preserve, and at Hunters Run (map on next page). Whitaker students and I conducted surveys of two additional PA sites (Goat Hill and Cowans Gap) in 1999 and 2000, in conjunction with State Parks and Bureau of Forestry personnel and with Nature Conservancy botanists. Because both populations appear to have declined alarmingly, we worked with these groups to erect fences to exclude deer at both sites and have obtained permission to intensify our population monitoring and our attempts to rear seedlings from these two sites. This summer I hope to 1) continue long-term monitoring at all five sites, 2) conduct a thorough search to locate additional plants that we think exist at Goat Hill, 3) obtain and analyze soil samples from all five sites to help us better understand the species' requirements, and 4) experiment to determine the best conditions for rearing seedlings, not only of this species but of two rare goldenrod species. We have begun using our long-term data set to document effects of deer on the plants, and I would like to expand the data analysis this year to assess the effects of early senescence in some plants on their growth and reproduction in the following season.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Wesley George Dean (2014)

Sexual Dimorphism in the Mouse Retrotrapezoid Nucleus

Term Funded: 2012-13
Professor: Mary Niblock


Casey Lyn DelConte (2005)

Evaluation of potential targets of SCALLOPED function during Drosophila development

A fundamental aspect of the process of development is the production of different types of cells, despite underlying identical genetic potentials. This diversity of cell types results from the expression of only a subset of the genome present in a cell. How the members of this subset of genes are determined, and when and where in the developing organism they will be activated, is the basis of the investigation of the control of gene expression. Coordination of gene expression in the context of the developing organism is critical to result in a correctly formed, patterned, and sized individual. We address this question of coordination of gene expression in the developing fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The aim of this proposal is to evaluate several candidate target genes, identified by computer-based methods, of the wing selector gene scalloped.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Casey Lyn DelConte (2005)

Evaluation of potential targets of SCALLOPED function during Drosophila development

A fundamental aspect of the process of development is the production of different types of cells, despite underlying identical genetic potentials. This diversity of cell types results from the expression of only a subset of the genome present in a cell. How the members of this subset of genes are determined, and when and where in the developing organism they will be activated, is the basis of the investigation of the control of gene expression. Coordination of gene expression in the context of the developing organism is critical to result in a correctly formed, patterned, and sized individual. We address this question of coordination of gene expression in the developing fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The aim of this proposal is to evaluate several candidate target genes, identified by computer-based methods, of the wing selector gene scalloped.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Alice Kaye Denea (2013)

SCALLOPED in the Drosophila Larva

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Kirsten Guss


John Mestrovic Deyrup (2009)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Amy Michelle Diamond (2015)

Ventilatory Changes in Male and Female Mice in Response to Whole Animal Exposure to Carbon Dioxide

My lab recently discovered a sex difference in the activation of the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) in mice in response to 5% crbon dioxide (CO2). There are more than three times as many RTN cells that respond to 5% C2 in males than in females. Our data are intriguing given that the RTN regulates breathing in response to changes in blood carbon dioxide and is defective in several conditions that disproportionately affect males, including the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The proposed study will address an important follow-up question: do females increase their breathing in response to 5% C2 even though the RTN isn't activated? We will collect ventilatory data and correlate numbers of CO2-activated RTN cells with changes in ventilation in mice of each sex. These data will further our understanding of the sex difference in the mouse RTN and also may explain why females are less susceptible to SIDS.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Mary Niblock


Eric Kyle Dichter (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Eric Kyle Dichter (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Eric Kyle Dichter (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Casey Elizabeth Ditzler (2016)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this project, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryo

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: John Henson


Alice Ann Duchon (2011)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PIs RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Debra Ann Dudas Honer (1991)

Construction of Recombinant Strains of Aspergillus Nidulans

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Craig Jurgensen


Jillian Hammond Dunbar (2014)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

Term Funded: 2012-13
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Javier Victor Duran (1998)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1998
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Kristi A Elder (2001)

NIH-Roberts

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jessica Elizabeth Ellerman (2003)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2002
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Jonathan Curry Emlet (2003)

Specificity of selector gene activity during Drosophila development

Developmental biology strives to address how a single cell, the fertilized egg, develops into an organism composed of many cells of many types that are precisely patterned and organized. Tissues, organs, and structures within the organism may develop from discrete clusters of cells called fields. These primordia may be specified to form a given structure through the activity of a special kind of protein, a field-specific transcription factor. These proteins control directly the expression of other proteins necessary for the elaboration of the tissue or structure. The aim of this work is to understand the mechanism by which the initial specification of these fields occurs; that is, what specifies the activity of the field-specific transcription factor? The student researcher who participates in the project will play an instrumental role in investigating this area of study as a potential research trajectory for my laboratory.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jonathan Curry Emlet (2003)

Specificity of selector gene activity during Drosophila development

Developmental biology strives to address how a single cell, the fertilized egg, develops into an organism composed of many cells of many types that are precisely patterned and organized. Tissues, organs, and structures within the organism may develop from discrete clusters of cells called fields. These primordia may be specified to form a given structure through the activity of a special kind of protein, a field-specific transcription factor. These proteins control directly the expression of other proteins necessary for the elaboration of the tissue or structure. The aim of this work is to understand the mechanism by which the initial specification of these fields occurs; that is, what specifies the activity of the field-specific transcription factor? The student researcher who participates in the project will play an instrumental role in investigating this area of study as a potential research trajectory for my laboratory.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Lisa Nicole Estrella (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: David Kushner


Francoise Annick Febrey (2003)

Molecular Endocrinology and Genetics

I will be actively participating in the lab studies at Bioqual, Inc. including quality research, development and consulting services to Government and commercial contract clients. The overall goal is to compare different organisms on the subspecies level. I will have the opportunity to work with and learn about primate genetics and development. We will compare levels of genetic variation among subspecies using short tandem repeats (STRs or "microsatellites") and functional genes. We will also study phenotypic differentiation among subspecies. I will be using techniques such as PCR and in-vitro cell assays. Assignment to a specific research project at Bioqual is pending funding request.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor:


Elise Marguerite Fiala (2013)

Scalloped Expression During Larval Development

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Kathryn Denise Fiedler (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced Sink Strength" (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally hetero genous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species shose inducible defense differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Kathryn Denise Fiedler (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Kathryn Denise Fiedler (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Kathryn Denise Fiedler (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Kathryn Denise Fiedler (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced Sink Strength" (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Sian Mary Fisher (2002)

Research on the population ecology of Euphorbia purpurea, or glade spurge

The project has three components, all involving the ecology of rare plant species. The first is our primary focus but I think the other two will provide good learning experiences as well. A.) Research on the population ecology of Euphoribia purpurea, or glade spurge, a globally rare swamp wildflower related to the poinsettia. There are only ca. 30 populations of glade spurge in existence, including six populations in PA; and it is considered threatened or endangered in each of the eight states in which it occurs. In Pennsylvania, students and I have monitored its status regularly at three sites since 1994 and have made occasional trips to the other PA sites with the DCNR and The Nature Conservancy. B.) Proprogation of two other wildflower species for future research and coursework. We will erect a deer exclosure plot at the Reineman Sanctuary and plant there several dozen individuals of Aster radula (rough-leaved aster) and Solidago speciosa (showy goldenrod) plants that are currently in flowerpots. The student and I will work together and will have assistance from Rob Martens of our department and from the sanctuary manager, Lee Schull. These two species are also endangered in PA. C.) Pollination of chestnut trees at the Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary, in collaboration with the American Chestnut Foundation. This involves bagging female flowers to prevent contamination by the wrong type of pollen, and then spreading male pollen from the desired parent tree onto the female flowers within the bags. It is part of a project to breed resistance from a devastating fungal disease, chestnut blight, into the American chestnut and thereby save that tree species from extinction.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Aimee Lee Foord (2005)

Assessing islet function after exposure to enzymes and enzyme by-products. Rita Bottino Ph.D., Director Islet Core, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh..

The Islet Core laboratory is involved in the isolation and purification of human and animal islets of Langerhans for clinical as well as experimental use. One of the current lines of research of our lab focuses on the recognition of factors that affect islet survival following isolation. Among the possible causes for early islet failure after transplantation, the effect of exogenous enzymes utilized for the separation of islets from the pancreatic tissue is not well known. In the upcoming summer we intend to perform a series of experiments to determine the consequences of isolation enzymes on islet survival in culture as well as in experimental transplants in vivo. All the technologies for testing islet function in vitro and in vivo are already established in our lab. It would be a great opportunity to involve Aimee in this project and specifically to carry out, with our supervision, the experiments that can finally establish a role for isolation enzymes on islet performance.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Gregory John Fredericks (2000)

The Influence of Microtubules on Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Coelomic Cells

The Influence of Microtubules on Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Coelomic Cells

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: John Henson


Christopher Alan Fried (2005)

Investigating the role of Arp2/3 complex-independent actin polymerization in the cell motility of sea urchin coelomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the collection of structural and motor proteins in the cell that mediate fundamental processes such as motility, division and signaling. The present study focuses on the impact of the drug butanedione monoxime (BDM) on the polymerization of the actin protein cytoskeleton, a process that helps drive motility in coelomocytes and that depends on the activity of the Arp2/3 protein complex. Our preliminary data with BDM treatment suggests that it is an Arp2/3 complex inhibitor and we plan to use this property in order to investigate the Arp2/3 complex-independent forms of actin polymerization that exist in this cell type. The results of this study should contribute to the overall understanding of the mechanisms underlying actin-based cell motility and increase our knowledge of the pharmacological effects of BDM.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: John Henson


Christopher Alan Fried (2005)

Investigating the role of contractile forces in the cell motility of sea urchin ceolomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the complex collection of structural and motor proteins that mediates fundamental cell processes such as motility, division and signaling. Our recent work suggests that contractile forces, mediated by the interaction of the structural protein actin and the motor protein myosin, play an integral role in both coelomocyte motility and the overall structuring of cell's cytoskeletal organization. In order to more fully test this hyopothesis we plan to use both morphological and biochemical methods to attempt to determine the extent of actomyosin contractile forces in these cells. The results of this study should contribute to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell motility.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: John Henson


Christopher Alan Fried (2005)

Investigating the role of Arp2/3 complex-independent actin polymerization in the cell motility of sea urchin coelomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the collection of structural and motor proteins in the cell that mediate fundamental processes such as motility, division and signaling. The present study focuses on the impact of the drug butanedione monoxime (BDM) on the polymerization of the actin protein cytoskeleton, a process that helps drive motility in coelomocytes and that depends on the activity of the Arp2/3 protein complex. Our preliminary data with BDM treatment suggests that it is an Arp2/3 complex inhibitor and we plan to use this property in order to investigate the Arp2/3 complex-independent forms of actin polymerization that exist in this cell type. The results of this study should contribute to the overall understanding of the mechanisms underlying actin-based cell motility and increase our knowledge of the pharmacological effects of BDM.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: John Henson


Christopher Alan Fried (2005)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

The main focus of recent experiments have been to generate computer-based comparisons of the subcellular localization patterns of GFP-tagged proteins in either normal or H-Ras-expressing NIH 3T3 cells. For this work GFP-tagged cell lines were transfected with H-Ras and then the control and Ras transformed lines examined using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Digital images of protein distribution patterns were analyzed by computer-based comparison programs and those proteins found to show significant changes were targeted for further examination. Dr. Henson's lab concentrated on the changes in localization of the tagged protein Tctex1 a light chain of the microtubule motor protein dynein.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: John Henson


Christopher Alan Fried (2005)

Investigating the role of contractile forces in the cell motility of sea urchin ceolomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the complex collection of structural and motor proteins that mediates fundamental cell processes such as motility, division and signaling. Our recent work suggests that contractile forces, mediated by the interaction of the structural protein actin and the motor protein myosin, play an integral role in both coelomocyte motility and the overall structuring of cell's cytoskeletal organization. In order to more fully test this hyopothesis we plan to use both morphological and biochemical methods to attempt to determine the extent of actomyosin contractile forces in these cells. The results of this study should contribute to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell motility.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: John Henson


Christopher Alan Fried (2005)

Investigating the role of Arp2/3 complex-independent actin polymerization in the cell motility of sea urchin coelomocytes.

Sea urchin blood cells (coelomocytes) are an excellent model experimental system for structure and function studies focused on the "cytoskeleton," the collection of structural and motor proteins in the cell that mediate fundamental processes such as motility, division and signaling. The present study focuses on the impact of the drug butanedione monoxime (BDM) on the polymerization of the actin protein cytoskeleton, a process that helps drive motility in coelomocytes and that depends on the activity of the Arp2/3 protein complex. Our preliminary data with BDM treatment suggests that it is an Arp2/3 complex inhibitor and we plan to use this property in order to investigate the Arp2/3 complex-independent forms of actin polymerization that exist in this cell type. The results of this study should contribute to the overall understanding of the mechanisms underlying actin-based cell motility and increase our knowledge of the pharmacological effects of BDM.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: John Henson


Jiantao Fu (2015)

RNA structure-function analysis of turnip crinkle virus (TCV) satellite C RNA

Evolution is controversial; a flaw of the "pro-evolution" argument is that demonstration of evolution in the lab setting is challenging. Students in Biology 419, RNA (ribonucleic acid) perform a semester-long lab module examining evolution of viral RNA - which RNA, from a pool of RNAs, allows for function (movement) in plants. Only recently has it been learned that RNA can be multifunctional within cells. The study of RNA viruses allows a unique perspective on understanding RNA function, since the virus uses only RNA (and never DNA) to code for proteins, or simply the RNA itself, for function. Here, sequence and/or structure of a non-coding viral RNA is being examined. The goal of the summer research is to continue the experiments and data analysis started during the semester-long evolution experiment in Bio 419, in order to determine specific nucleotide sequence and/or structure of the viral RNA that mediates its function in plants.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: David Kushner


Christopher Jason Gaetano (1997)

Immunolocalization of the Microtubule Motor Protein Kinesin II in Pluteus Stage Echinoderm Embryos

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: John Henson


Courtney M Gamache (2018)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this project, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryo

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: John Henson


Courtney M Gamache (2018)

Experimental Evolution of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus Yeasts

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is essential to the production of various food, beverages, and biofuels, and has been utilized by humans for thousands of years. Consequently, many different domesticated populations of S. cerevisiae exist, including those from wine, baking, and brewing, in which strains with particular characteristics (e.g., increased fermentative capacity in brewing strains and high ethanol tolerance in wine strains) have been selected over multiple generations. Laboratory strains of S. cerevisiae have also been subject to domestication, through repeated selection for the ability to grow efficiently in a laboratory environment. However, despite their importance and the multiple relevant examples of microbe domestication, little is known about the genetic changes that accompany microbe domestication. This project seeks to address the extent to which selection for biochemical changes (changes to protein sequence) versus gene expression changes (changes to the timing and amount of proteins) are drivers of evolutionary change during yeast domestication.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Dana Somers


Damien Garbett (2003)

EGF Receptor Activation in Bovine Cumulus Cells Induces [Ca2 ]i Elevation and Subsequent Cell Death

Last summer I studied the effects of EGF Receptor Activation in Bovince Cumulus Cells (BCC). We observed that EGF stimulus induced an intracellular Ca2+ elevation and subsequent cell death. Towards the end of the summer we began to study the pathways involved in the response and I developed several experiments to determine what pathways were involved for the Ca2+ response, cell death, and cell motility change. I conducted the research with Dr. David Gross at the Lederle Graduate Research Center at UMASS. The lab setting allowed me to design and conduct the experiments first hand with guidance and suggestions from Dr. Gross. The research I conducted was one of the most educational experiences of my life and resulted in future publication and allowed me to present my research at the American Society for Cellular Biology (ASCB) annual meeting in Washington DC. I would like to continue with this project this summer because of how enjoyable and educational the experience was last summer.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor:


Sheri Gentekos (2000)

Surveys, monitoring and initial planning for experimental study of three rare plant species

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Aphnie Germain (2017)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: John Henson


Aphnie Germain (2017)

Dissect the contribution of Rho signaling to contractile ring formation

"During cytokinesis, a ring of actin and myosin forms at the cleavage furrows of cells and its contraction divides the cytoplasm in two. Septins are protein recruiters also found in these contractile rings of cells. Their localization in the contractile rings of dividing sea urchin embryos are shown here for the first time. Similar to mammalian cells, septin appears to co-localize with phosphorylated MLC in embryo contractile rings. We injected the Lytechinus pictus sea urchins with roughly 5 mL of 0.5 M KCl and were then compiled. We collected the eggs in a beaker containing artificial seawater (ASW) and we gathered the sperm in a dry petri dish. At the conclusion of spawning, we washed the eggs multiple times with ASW, which resulted in the removal of the sea urchins' jelly coats, then we fertilized the eggs; we washed the embryos with calcium-free seawater (CFSW) once we removed the fertilization envelopes with the addition of urea. After the embryos were done dividing and were fix, we used several antibodies to label the different proteins within the embryos. In Lytechinus pictus embryos and LLC-PK1 epithelial cells, septin and myosin showed evidence of co-localization within the actomyosin contractile ring. Through fluorescent labeling, there appeared to be an overlap in the placement of both myosin and septin. Embryo treatment with Latrunculin B displayed septin's behavior in the absence of actin. Septin remained in the previous position seen in the untreated embryos; therefore, we concluded that septin was not interacting with actin as previously hypothesized. Furthering testing would be necessary to investigate the interaction between septin and myosin. "

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: John Henson


Shawn Ashley Gessay (2014)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Anastasia Despina Gianakas (2012)

Mechanisms of Cell Process Formation in Sea Urchin Embryos

The cytoskeleton is the system of structural and motor proteins that mediates cell motility, division and shape changes. My laboratory has long used the sea urchin coelomocyte as a model cell system for the study of the cytoskeletal basis of cellular movement and process/protrusion formation. This summer we plan to extend our studies on cell process formation in coelomocytes to the generation of cell processes during the development of the sea urchin embryo. This will involve the microscopic localization of specific cytoskeletal proteins in processes of cells helping mediate embryonic gastrulation, skeletal formation and establishment of the nervous system. We also plan to inhibit process formation by decreasing the expression of specific cytoskeletal proteins via an antisense RNA-based approach. The results of these studies will increase our knowledge concerning the cytoskeletal mechanisms fundamental to cell process formation. This research will be carried out at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Maine in collaboration with Drs. Robert Morris (Wheaton College) and James Coffman (MDIBL).

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: John Henson


Caroline Elizabeth Gillespie (2018)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification/Collaborative Research/RUI: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Anthony Pires


Emily Kathryn Gleason (2014)

Sex Differences in the Mouse Retrotrapezoid Nucleus

Term Funded: 2012-13
Professor: Mary Niblock


Brandon Neville Goldson (2015)

Investigation of Actin Nucleation Factors and Cytoskeletal Structure in Mouse Melanoma Cells

Term Funded: 2012-13
Professor: John Henson


Michele Anne Gortakowski (2007)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Anthony Pires


Trevor Munro Griesman (2015)

Exosomal Restriction factors and HIV

This summer, at the University of Iowa, I will be performing research into the relationship between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and host restriction factors. Restriction factors are proteins or enzymes produced by host cells that can inhibit a virus or prevent it from replicating. Several restriction factors of HIV are known, but I will specifically be looking at a family of proteins called APOBEC3 proteins.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Charles Edward Griffith (1995)

A Moleular Analysis of Gene Expression during Cell Differentiation

A Moleular Analysis of Gene Expression during Cell Differentiation

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Michael Roberts


Nicholas Samuel Gubitosi (2012)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Emily Grace Gvodas (2005)

Development of fluorescence in in situ hybridization using rRNA-based probes for the analysis of gastrointestinal bacteria

The specific objectives for this project would be as follows: 1) develop and implement 16S rRNA-based probe FISH approaches for the analyses of key groups of gastrointestinal microbes; 2) compare the results of these molecular approaches with classical culture-based techniques; and 3) time permitting, use the FISH approaches to investigate the impact of feeding an ingredient of interest on the gastrointestinal microflora composition of the rat. Ms. Greenlee will be an integral part of this project and, with my assistance and the assistance of other members of my group, will conduct the FISH analyses and classical microbiological techniques. Ms. Greenlee will also be involved in the animal studies, where she will participate in feeding, sample collection and processing. Because the project will involve a considerable amount of effort for development, the optimal duration for the internship woud be 10 weeks.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Nicole Christine Hanson (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Nicole Christine Hanson (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Nicole Christine Hanson (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Nicole Christine Hanson (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Nicole Christine Hanson (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced Sink Strength" (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:13Spring 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Danielle Verlee Hazard (2000)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1999
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Sprague William Hazard (1999)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1998
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Jeffrey Todd Heath (2005)

NSF 0336717 Collaborative Research: Coordinate Induction of Sink Strength and Polyphenol Metabolism in Trees

Carbohydrates and secondary metabolism of forest trees, tomato

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Evan Robert Hennessy (2011)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. Evan's project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Elaine Rachel Herbig (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant: Climate Variability Reduces Frog Resistance to Nematode Infection

Climate Variability Reduces Frog Resistance to Nematode Infection

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Thomas Raffel


Elaine Rachel Herbig (2012)

NSF 1121529 IOS: Dynamic Thermal Physiology of Host-Parasite Interactions

INTELLECTUAL MERIT: Climate change is projected to influence the dynamics and distributions of many parasitic diseases of both humans and wildlife. Whether such changes will increase or reduce disease levels will depend on the differential thermal physiologies of parasites and their hosts. Available forecasts suggest that climate change will involve changes in both mean temperature and temperature variability, yet relatively little is known about how shifts in temperature affect parasite-host relationships. What few studies have examined the thermal biology of disease have focused on how changes in mean temperature affect the susceptibility of endothermic hosts to infection. However, the vast majority of free-living organisms are ectothermic, including many species of economic and ecological importance, and quantitative theory for how ectotherms and their parasites respond to unpredictable changes in temperature remains lacking. The overarching hypothesis underlying this proposal is that parasites acclimate to unpredictable temperature changes more rapidly than their hosts, leading to higher infection rates under variable-temperature conditions. PI Johnson and colleagues will use an integrated theoretical and experimental approach to address this gap in knowledge, using trematode infections in amphibians as a model system to parameterize and validate a model describing the thermal biology of ectotherm parasitism. Specifically, they will (1) develop a theoretical model describing how temperature variability influences parasitic infection in ectotherms, incorporating lags in thermal acclimation following temperature shifts, (2) parameterize the model developed in Objective 1 through a series of controlled-temperature laboratory experiments using trematode infections of tadpoles, and (3) validate the model by testing quantitative predictions for different timescales of temperature variability with a largescale mesocosm experiment. Importantly, beyond simply addressing changes in mean temperature, this model will include time lags in acclimation to new temperatures by both host and parasite. A key innovation will be the construction of a novel yet inexpensive incubator array to overcome limitations of many past experiments on climate change (i.e., pseudoreplication). Once developed, this integrated empirical and theoretical approach to host-pathogen thermal physiology can be easily extended to other disease systems. BROADER IMPACTS: The proposed research and public outreach will provide significant educational and societal benefits. Many economically important diseases, such as malaria and schistosomiasis, have ectothermic vectors or intermediate hosts, and disease is a constant threat to economically important plants and ectothermic animals (e.g., pollinators). The theory developed in this project will help improve our understanding of, and ability to control, these economically important diseases in the face of climate change. Furthermore, funding this proposal will provide educational opportunities at multiple levels. Postdoctoral Researcher Raffel will benefit from the opportunity to administer his first NSF grant, improving his chances of landing a faculty position in the current competitive job market. Both PIs will place an emphasis on educational public outreach with K-12 teachers through collaborations with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. The graduate student research assistants supported on this grant will participate actively in public outreach to K-12 students through the UC-Boulder School of Education's Science Discovery Program. Undergraduate research assistants will also be recruited from under-represented groups, giving them valuable experiential opportunities to conduct research and develop their own projects. PI Johnson and Dr. Raffel have each advised dozens of undergraduate researchers from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, many of whom have attended national scientific meetings and coauthored papers in professional journals.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Thomas Raffel


Jeanine McGreevy Herdman (2001)

Actin-Based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Coelomocytes: Development of a Permeabilized Cell Model

The mechanisms underlying how cells move and change shape have puzzled cell biologists for over a hundred years. Although a great deal of detailed molecular knowledge has been generated, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. My lab employs cells isolated from the coelomic fluid of sea urchins (coelomocytes) as an experimental system for studying an aspect of cell motility termed retrograde flow. This process consists of the centripetal movement of the cell surface membrane and underlying protein scaffold (the cytoskeleton) from the cell periphery to the center. The sea urchin coelomocyte has a number of attributes, including ease of isolation, geometry, and optical clarity, which makes it an excellent system for studying this form of motility. However the types of experiments that can be performed with these cells has been limited by the fact that they are not amenable to microinjection. In this proposal we plan to develop a permeabilized cell model of the coelomocyte. In order to do this my students and I will have to test a wide array of permeabilizing agents (detergents and membrane toxins) as well as intracellular buffers. Permeabilized cell models have been instrumental in studying a number of cellular processes including cell division, secretion and intracellular transport. The development of the coelomocyte permeabilized model will allow for us to use membrane impermeant reagents (fluorescent proteins, function blocking antibodies, toxins, etc.) as tools in experiments aimed at gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms mediating the flow process.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: John Henson


Jeanine McGreevy Herdman (2001)

NIH 1R15GM60925-01 Mechanism and Regulation of Actin-based Retrograde Flow

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: John Henson


Hannah Yufay Herzon ()

NSF Collaborative Research: Building the Contractile Ring

NSF Collaborative Research: Building the Contractile Ring

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: John Henson


Trapper Ty Hobble (2020)

Experimental evolution of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus yeasts

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is essential to the production of various food, beverages, and biofuels. Many different domesticated populations of S. cerevisiae exist, in which strains with advantageous characteristics have been selected over multiple generations. Laboratory strains of S. cerevisiae have also been subject to domestication, through repeated selection for the ability to grow efficiently in a laboratory environment. Despite the importance of yeasts and the multiple relevant examples of their domestication, little is known about the genetic changes that accompany domestication. This project seeks to observe evolutionary dynamics of laboratory domestication in real-time to answer several questions about evolutionary mechanisms: Will evolution in the same controlled environment carried out many times result in variants with similar mutations? How will genotypic diversity relate to diversity in physiology? Are evolutionary trajectories similar among strains of the same species, or among closely related species? Are biochemical changes or gene expression changes the primary driver of evolutionary change during domestication?

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Dana Somers


Scott William Hoffman (2012)

Organization of vago-vagal circuits controlling pancreatic function

Organization of vago-vagal circuits controlling pancreatic function

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Jennifer Lynn Hoffmann (2000)

Surveys, monitoring and initial planning for experimental study of three rare plant species

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Trevor Thomas Hollinger (2016)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Cervix Remodeling during Pregnancy

In the research experience the question that is being addressed is whether or not there can be a treatment developed to help reduce the chances of preterm birth. This experience will incorporate many aspects of my major especially biological processes and will require the understanding of physiological processes as well. It also has ties to my future career goals by giving me exposure to medical research. It is a very important question to ask and one that could help reduce the chances of preterm birth and the difficulties that go along with it.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Jamie Yoonjoung Hur (2011)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: David Kushner


Marianne Hutt (2011)

Immunohistochemical Characterization of Sexually Dimorphic Cells in the Retrotrapezoid Nucleus of the Mouse Brainstem

My lab recently has discovered a difference in the number of activated cells in the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) region in male and female mice following carbon dioxide (CO2) exposure. This important region is one of the major players in regulating breathing in response to changes in blood CO2. Our data suggest the interesting possibility that the sexes differ in their thresholds for CO2-activation of the RTN, with males having a lower threshold than females. Because there are many types of cells in the RTN, however, we must verify that the activated cells we have counted are the same cells within the RTN that contribute to CO2 detection. The proposed project will positively identify cells activated by 5% or 10% CO2 in mice of both sexes using antibodies to detect a molecular marker (Phox2b) unique to the RTN CO2-detecting cells. Our data will support (or refute) the existence of a potentially vital sex difference in the RTN.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Mary Niblock


Zoe Heng Irons (2018)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this project, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryo

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: John Henson


Zoe Heng Irons (2018)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: John Henson


Patrick Michael Irwin (2017)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: John Henson


Jonathan William Jackson (2014)

Ventilatory Changes in Male and Female Mice in Response to Whole Animal Exposure to Carbon Dioxide

Ventilatory Changes in Male and Female Mice in Response to Whole Animal Exposure to Carbon Dioxide

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Mary Niblock


Kristy Beth Jacobus (2005)

Structural genomics analysis using Rho130 as a model

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Maxwell Michael James (2010)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Nina Barbara Jean-Jacques (2011)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Helena Jeudin (2017)

NSF 085670: STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Scott Boback


Bethany Leigh Jillson-Thornhill (2005)

NSF 0336716 RUI Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of induced pathogen resistance in seagrasses

Seagrass enzyme biomarkers

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Amanda Hildur Jimcosky (2017)

Interactions between Oak Trees and Small Mammals

The distribution and proportion of the components of seeds, such as acorns, has the potential to provide explanation for various plant-animal interactions. As tannins play a key role in how desirable a seed is to a small mammal, it was hypothesized that a higher tannin concentration would occur earlier in the winter when seeds are more likely to be stored and that the concentration would diminish throughout the time period that it was cached. Samples were taken from seeds, which were then buried to mock how small mammals cache seeds and sampled monthly. Radial diffusion assays were performed, using the specifications put forth by Ann E. Hagerman of Miami University, to determine the concentration of tannin in each sample. It was found that initial (from November) and final (from March) sample concentrations were fairly similar but that a spike in tannins typically occurs in January before dropping again at the end of the caching period. These results indicate that the seeds may not be more desirable at the end of the winter, but instead that an increase in tannin concentration during the middle portion of the cache helps preserve the seed in order for it to survive longer and potentially reach germination before being eaten or destroyed. These results help gain perspective on the relationship between small mammals and seeds down to a chemical level, including the importance each plays in the others survival as a species.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Rachel Ann Jones (2009)

Structural and Molecular Characterization of a Newly Isolated Bacteriophage Virus

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria and are of significant interest due to their extreme abundance, importance in the regulation of bacterial population dynamics, and potential usefulness in limiting the growth of harmful bacteria in environmental and biomedical contamination contexts. Dickinson student Rachel Jones will spend 1 week at Dickinson and then 6 weeks at UCLA analyzing the physical structure and DNA sequence of a new bacteriophage virus isolated in Dr. Erin Sanders-Lorenz's lab at UCLA. This characterization will involve transmission electron microscopy and shotgun sequencing methods and will continue at Dickinson in the fall. The research represents a continuation of the productive collaboration between UCLA and Dickinson that was initiated this semester and based on the purchase of a Li-Cor DNA automated sequencer.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: John Henson


Rodney D Jones (2017)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: John Henson


Caroline Ellis Jordan (2013)

Investigation of Actin Nucleation Factors and Cytoskeletal Structure in Mouse Melanoma Cells

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: John Henson


Rachel Ellis Jordan (2013)

NSF 1121529 IOS: Dynamic Thermal Physiology of Host-Parasite Interactions - Climate change and disease susceptibility in amphibians

This project studied whether the immune system of tadpoles from 3 different species of frog were able to clear the parasite Ribeiroia on its own. The three species of frog studied were Wood frogs, toads, and Green frogs. Snails were used as the preliminary host for the parasite. Cercariae (young parasites) were collected from the snails and dyed with a green fluorescent dye. 24 tadpoles from each species were infected with the dyed cercariae while an additional 12 from each species were not infected and used as controls. Tadpoles were anesthetized and pictures were taken using a fluorescent microscope for 4 weeks to track the number of cercariae present and look for clearing of the parasite. After 4 weeks, tadpoles were euthanized and examined under a microscope to determine the true number of cercariae at euthanization.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Thomas Raffel


Elizabeth G Joseloff (1991)

Regulation of Gene Expression in the Development of Aspergillus Nidulans

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Craig Jurgensen


Michelle Ferenz Kanther (2004)

Analysis of Pdr5p Mutants that Retain Partial Function

I will be working on a project that has been ongoing for some time now. Using biochemical and genetic techniques, they have been investigating the genetic control of multiple drug resistance in yeast cells. By investigating how the ABC multi-drug transporter Pdr5p functions in yeast cells, they are attempting to understand its role in genetic control of drug resistance. Using gel electrophoresis, membrane preparation, Western blotting, and other techniques, I will be analyzing mutations that alter the recognition properties of Pdr5p. We will be attempting to understand how a single transporer is able to mediate resistance to multiple compounds that are widely varied in their chemical makeup. The major goal of the research will be to investigate how substrates interact with specific binding sites by creating structural and enzymological mutants. These mutants will be prepared for me prior to my arrival and it will be my job to help in the preliminary characterization of such mutants.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Christopher James Katalinas (2013)

Ecophysiology of Marine Organisms

n/a

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Christopher James Katalinas (2013)

Ontogenetic habitat shift of Pterois volitans and their increasing invasion of South Caicos

Pterois volitans have established themselves as the first successful non-native species within the Western North Atlantic and Caribbean regions. The rapid growth, relatively early settlement age, and aggressive predatory behavior of lionfish allow them to compete with native fishes and insert themselves as top predators. Surveys involving the sighting and capturing of lionfish were taken during the Fall 2010, Spring/Summer 2011 and Fall 2011 semesters. During the Fall 2011 semester, a total of 28 shallow sites and 7 deep sites were surveyed by a maximum of 11 team members and habitat, depth, and size of all observed lionfish was recorded. There was a positive correlation between total length and depth, as well as a significant increase in average size of lionfish in shallow and deep patch reefs over the one year study period. In addition, a greater abundance of adult lionfish was found throughout shallow and deep habitats. The positive correlation between total length and depth indicates an ontogenetic shift as lionfish grow larger. Also, the greater abundance of adults throughout shallow and deep patch reefs confirms that lionfish have grown larger and have been expanding their invasion since their arrival in South Caicos in 2007

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor:


Christopher James Katalinas (2013)

NASA GCCE Grant: Carbon Enrichment Technology

Carbon Enrichment Technology

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Emily R Keller (2004)

Development of Genetic Markers for the Analysis of Population Structure in the Chilean Sea Bass and Antartic Toothfish

The goal of this project is to apply new single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection by temperature gradient capillary electrophoresis (TGCE) to discover genetic polymorphisms in two commercially and ecologically important fish species, the Chilean Sea Bass and the Antartic Toothfish. Previous methods of detection by restriction enzyme fragment analysis, microsatellites, protein polymorphisms, and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA have proven to be both time and labor intensive. SNP discovery by TGCE offers the highest output and fewest drawbacks, which is why it will be utilized in this project. The experiment will proceed through 5 steps: collection of skeletal muscle samples from both species, DNA extraction from 48 individuals of each species, PCR of target gene fragments, TGCE screening, and DNA sequencing. The results of this project, combined with Dr. Gaffney's previous research, will hopefully contribute to more effective management of these resources and more useful tools for monitoring and enforcement of harvesting of the two species. The project will be presented at both the division and national conferences of the American Fisheries Society, as well as at Dickinson's own research symposium.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Justin Robert Kiehne (2014)

Biomechanics of Ventilation in Boa Constrictor

Term Funded:Spring 2012-2013
Professor: Scott Boback


Jake Olson Kleiner (2013)

Investigation of Actin Nucleation Factors and Cytoskeletal Structure in Mouse Melanoma Cells

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: John Henson


Mary Winifred Kleinman (2010)

Structural Organization of the Contractile Ring during Cell Division in Sea Urchin Embryos

Understanding how cell division works is crucial to our overall knowledge of the role of cell proliferation in health and disease. Cell division consists of two distinct stages: karyokinesis involving division of the chromosomes and cytokinesis involving the division of the cytoplasm. Cytokinesis results from the transient assembly of a contractile ring consisting of the filamentous protein actin and it's associated motor protein myosin II. Although genetic, proteomic, and biochemical analyses have defined the components necessary for contractile ring assembly and constriction, fundamental questions remain regarding the structural organization of the contractile ring. In this study we plan to use sophisticated light and electron microscopic methods to study the structure of actin and myosin in contractile rings isolated from sea urchin embryos. We also plan to examine roles for proteins that impact the formation of actin filaments and those that influence the interaction of actin and myosin. The results of these studies should shed light on the structure and regulation of the contractile ring.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: John Henson


Kristen Michelle Kocher (2012)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Sarah Elizabeth Kolnik (2003)

The role of the cytoskeleton in the cytotoxic functions of the sea urchin coelomocyte

My laboratory has employed sea urchin blood cells (called coelomocytes) as a model experimental system for the study of cell motility, a process that is medicated by a series of structural and motor proteins know collectively as the "cytoskeleton." A major long-term goal of this research is to understand the structural, functional and regulatory mechanisms underlying the cytoskeletal dynamics which help cell's mediate motility, shape changes an intracellular transport. A related goal is to determine how the cytoskeletal mechanisms we identify in coelomocytes contribute to the in vivo functioning of these cells. Several recent literature papers indicate that the subpopulation of coelomocytes historically referred to as "phagocytic amoebocytes" perform primitive immune functions including Natural Killer (NK) cell-like cytotoxic activity (Lin et al., 2001, J. Exp. Zool. 290:741) and he production and secretion of Complement factors (Gross et al., 2000, Immunogenetics 51:1034; Smith et al., 2001, Immunol. Rev. 180:16).

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: John Henson


Sarah Elizabeth Kolnik (2003)

Molecular Mechanism of Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Ceolomocytes

Cell motility, which plays a fundamental role in a number of crucial cell processes including migration, cell division, and secretion, is mediated by a host of motor and structural proteins know collectively as "the cytoskeleton." In this proposal we plan to extend our studies on the cytoskeletal mechanisms underlying a specific form of motility termed retrograde flow. This flow process involves the movement of the cell's membrane and underlying cytoskeletal scaffold from the cell periphery towards the cell center and it is present in the majority of nucleated cells. The sea urchin coelomocyte offers a number of distinct advantages as a model experimental system for studying retrograde flow, including ease of isolation, lack of cytoskeletal complexity and optical clarity. We plan to use coelomocytes combined with pharmacological treatments, digitally-enhanced video microscopy, and immunofluorescent localization microscopy to extend our understanding of the molecular mechanisms which mediate retrograde flow.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: John Henson


Sarah Elizabeth Kolnik (2003)

The role of the cytoskeleton in the cytotoxic functions of the sea urchin coelomocyte

My laboratory has employed sea urchin blood cells (called coelomocytes) as a model experimental system for the study of cell motility, a process that is medicated by a series of structural and motor proteins know collectively as the "cytoskeleton." A major long-term goal of this research is to understand the structural, functional and regulatory mechanisms underlying the cytoskeletal dynamics which help cell's mediate motility, shape changes an intracellular transport. A related goal is to determine how the cytoskeletal mechanisms we identify in coelomocytes contribute to the in vivo functioning of these cells. Several recent literature papers indicate that the subpopulation of coelomocytes historically referred to as "phagocytic amoebocytes" perform primitive immune functions including Natural Killer (NK) cell-like cytotoxic activity (Lin et al., 2001, J. Exp. Zool. 290:741) and he production and secretion of Complement factors (Gross et al., 2000, Immunogenetics 51:1034; Smith et al., 2001, Immunol. Rev. 180:16).

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: John Henson


Sarah Elizabeth Kolnik (2003)

Molecular Mechanism of Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Ceolomocytes

Cell motility, which plays a fundamental role in a number of crucial cell processes including migration, cell division, and secretion, is mediated by a host of motor and structural proteins know collectively as "the cytoskeleton." In this proposal we plan to extend our studies on the cytoskeletal mechanisms underlying a specific form of motility termed retrograde flow. This flow process involves the movement of the cell's membrane and underlying cytoskeletal scaffold from the cell periphery towards the cell center and it is present in the majority of nucleated cells. The sea urchin coelomocyte offers a number of distinct advantages as a model experimental system for studying retrograde flow, including ease of isolation, lack of cytoskeletal complexity and optical clarity. We plan to use coelomocytes combined with pharmacological treatments, digitally-enhanced video microscopy, and immunofluorescent localization microscopy to extend our understanding of the molecular mechanisms which mediate retrograde flow.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: John Henson


Heather Oliver Kot (1999)

NIH- 1R15GM47693-01 Cytoskeletal Dynamics during Dell Shape Changes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: John Henson


Tasha Kouvatsos (2005)

A DNA Microarray Analysis of Human Leukemia Cell Differentiation

DNA microarrays have enabled scientists to study changes in gene expression in living cells by examining thousands of genes in a single experiment. In the experiments described here, DNA microarrays will be used to examine changes in gene expression during the differentiation of human promyelocytic leukemia cells (HL-60) into granulocytes or eosinophils. A microarray analysis HL-60 cell differentiation into macrophages is currently nearing completion. Once identified, genes that are significantly up-regulated or down-regulated will be compared for the three pathways and confirmatory experiments will be preformed by conventional, "one gene at a time" methods. The significance of these experiments goes beyond the study of cell differentiation, since in all three cases, rapidly dividing cancer cells are being converted into non-dividing "normal" cells.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Michael Roberts


Tasha Kouvatsos (2005)

A DNA Microarray Analysis of Human Leukemia Cell Differentiation

DNA microarrays have enabled scientists to study changes in gene expression in living cells by examining thousands of genes in a single experiment. In the experiments described here, DNA microarrays will be used to examine changes in gene expression during the differentiation of human promyelocytic leukemia cells (HL-60) into granulocytes or eosinophils. A microarray analysis HL-60 cell differentiation into macrophages is currently nearing completion. Once identified, genes that are significantly up-regulated or down-regulated will be compared for the three pathways and confirmatory experiments will be preformed by conventional, "one gene at a time" methods. The significance of these experiments goes beyond the study of cell differentiation, since in all three cases, rapidly dividing cancer cells are being converted into non-dividing "normal" cells.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Michael Roberts


Paul Michael Kretzer (2004)

Testing the Biological Activity of Cis and Trans Photoisomers of Phenylpropanoid Compounds

Depletion of the ozone layer has resulted in an increase in the exposure of terrestrial plants to ultraviolet-B radiation. This damages many species of plants and in some cases may have a significant impact on agricultural productivity. One mechanism by which plants are thought to protect themselves from these effects is by synthesis of flavonoids and related compounds that function as natural sunscreens. These compounds are derived from phenylalanine, which is metabolized through thr phenylpropanoid pathway, leading to formation of flavonoids and also to the cell wall structural element lignin. The phenylpropanoid pathway appears to be regulated both at the level of gene transcription and by product inhibition of key enzymes by intermediates of the pathway. Specifically, regulation may occur through cis-trans photoisomerization of intermediates of the pathway, whose isomeric forms have a differential effect on the activity of the enzymes that form them. Using high performance liquid chromatography, we propse to prepare and isolate the cis and trans isomers of a number of these compounds. We will then test their biological activity by observing their effects on flavonoid synthesis and lignin formation in excised plant tissues. These results will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of damage and resistance to ultraviolet radiation in higher plants.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Paul Michael Kretzer (2004)

NSF 0336716 RUI Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of induced pathogen resistance in seagrasses

Nutrient enrichment and seagrass phenolic metabolism

Term Funded:Fall 2003
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Paul Michael Kretzer (2004)

NSF 0336716 RUI Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of induced pathogen resistance in seagrasses

Nutrient enrichment and seagrass phenolic metabolism

Term Funded:Spring 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Paul Michael Kretzer (2004)

Testing the Biological Activity of Cis and Trans Photoisomers of Phenylpropanoid Compounds

Depletion of the ozone layer has resulted in an increase in the exposure of terrestrial plants to ultraviolet-B radiation. This damages many species of plants and in some cases may have a significant impact on agricultural productivity. One mechanism by which plants are thought to protect themselves from these effects is by synthesis of flavonoids and related compounds that function as natural sunscreens. These compounds are derived from phenylalanine, which is metabolized through thr phenylpropanoid pathway, leading to formation of flavonoids and also to the cell wall structural element lignin. The phenylpropanoid pathway appears to be regulated both at the level of gene transcription and by product inhibition of key enzymes by intermediates of the pathway. Specifically, regulation may occur through cis-trans photoisomerization of intermediates of the pathway, whose isomeric forms have a differential effect on the activity of the enzymes that form them. Using high performance liquid chromatography, we propse to prepare and isolate the cis and trans isomers of a number of these compounds. We will then test their biological activity by observing their effects on flavonoid synthesis and lignin formation in excised plant tissues. These results will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of damage and resistance to ultraviolet radiation in higher plants.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Afif Naji Kulaylat (2007)

A Proteomics Approach to Human Leukemia Cell Differentiation

Human leukemia cells can be induced in culture to become cells with normal growth properties. This reversion form cancer cell to "normal " cell has profound implications for cancer treatment and for the understanding of cell differentiation, the process by which embryonic cells specialize into specific cell types. This study seeks to understand the molecular mechanisms by which cancer cells are transformed into normal cells, using state-of-the art technology in the newly evolved field of protemics. Genetic "re-programming" occurs as the leukemia cells are coaxed into "remembering" the traits of the normal cells from which they were derived. The remembered normal cell program then directs the cells to actually become the cells of their origin, in this system, white blood cells called macrophages. The genetic program is manifested in the kinds of proteins present in the cells and their relative amounts. Human cells contain tens of thousands of different proteins and their relative abundances distinguish a muscle cell from a kidney cell, neuron from skin and even a cancer cell from its normal counterpart. Proteomics is the study of the global repertoire of proteins within a cell. Using a newly developed technique, difference gel electrophoresis (DIGE), we propose to identify changes in the protein repertoire of leukemia cells as they revert back to macrophages.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Kelly Marie LaRue (2009)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. Evan's project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Fall 2008
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Kelly Marie LaRue (2009)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. Evan's project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Jennifer Reine Lloyd Langston (2008)

Neurochemical Control of Development in Larvae of Marine Polychaete Worms

This proposal seeks funding for Prof. Tony Pires to work with a student for 3 weeks on campus and 4 weeks at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories in the summer of 2007. We will investigate the neural control of metamorphosis by nitric oxide signaling in larvae of marine polychaete worms. This project will use neurochemical, optical and microanatomical methods to study how the nervous system directs rapid and radical developmental changes in immature animals. While on campus, Pires and the student will collaborate with Prof. William Biggers of Wilkes University. Biggers is a biochemist with expertise in polychaete larval biology and nitric oxide biochemistry. At Friday Harbor, Pires and the student will interact with a vigorous international community of scientists. It is anticipated that the project will be reported as a co-authored presentation at the national meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in January 2008.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Anthony Pires


Hannah Marie Leahey (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant: Carbon Enrichment Technology

Carbon Enrichment Technology

Term Funded:summer 2011
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Brandon Jongwon Lee (2010)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Fall 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Esther Sun Lee (1998)

Enzymatic Activation of Naturally Occurring Photosensitizers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Maxwell Lee (2019)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification/Collaborative Research/RUI: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Anthony Pires


Maxwell Lee (2019)

Improving Utilization of Biogas and Digester Effluent for Sustainability

Improving Utilization of Biogas and Digester Effluent for Sustainability

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Matthew Steiman


Bryan Daniel Lerner (2014)

NSF 0918624: Collaborative Research/RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3 portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5 portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PIs RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Katherine Anne Lestitian (2003)

Ecology, demography, and recovery of a rare wildflower Euphorbia Purpurea

Long-term studies that students and I have carried out on Pennsylvania populations of glade spurge, Euphorbia purpurea, indicate that this globally rare and scientifically interesting wildflower is declining locally. Sexual reproduction is necessary for the maintenance of the population size. However, seedlings are rare and survival of young plants is poor, even after five or six years of growth. This summer I hope to 1) continue long-term monitoring at all five sites, 2) assess the effects of new deer fences and removal of competing vegetation on performance of the plants at three locations, 3) complete initial location of plants in two more recently located populations, with particular attention to small plants such as seedlings that may have been overlooked, 4) experiment to determine the best conditions for rearing seedlings, and 5) work up certain portions of our long-term data set that have remained unanalyzed until now because of time constraints.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Samantha Brooke Levin (2013)

Identification of Central Chemoreceptors in the Mouse Brainstem

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Mary Niblock


Rebecca Diane Levit (2002)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2002
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Joshua Sturgess Lichtman (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Joshua Sturgess Lichtman (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Joshua Sturgess Lichtman (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Joshua Sturgess Lichtman (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Joshua Sturgess Lichtman (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Kristen Nicole Liebig (2014)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

Term Funded: 2012-13
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Wai Wai Lin (2009)

Turnip crinkle virus (TCV) - host interaction studies: in vivo evolution of TCV sattelite RNA (completion of a laboratory research project originating from Biology 419) and analysis of host chemical response to TCV

Evolution is controversial; a flaw of the "pro-evolution" argument is that demonstration of evolution in the lab setting is challenging. Currently, students in Biology 419 RNA (ribonucleic acid), are performing a semester-long lab module examining evolution of viral RNA - which RNA, from a pool of RNAs, allows for function. Only recently has it been learned that RNA is multifunctional within cells. The study of RNA viruses allows a unique perspective on understanding RNA function, since the virus uses only RNA (and never DNA) to code for proteins, or simply the RNA itself, for function. Part of the summer research is designed to complete the experiments and data analysis from the semester-long evolution experiment, and to initiate follow-up studies in collaboration with Anne Simon, Ph.D. (Univ. of MD). In addition, the spread of the virus throughout the host vascular system will be examined in a collaboration with Tom Arnold (Biology), who is currently tracking vascular flow rates in other plant species under the auspices of a current NSF grant.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Stephanie Ann Long (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Stephanie Ann Long (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Stephanie Ann Long (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Kurt Matthew Lucin (2002)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2001
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Ashly Elizabeth Lukoskie (2005)

Integrated Protein Informatics for Cancer Research

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: John Henson


Cecilie Olrik Macpherson (2020)

Incubations Across A Geothermal Temperature Gradient

"The beef industry suffers major economic losses due to a complex of flies that feed on cow blood and/or mucus. For pastured cows, the most important of these pests are horn flies and face flies. Chemical controls for these pests are prone to failure due to resistance evolution and, moreover, they pose environmental and health risks. For these reasons we propose to evaluate a non-chemical control method that could be used in an integrated pest management plan for filth flies: pasture dragging. This practice is thought to benefit farms by spreading manure nutrients while reducing the survival of fly larvae in manure, but the effects on flies have not been scientifically evaluated. We propose to evaluate the efficacy of this practice on the Dickinson College Farm and share our results via the 2019 PASA Farming for the Future Conference, publication in a trade journal (e.g. Stockman Grass Farmer), and publication in a peer-reviewed science journal."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Matthew Steiman, Jason Smith


Christopher Robert Magel (2004)

Radiotelemetry Study of Summer Movements in Allegheny Woodrat (Neotoma magister) Populations

The allegheny woodrat is a native mammal designated as threatened or endangered in all the states of its range in the northeastern US. Our previous studies suggest that its long-term existence may depend on effective dispersal between habitat patches, but so far there are no measurements of when, and how far, woodrats are capable of dispersing. I propose to use Whitaker funds to include a student collaborator in a radiotelemetry study already funded by the Pennsylvania Wild Resource Conservation Fund. My student collaborator and I will live-trap and radiocollar up to 12 woodrats in a local population and then will monitor their position during June and July. In a follow-up session, I will repeat the monitoring for three weeks in August-September. The data from this study, in conjunction with a parallel effort by collaborator Dr. John Peles of Penn State McKeesport, will allow us to quantify the density of woodrats on and around their primary rock outcrop habitat, their likelihood of shifting den sites, and the timing and distance of dispersal of juvenile woodrats, all key pieces of information for modeling the future of this species and for developing a general model for biodiversity of patchily distributed small mammals in Pennsylvania.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Janet Wright


Christopher Robert Magel (2004)

Dopamine Receptors

Dopamine receptors are important structures that interact with neurons all throughout the body via the neurological system. They have been said to play a major role in regulating neuronal motor control, cognition, and vacular function. Its degradation has been connected to many neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's disease, and Parkinson's disease. All of these diseases are caused by the slow, irreversible, and progressive death of neurons in the brain and can be seen as a function of aging. As of right now no cure has been discovered. The Laboratory of Molecular Neurochemistry at Georgetown University, and specifically Dr. Anita Sidhu, has been researching dopamine receptors to better understand how interactions with these receptors by various molecular players help to either slow down or accelerate neuro-degeneration.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Matthew Stephen Manganaro (2009)

NSF 0744261: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Matthew Stephen Manganaro (2009)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. Evan's project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Abigail Rose Marich (2020)

Impact of American Toads on crops and dietary preferences of American Toads

A population of American Toads (Anaxyrus americanus) on the Dickinson College Farm has been investigated by our lab since 2012. Pond habitats were constructed to support the toads as a potential mitigator of pest insects and we have monitored their population sizes, movements, and diet. During the summer of 2019, we aim to gain further insight into the toads' feeding behavior and the impacts they have on vegetable production. This project will involve two separate elements: a habitat enclosure study where we will directly test the impact of toads on crop production and a laboratory study to test toad dietary preferences. The first study will experimentally test the impact of toads on crops by placing toads of known densities within enclosures that contain known quantities of a crop plant. Toad growth and plant damage will be monitored over the course of 7 weeks. The laboratory study will test the toad's preference for certain species of prey. Toads will be brought into captivity and presented with pairs of prey species. Toads will be monitored for which prey they select first and this will be recorded. We will replicate these choice trials on a series of captive toads to determine prey preference.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Scott Boback, Margaret Douglas


Antonio David Marrero (2013)

Characterization of Myosin-XIX (MYO19), a Novel Actin-Based Motor

n/a

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Scott Boback


Antonio David Marrero (2013)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Mohammed Hakim Masab (2013)

NSF 0918624: Collaborative Research/RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA - Sequence-structure-function analysis of a viral RNA

In the USA, crop loss due to infection by plant pathogens (including viruses) exceeds 30 billion dollars annually. In the environment, plant virus genomes, and virus-associated RNAs (satellite RNAs) can evolve to enhance symptom severity. A major question in RNA virology is "what makes an RNA infectious?" Viral RNA sequence and/or structure is often linked to RNA function, which can include infectiousness. Due to its small size, the satellite RNA C (satC) from Turnip crinkle virus is an excellent model for identification and characterization of RNA sequences and/or structures involved in virus replication and pathogenesis. Using an in vivo evolution approach, portions of satC RNA can be randomized, pools of these random satC used to infect turnip plants, and functional satCs can be recovered from plants, allowing for identification of sequences and/or structures formed by these sequences that mediate satC function in plants. Here, we seek to determine sequence/structure requirements in a portion of satC that mediate a step in replication (copying) of the satC RNA. Dr. Kushner has obtained NSF funding for this project; the second of 2 parts of the project will be initiated in his Bio 419 course in Spring '12. Several students have worked on the project since it started in Spring '10. Two students will continue working on the project during summer 2012 -- stipend/housing for one of these students will be paid from NSF grant money; previously it was agreed that the stipend/housing for the second student would be paid for by the college.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Mohammed Hakim Masab (2013)

In Vivo Evolution of a Viral RNA II

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: David Kushner


Mohammed Hakim Masab (2013)

Invivo Evolution of a Viral RNA

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Carole Anne McBride (2004)

Computational and Laboratory stuey of p16/Ink4 Mutations"

This project focuses on exploring the relationship among gene evolution and mutation, protein function and structure, and disease (cancer). This will be accomplished by using computational and experimental approaches to predict and test whether mutations in tumor suppressor genes, such as the p16/CDKN2a gene, alter protein function. In the case of CDKN2a, evolutionary and structural patterns are being examined to predict which variants might affect the protein, creating mutant p16 proteins, and to test whether the mutated proteins retain or lose the ability to cause cell cycle arrest. The data gathered in this study will then be employed in the Vermont Cancer Center's ultimate goal of understanding and utilizing this knowledge to aid in early cancer diagnosis and/or prevention.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Mary Kathryn McClellan (2007)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

During the period 2005-2006, Dr. Henson's lab has continued to collaborate with the labs of Drs. Robert Murphy and Jon Jarvik at CMU on the project entitled "Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer". The work has involved the participation of Dickinson undergraduate Mary McClellan.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Quenelle Washington McKim ()

NSF Collaborative Research: Building the Contractile Ring

NSF Collaborative Research: Building the Contractile Ring

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: John Henson


Julia Brumbaugh McMahon (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Scott Boback


Julia Brumbaugh McMahon (2015)

Ocean Acidification and Larval Development

Our research will endeavor to answer the following question: how does low food concentration and higher pCo2 affect the growth and metamorphosis in Crepidula fornicata? This investigation is a follow-on to our research conducted in the spring of 2014, which was limited to exploring the effects of low pH, by adding the effects of high food versus low food.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Julia Brumbaugh McMahon (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Anthony Pires


Julia Brumbaugh McMahon (2015)

Effects of Ocean Acidification on Development of a Marine Mollusc Larva

Effects of Ocean Acidification on Development of a Marine Mollusc Larva

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Anthony Pires


Angela Emer Medrano (2016)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: John Henson


Caitlin Anne Mehalick (2010)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Ora Elizabeth Mika (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Ora Elizabeth Mika (2007)

NSF 0336717 Collaborative Research: Coordinate Induction of Sink Strength and Polyphenol Metabolism in Trees

Carbohydrates and secondary metabolism of forest trees, tomato

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Ora Elizabeth Mika (2007)

NSF 0336717 Collaborative Research: Coordinate Induction of Sink Strength and Polyphenol Metabolism in Trees

Carbohydrates and secondary metabolism of forest trees, tomato

Term Funded:Fall 2005
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Ora Elizabeth Mika (2007)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

In YEAR 1 we have succeeded in completing all proposed greenhouse experiments involving hybrid poplar saplings and made progress in establishing Arabidopsis and tomato as model systems in which to examine induced sink strength (ISS), which we hypothesize is a conuuon, first step in general plant wound responses. POPLAR EXPERIMENTS. Along with my co-PIs (Jack Schultz and Heidi Appel) I worked to complete the proposed experiments aimed at testing the ability of wounded poplar foliage to draw in additional resources, via an induction of cell wall invertase activities, to support the production of anti-herbivore defenses. Three large, factorial experiments involving over 500 poplar samplings were completed in the summer of 2006. The ability of induced foliage to import carbohydrates and nitrogen, observed using 1 3C and 1 SN tracers, was assessed with and without disruption of phloem transport and the presence of competing sink tissues, e.g. other wounded branches which compete for resources. These experiments were the largest, most complicated we have attempted since we began this work over eight years ago. ARABIDOPSIS. We have made good progress in developing Arabidopsis as a model system for testing the hypothesis that 155 is a common first step in defense responses. This required some additional effort because it became clear that which this species does possess the ISS response, it reacts a bit differently than poplar. In a series of experiments involving undergraduate students, we tested for the presence or absence of the IS S response in this plant at various developmental stages, in a range of sink and source leaves. The large number of enzyme assays required the development of a new enzyme activity assay, using high through-put grinders, which has increased our ability to process samples by nearly 10-fold.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Emily Mae Miller (2014)

Fluid Resuscitation in Adults with Severe Burns at Risk of Secondary Abdominal Compartment Syndrome

I will be working with Dr. Amani in the Burn Unit of Lehigh Valley Hospital at Cedar Crest. Dr. Amani explained to me that Lehigh Valley Hospital treats third degree burns (those that cover more than 30% of the body's surface area) in a different manner than most other hospitals, and for this reason, patients do not experience secondary abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS). Secondary Abdominal Compartment Syndrome complicates fluid resuscitation (treatment for severe burns) because it causes a great decrease in urine output. Therefore, more fluid must be given to the patient and it causes a cycle in which fluid must constantly be given to the patient, which may result in death. The fluid given to the patient is generally a type of saline solution. It has been reported that there is an sACS incidence of 1-20%. However, at Lehigh Valley Hospital, the data suggests that there is a 0% incidence of sACS. The doctors at Lehigh Valley Hospital give the patients fluids, however they usually treat them with high dose Vitamin C, hypertonic LR, or more commonly colloids (ex: frozen plasma). Dr. Amani and I will be conducting research, hoping to reach a conclusion as to why 0% of the severe burn patients at Lehigh Valley Hospital do not experience secondary Abdominal Compartment Syndrome, whereas a percentage of patients at most other hospitals do experience sACS. We will be working on a paper and one of my jobs is to quantify data.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Matthew William Miller (2013)

Ecological and environmental consequences of nest site selection in the Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta)

In contrast to most vertebrates which possess sex chromosomes, the gender of many reptile species is determined by the temperature experienced during the middle third of embryonic development. Consequently, the sex ratio, a critical demographic parameter, is strongly influenced by changes in environmental temperature. As such, climate change can and will have major impacts on the survival of species which exhibit this strategy known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). In this study we will monitor environmental and ecological parameters which determine hatchling survival in the eastern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta). Nest temperatures will be obtained using miniature data loggers and a suite of environmental parameters will be recorded for each nest. By recording and analyzing these variables, we will begin to understand how females choose nest sites and how the environment, both current and future, can impact these populations. Therefore, our research will contribute to our understanding of the biological consequences of global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Scott Boback


Matthew William Miller (2013)

Ecological Consequences of Nest Site Selection in the Painted Turtle

Ecological Consequences of Nest Site Selection in the Painted Turtle

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Scott Boback


Patrick Lennon Millet (2007)

Continued Analysis of Role of the Phosphatase siw14p in BMV RNA Replication

Studies of virus-host interaction can illustrate how viruses manipulate host-cell machinery to propagate their genetic material, yet also elucidate enhanced understanding of cellular processes. Positive-strand RNA ((+)ssRNA) viruses include pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the SARS coronavirus. The plant pathogen Brome mosaic virus (BMV) is a representative (+)ssRNA virus whose life cycle has been reproduced in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Previous yeast genomic studies have indicated that siw14p, a protein phosphatase, is critical for BMV RNA replication. To enhance understanding of how SIW14 causes this BMV replication defect, this study seeks to analyze BMV replication in the presence of SIW14 phosphatase mutants and begin to determine the direct target of siw14p activity. Furthermore, to better understand SIW14 general function in the cell, completion of current DNA microarray studies, analyzing genome-wide yeast transcription in the presence and absence of SIW1 will be pursued.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: David Kushner


Patrick Lennon Millet (2007)

Continued Analysis of Role of the Phosphatase siw14p in BMV RNA Replication

Studies of virus-host interaction can illustrate how viruses manipulate host-cell machinery to propagate their genetic material, yet also elucidate enhanced understanding of cellular processes. Positive-strand RNA ((+)ssRNA) viruses include pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the SARS coronavirus. The plant pathogen Brome mosaic virus (BMV) is a representative (+)ssRNA virus whose life cycle has been reproduced in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Previous yeast genomic studies have indicated that siw14p, a protein phosphatase, is critical for BMV RNA replication. To enhance understanding of how SIW14 causes this BMV replication defect, this study seeks to analyze BMV replication in the presence of SIW14 phosphatase mutants and begin to determine the direct target of siw14p activity. Furthermore, to better understand SIW14 general function in the cell, completion of current DNA microarray studies, analyzing genome-wide yeast transcription in the presence and absence of SIW1 will be pursued.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: David Kushner


Nana Kwaku Minkah (2005)

Host gene expression changes caused by a novel protein phosphatase.

Yeast, a powerful model eukaryotic research system, features striking similarity to humans on the genetic level. While sequencing the yeast genome led to the identification of 6000 yeast genes, elucidation of function of several proteins encoded by those genes has yet to occur. One gene, SIW14, has shown to encode a protein phosphatase, yet the cellular protein targets of this enzyme remain unknown. As proteins are often regulated by kinases and phosphatases, understanding these pathways is critical for determining cellular function. Since the phosphorylation status of proteins is often key to the regulation of gene expression, this study aims to employ microarray technolgoy to identify downstream targets of SIW14. Furthermore, as the protein product of SIW14 is critical for brome mosaic virus (BMV) to copy its genetic material (replicate), a long-term goal of this line of investigation is to further understand the role of SIW14 in BMV RNA replication.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: David Kushner


Nana Kwaku Minkah (2005)

Host gene expression changes caused by a novel protein phosphatase.

Yeast, a powerful model eukaryotic research system, features striking similarity to humans on the genetic level. While sequencing the yeast genome led to the identification of 6000 yeast genes, elucidation of function of several proteins encoded by those genes has yet to occur. One gene, SIW14, has shown to encode a protein phosphatase, yet the cellular protein targets of this enzyme remain unknown. As proteins are often regulated by kinases and phosphatases, understanding these pathways is critical for determining cellular function. Since the phosphorylation status of proteins is often key to the regulation of gene expression, this study aims to employ microarray technolgoy to identify downstream targets of SIW14. Furthermore, as the protein product of SIW14 is critical for brome mosaic virus (BMV) to copy its genetic material (replicate), a long-term goal of this line of investigation is to further understand the role of SIW14 in BMV RNA replication.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: David Kushner


Jeffrey Vincent Mitten (1997)

Electrophysiological Study of Metamorphosis in Gastropod Molluscs

Electrophysiological Study of Metamorphosis in Gastropod Molluscs

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Anthony Pires


Noah Raphael Morgenstein (2011)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Joanne Cissel Morton (1997)

A Molecular Analysis of Gene Expression during Cell Differentiation

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Michael Roberts


Joanne Cissel Morton (1997)

A Molecular Analysis of Gene Expression during Cell Differentiation

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jennifer Ann Moyer (1990)

Karyotypes of Cylindrocystis

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Paul Biebel


Kathryn Alisa Mueller (2016)

Microbial Taxonomic Diversity

Microbial Taxonomic Diversity

Term Funded:Year 2016
Professor: Dana Somers


Zoe Louisa Muller ()

Sociality of Pregnant Prairie Rattlesnakes in Northern Colorado

Animals face many obstacles in successfully producing and rearing offspring. Survival of offspring can be quite low in part because young are often small, slow, and/or defenseless. In response, parental care has evolved in several vertebrate and invertebrate clades but is most widespread in birds and mammals. In contrast, snakes are considered asocial and the majority of squamate reptiles (lizards snakes) show little to no parental care. In oviparous species (egg layers), maternal egg attendance seems to be more common whereby females defend their eggs from predators. In contrast, viviparous species (those that have live birth) retain embryos in the uterus until they are fully developed, and thus parental care is extremely rare in this group. In fact, maternal attendance of offspring has only been documented in a single group of snakes, temperate pitvipers who remain with their young until they complete their first shed cycle (~ 2 weeks). Pregnant females migrate short distances from their winter dens where aggregate in rookeries where they give birth together. While it is straightforward to see why it would be beneficial for a mother to defend her own offspring, the benefit of aggregation during birthing is less clear. As part of a long-term project focused on understanding the ecology of Prairie rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis) in northwestern Colorado, we aim to understand the benefits of social aggregation for pregnant female rattlesnakes

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Scott Boback


Allison Margaret Murawski (2012)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Allison Margaret Murawski (2012)

NSF 0918624: Collaborative Research/RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3 portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5 portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI's RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: David Kushner


Connor Thomas Murphy (2005)

Integrated Protein Informatics for Cancer Research

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: John Henson


Heidi Ann Murray-Smith (2003)

The role of the cytoskeleton in the cytotoxic functions of the sea urchin coelomocyte

My laboratory has employed sea urchin blood cells (called coelomocytes) as a model experimental system for the study of cell motility, a process that is medicated by a series of structural and motor proteins know collectively as the "cytoskeleton." A major long-term goal of this research is to understand the structural, functional and regulatory mechanisms underlying the cytoskeletal dynamics which help cell's mediate motility, shape changes an intracellular transport. A related goal is to determine how the cytoskeletal mechanisms we identify in coelomocytes contribute to the in vivo functioning of these cells. Several recent literature papers indicate that the subpopulation of coelomocytes historically referred to as "phagocytic amoebocytes" perform primitive immune functions including Natural Killer (NK) cell-like cytotoxic activity (Lin et al., 2001, J. Exp. Zool. 290:741) and he production and secretion of Complement factors (Gross et al., 2000, Immunogenetics 51:1034; Smith et al., 2001, Immunol. Rev. 180:16).

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: John Henson


Heidi Ann Murray-Smith (2003)

The role of the cytoskeleton in the cytotoxic functions of the sea urchin coelomocyte

My laboratory has employed sea urchin blood cells (called coelomocytes) as a model experimental system for the study of cell motility, a process that is medicated by a series of structural and motor proteins know collectively as the "cytoskeleton." A major long-term goal of this research is to understand the structural, functional and regulatory mechanisms underlying the cytoskeletal dynamics which help cell's mediate motility, shape changes an intracellular transport. A related goal is to determine how the cytoskeletal mechanisms we identify in coelomocytes contribute to the in vivo functioning of these cells. Several recent literature papers indicate that the subpopulation of coelomocytes historically referred to as "phagocytic amoebocytes" perform primitive immune functions including Natural Killer (NK) cell-like cytotoxic activity (Lin et al., 2001, J. Exp. Zool. 290:741) and he production and secretion of Complement factors (Gross et al., 2000, Immunogenetics 51:1034; Smith et al., 2001, Immunol. Rev. 180:16).

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: John Henson


Nicole Michelle Myers (2010)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Ronniel Nazarian (2000)

The Influence of Microtubules on Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Coelomic Cells

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: John Henson


Ronniel Nazarian (2000)

Mechanical and Pharmacological Manipulation of Actin-Based Centripetal Flow in Sea Urchin \

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: John Henson


Alexis N Newton (2017)

HSP70 and Parthenolide

Cellular systems need to respond to external stressors in order to survive and one of these survival mechanisms happens to include the heat shock response system- which is regulated in response to thermal stress and drug-induced reagents. Once the heat shock protein is induced, it decreases the proteins ability to aggregate by chaperoning in order to mediate protein folding, as well as protein translocation and repair unfolded proteins damaged by environmental stresses. The heat shock system is comprised of the chaperone proteins, chaperone regulators, and transcription factors Hsf1, Hsp70 and Hsp90. Within Hsp70 there are 5 known cysteine mutants: C17, C267, C303, C574, and C603, which are also known to be thiol-reactive compounds. To explore the importance of these cysteine residues, the plasmid strains DH5alpha and JW0013 DNAK were used in order to conduct a mutagenesis, which mutated the cysteine groups to serine in order to determine the mutants, affect on hsp70 activity, as well as its electrophilic activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Chieuanh Thi Nguyen (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Chieuanh Thi Nguyen (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Minh Huu Nguyen (2011)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Cody Michael Nichols (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Cody Michael Nichols (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - THE BIOMECHANICS OF TWO POLICE PISTOL FIRING STYLES

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Johnathan Lee Nieves (2011)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Elizabeth Rasfeld Norris (2012)

NSF 0744261: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Elizabeth Rasfeld Norris (2012)

Effect of a ketogenic diet on synaptic efficacy in freely behaving juvenile rats

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The Roberts laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of cell differentiation and malignant transformation. To study these two distinct about interrelated events, we have chosen the human leukemia cell line, HL-60, as a model system. HL-60 cells are rapidly dividing, non-specialized cancer cells that can be induced to differentiate along normal myeloid lineages in culture. Previously, my laboratory has studied the phorbol ester-induced, macrophage differentiation pathway. Rapidly, after addition of the inducer, HL-60 cells exhibit properties of normal macrophage-like cells, exit the cell cycle and eventually undergo apoptosis. A cancer cell can literally be reverted into a "normal", non-dividing cell that ultimately self-destructs. Understanding the molecular events that mediate this dramatic reversion is the goal of our research. DNA Microarray Analysis has demonstrated changes in the global patterns of gene expression and it is this re-programming of the cell's genetics that underlies the process. Mr. Nowicki has explored another differentiation pathway, induced by butyric acid, that also leads to the reversion of HL-60 cells to a more normal cellular phenotype. Butyric acid is known to act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases that cause changes in chromatin structure, which affect gene expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Genome-wide Analysis of Differential Gene Expression Modulated by Butyric Acid in HL-60 Cells

During the past year Dr. Michael Roberts mentored research student T. Scott Nowicki ('06) who trained in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Minden during the summer 2005. Mr. Nowicki assisted Sara Baszczewski in the Minden laboratory learning the DIGE proteomic analysis methods. This expertise was brought back to the Roberts laboratory at Dickinson and Nowicki investigated changes in human leukemia cells during differention using these proteomic methods during the 2005-06 academic year.

Term Funded:Fall 2005
Professor:


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Genome-wide Analysis of Differential Gene Expression Modulated by Butyric Acid in HL-60 Cells

During the past year Dr. Michael Roberts mentored research student T. Scott Nowicki ('06) who trained in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Minden during the summer 2005. Mr. Nowicki assisted Sara Baszczewski in the Minden laboratory learning the DIGE proteomic analysis methods. This expertise was brought back to the Roberts laboratory at Dickinson and Nowicki investigated changes in human leukemia cells during differention using these proteomic methods during the 2005-06 academic year.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Genome-wide Analysis of Differential Gene Expression Modulated by Butyric Acid in HL-60 Cells

During the past year Dr. Michael Roberts mentored research student T. Scott Nowicki ('06) who trained in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Minden during the summer 2005. Mr. Nowicki assisted Sara Baszczewski in the Minden laboratory learning the DIGE proteomic analysis methods. This expertise was brought back to the Roberts laboratory at Dickinson and Nowicki investigated changes in human leukemia cells during differention using these proteomic methods during the 2005-06 academic year.

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor:


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

The main focus of recent experiments have been to generate computer-based comparisons of the subcellular localization patterns of GFP-tagged proteins in either normal or H-Ras-expressing NIH 3T3 cells. For this work GFP-tagged cell lines were transfected with H-Ras and then the control and Ras transformed lines examined using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Digital images of protein distribution patterns were analyzed by computer-based comparison programs and those proteins found to show significant changes were targeted for further examination. Dr. Henson's lab concentrated on the changes in localization of the tagged protein Tctex1 a light chain of the microtubule motor protein dynein.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor:


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The Roberts laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of cell differentiation and malignant transformation. To study these two distinct about interrelated events, we have chosen the human leukemia cell line, HL-60, as a model system. HL-60 cells are rapidly dividing, non-specialized cancer cells that can be induced to differentiate along normal myeloid lineages in culture. Previously, my laboratory has studied the phorbol ester-induced, macrophage differentiation pathway. Rapidly, after addition of the inducer, HL-60 cells exhibit properties of normal macrophage-like cells, exit the cell cycle and eventually undergo apoptosis. A cancer cell can literally be reverted into a "normal", non-dividing cell that ultimately self-destructs. Understanding the molecular events that mediate this dramatic reversion is the goal of our research. DNA Microarray Analysis has demonstrated changes in the global patterns of gene expression and it is this re-programming of the cell's genetics that underlies the process. Mr. Nowicki has explored another differentiation pathway, induced by butyric acid, that also leads to the reversion of HL-60 cells to a more normal cellular phenotype. Butyric acid is known to act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases that cause changes in chromatin structure, which affect gene expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The Roberts laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of cell differentiation and malignant transformation. To study these two distinct about interrelated events, we have chosen the human leukemia cell line, HL-60, as a model system. HL-60 cells are rapidly dividing, non-specialized cancer cells that can be induced to differentiate along normal myeloid lineages in culture. Previously, my laboratory has studied the phorbol ester-induced, macrophage differentiation pathway. Rapidly, after addition of the inducer, HL-60 cells exhibit properties of normal macrophage-like cells, exit the cell cycle and eventually undergo apoptosis. A cancer cell can literally be reverted into a "normal", non-dividing cell that ultimately self-destructs. Understanding the molecular events that mediate this dramatic reversion is the goal of our research. DNA Microarray Analysis has demonstrated changes in the global patterns of gene expression and it is this re-programming of the cell's genetics that underlies the process. Mr. Nowicki has explored another differentiation pathway, induced by butyric acid, that also leads to the reversion of HL-60 cells to a more normal cellular phenotype. Butyric acid is known to act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases that cause changes in chromatin structure, which affect gene expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The Roberts laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of cell differentiation and malignant transformation. To study these two distinct about interrelated events, we have chosen the human leukemia cell line, HL-60, as a model system. HL-60 cells are rapidly dividing, non-specialized cancer cells that can be induced to differentiate along normal myeloid lineages in culture. Previously, my laboratory has studied the phorbol ester-induced, macrophage differentiation pathway. Rapidly, after addition of the inducer, HL-60 cells exhibit properties of normal macrophage-like cells, exit the cell cycle and eventually undergo apoptosis. A cancer cell can literally be reverted into a "normal", non-dividing cell that ultimately self-destructs. Understanding the molecular events that mediate this dramatic reversion is the goal of our research. DNA Microarray Analysis has demonstrated changes in the global patterns of gene expression and it is this re-programming of the cell's genetics that underlies the process. Mr. Nowicki has explored another differentiation pathway, induced by butyric acid, that also leads to the reversion of HL-60 cells to a more normal cellular phenotype. Butyric acid is known to act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases that cause changes in chromatin structure, which affect gene expression.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

The main focus of recent experiments have been to generate computer-based comparisons of the subcellular localization patterns of GFP-tagged proteins in either normal or H-Ras-expressing NIH 3T3 cells. For this work GFP-tagged cell lines were transfected with H-Ras and then the control and Ras transformed lines examined using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Digital images of protein distribution patterns were analyzed by computer-based comparison programs and those proteins found to show significant changes were targeted for further examination. Dr. Henson's lab concentrated on the changes in localization of the tagged protein Tctex1 a light chain of the microtubule motor protein dynein.

Term Funded:Fall 2004
Professor: John Henson


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Bioinformatics of Subcellular Localization and Changes due to Cancer

The main focus of recent experiments have been to generate computer-based comparisons of the subcellular localization patterns of GFP-tagged proteins in either normal or H-Ras-expressing NIH 3T3 cells. For this work GFP-tagged cell lines were transfected with H-Ras and then the control and Ras transformed lines examined using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Digital images of protein distribution patterns were analyzed by computer-based comparison programs and those proteins found to show significant changes were targeted for further examination. Dr. Henson's lab concentrated on the changes in localization of the tagged protein Tctex1 a light chain of the microtubule motor protein dynein.

Term Funded:Spring 2005
Professor: John Henson


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The Roberts laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of cell differentiation and malignant transformation. To study these two distinct about interrelated events, we have chosen the human leukemia cell line, HL-60, as a model system. HL-60 cells are rapidly dividing, non-specialized cancer cells that can be induced to differentiate along normal myeloid lineages in culture. Previously, my laboratory has studied the phorbol ester-induced, macrophage differentiation pathway. Rapidly, after addition of the inducer, HL-60 cells exhibit properties of normal macrophage-like cells, exit the cell cycle and eventually undergo apoptosis. A cancer cell can literally be reverted into a "normal", non-dividing cell that ultimately self-destructs. Understanding the molecular events that mediate this dramatic reversion is the goal of our research. DNA Microarray Analysis has demonstrated changes in the global patterns of gene expression and it is this re-programming of the cell's genetics that underlies the process. Mr. Nowicki has explored another differentiation pathway, induced by butyric acid, that also leads to the reversion of HL-60 cells to a more normal cellular phenotype. Butyric acid is known to act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases that cause changes in chromatin structure, which affect gene expression.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The Roberts laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of cell differentiation and malignant transformation. To study these two distinct about interrelated events, we have chosen the human leukemia cell line, HL-60, as a model system. HL-60 cells are rapidly dividing, non-specialized cancer cells that can be induced to differentiate along normal myeloid lineages in culture. Previously, my laboratory has studied the phorbol ester-induced, macrophage differentiation pathway. Rapidly, after addition of the inducer, HL-60 cells exhibit properties of normal macrophage-like cells, exit the cell cycle and eventually undergo apoptosis. A cancer cell can literally be reverted into a "normal", non-dividing cell that ultimately self-destructs. Understanding the molecular events that mediate this dramatic reversion is the goal of our research. DNA Microarray Analysis has demonstrated changes in the global patterns of gene expression and it is this re-programming of the cell's genetics that underlies the process. Mr. Nowicki has explored another differentiation pathway, induced by butyric acid, that also leads to the reversion of HL-60 cells to a more normal cellular phenotype. Butyric acid is known to act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases that cause changes in chromatin structure, which affect gene expression.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Theodore Scott Nowicki (2006)

Differential Gene Expression in Butyric Acid-Induced Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Roberts


Caitlyn Rose Nuger (2009)

NSF 0744261 RUI: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Michael Joseph O'Malley (2005)

The role of a 1 specific opioid agonist in improving neurological outcome following resuscitation from cardiac arrest

Whole body cooling and brain metabolic depression increase survival time following ischemic brain injury. Recent molecular and integrative pharmacology research suggests that numerous vertebrates produce δ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of aδ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of a δ1-specific opioid agonist, as a resuscitation adjuvant, will improve neurological recovery following nine minutes of cardiac arrest. We expect to find significant improvement in neurological outcome in animals receiving the opioid and that this will be mediated by decreases in metabolic demand and body core temperature.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Michael Joseph O'Malley (2005)

The role of a 1 specific opioid agonist in improving neurological outcome following resuscitation from cardiac arrest

Whole body cooling and brain metabolic depression increase survival time following ischemic brain injury. Recent molecular and integrative pharmacology research suggests that numerous vertebrates produce δ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of aδ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of a δ1-specific opioid agonist, as a resuscitation adjuvant, will improve neurological recovery following nine minutes of cardiac arrest. We expect to find significant improvement in neurological outcome in animals receiving the opioid and that this will be mediated by decreases in metabolic demand and body core temperature.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Blake Thomas O'Shaughnessy (2006)

Heart S.C.O.R.E.

This Western Pennsylvania-based study will (1) improve cardiovascular risk stratification to identify high risk populations, (2) identify disparities in cardiovascular risk based on race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location, (3) evaluate mechanisms for populations difference in cardiovascular risk, and (4) implement a multi-disciplinary community-based intervention program (includes exercise, nutrition, smoking cessation, and behavioral interventions) to decrease cardiovascular risk in high-risk populations. These goals, which are designed to eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities, are closely tied to the National Initiative to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health and the nation's health promotion and disease prevention agenda established in Healthy People 2010.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor:


Phoebe Ford Oldach (2013)

Genomics in The Differentiation of HL60 Cells

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Michael Roberts


Phoebe Ford Oldach (2013)

Human Amniotic Stem Cells in the Treatment of Pulmonary Fibrosis

Human Amniotic Stem Cells in the Treatment of Pulmonary Fibrosis

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor:


Ruth Mary Oldham (2006)

NSF 0336717 Collaborative Research: Coordinate Induction of Sink Strength and Polyphenol Metabolism in Trees

Carbohydrates and secondary metabolism of forest trees, tomato

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Davia Marie Palmeri (2009)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced sink Strenth" (ISS) determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Davia Marie Palmeri (2009)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced Sink Strength" (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:8Summer 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Davia Marie Palmeri (2009)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induces Sink Strength" (ISS)determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:13Spring 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Rosemary Lillian Palmieri (2016)

Forensic Polymorphisms in Mongolians

This research experience will be focusing on genotyping population samples from a group of ethnic Mongolians and Tsaatans from the region of Outer Mongolia. 128 samples from both populations will be tested using different genotyped loci. The hope is to genotype 100 loci in my time at Yale. The goal of this project is to distinguish the two Mongolian populations from other populations previously genotyped in the Kidd lab.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Linda Anne Mathew Panicker (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: David Kushner


Linda Anne Mathew Panicker (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: David Kushner


Linda Anne Mathew Panicker (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2008
Professor: David Kushner


Rebecca Lyn Patterson (2013)

Investigation of Actin Nucleation Factors and Cytoskeletal Structure in Mouse Melanoma Cells

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: John Henson


Laura Ann Pell (2004)

Radiotelemetry Study of Summer Movements in Allegheny Woodrat (Neotoma magister) Populations

The allegheny woodrat is a native mammal designated as threatened or endangered in all the states of its range in the northeastern US. Our previous studies suggest that its long-term existence may depend on effective dispersal between habitat patches, but so far there are no measurements of when, and how far, woodrats are capable of dispersing. I propose to use Whitaker funds to include a student collaborator in a radiotelemetry study already funded by the Pennsylvania Wild Resource Conservation Fund. My student collaborator and I will live-trap and radiocollar up to 12 woodrats in a local population and then will monitor their position during June and July. In a follow-up session, I will repeat the monitoring for three weeks in August-September. The data from this study, in conjunction with a parallel effort by collaborator Dr. John Peles of Penn State McKeesport, will allow us to quantify the density of woodrats on and around their primary rock outcrop habitat, their likelihood of shifting den sites, and the timing and distance of dispersal of juvenile woodrats, all key pieces of information for modeling the future of this species and for developing a general model for biodiversity of patchily distributed small mammals in Pennsylvania.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Janet Wright


Cheryl Jane Pendergrass (2000)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Jacob Richard Penniman (2003)

Neural Control of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

This proposal seeks funding for Jacob Penniman '03 to work at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories for 8 weeks in the summer of 2002. He will investigate the neural control of metamorphosis in larvae of gastropod molluscs under the supervision of Prof. Anthony Pires. This project, currently funded by the National Science Foundation, uses electrophysiological, neurochemical and anatomical methods to study how the nervous system directs rapid and radical developmental changes in immature animals. While at Friday Harbor, Penniman and Pires will interact with a vigorous international community of scientists. In addition to working on Pires' NSF-funded project (see attached summary), Penniman and Pires will also pursue collaborations in progress with Dr. Michael G. Hadfield (University of Hawaii), Dr. Shaun Cain (University of Washington), and Dr. Stephen C. Kempf (Auburn University) on various aspects of neurochemistry, development and behavior of marine invertebrates.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor:


Jacob Richard Penniman (2003)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Fall 2003
Professor: Anthony Pires


Jacob Richard Penniman (2003)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Anthony Pires


Jacob Richard Penniman (2003)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Anthony Pires


Jacob Richard Penniman (2003)

Neural Control of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

This proposal seeks funding for Jacob Penniman '03 to work at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories for 8 weeks in the summer of 2002. He will investigate the neural control of metamorphosis in larvae of gastropod molluscs under the supervision of Prof. Anthony Pires. This project, currently funded by the National Science Foundation, uses electrophysiological, neurochemical and anatomical methods to study how the nervous system directs rapid and radical developmental changes in immature animals. While at Friday Harbor, Penniman and Pires will interact with a vigorous international community of scientists. In addition to working on Pires' NSF-funded project (see attached summary), Penniman and Pires will also pursue collaborations in progress with Dr. Michael G. Hadfield (University of Hawaii), Dr. Shaun Cain (University of Washington), and Dr. Stephen C. Kempf (Auburn University) on various aspects of neurochemistry, development and behavior of marine invertebrates.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Anthony Pires


Jennifer L Picarsic (2003)

Development of Gene Therapy for Early Lung Cancer using Novel In Vitro Model of Lung Cancer

The Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative (PTEI) is an engineering growth project, which is playing a key role in the advancement and education of biomedical research, both locally and internationally. In 1997 the PTEI established a summer internship program for undergraduate students from 10 Southwestern Pennsylvanian counties, for students who are pursuing future career goals in medicine, engineering, research, or related fields. Each intern is paired with his/her research mentor at one of PTEI's six funded hospitals or universities. During the 10-week internship (contingent upon receiving HHMI grant), I would be working with Joseph M. Pilewski, M.D. of the University of Pittsburgh Biomedical Center. I would engage in research focused on using gene vectors, in an originally designed in vitro lung cancer model of normal and malignant lung cancer cells, to test for genes that could abolish malignant cells while preserving the normal cell lining.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor:


Mairi Kaia Phyllis Poisson (2016)

Efficacy of the American Toad as a biological control of insect pests at the Dickinson College Farm

Integrated pest management (IPM) has become an attractive method to control pests in organic production farms as it reduces the need for harmful pesticides. IPM incorporates pest control strategies that take production, ecology and society into consideration. One particular part of IPM is conservation biological control (CBC) which is defined as a modification to the environment to protect or enhance natural enemies to reduce the effect of pests. In the proposed study we will investigate the efficacy of toads as a biological control option for insect pests. We will obtain and analyze the stomach contents of toads at the Dickinson College Farm to assess the proportion of their diet that contains pest insects.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Scott Boback


Nadine Marie Powell (2004)

The role of a 1 specific opioid agonist in improving neurological outcome following resuscitation from cardiac arrest

Whole body cooling and brain metabolic depression increase survival time following ischemic brain injury. Recent molecular and integrative pharmacology research suggests that numerous vertebrates produce δ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of aδ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of a δ1-specific opioid agonist, as a resuscitation adjuvant, will improve neurological recovery following nine minutes of cardiac arrest. We expect to find significant improvement in neurological outcome in animals receiving the opioid and that this will be mediated by decreases in metabolic demand and body core temperature.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Nadine Marie Powell (2004)

The role of a 1 specific opioid agonist in improving neurological outcome following resuscitation from cardiac arrest

Whole body cooling and brain metabolic depression increase survival time following ischemic brain injury. Recent molecular and integrative pharmacology research suggests that numerous vertebrates produce δ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of aδ1-specific opioid agonists within their central nervous systems in response to severe environmental stressors. These opioids seemingly confer protection by lowering brain metabolic demand and thus increasing tolerance to reduced blood delivery states. We will test the hypothesis that the administration of a δ1-specific opioid agonist, as a resuscitation adjuvant, will improve neurological recovery following nine minutes of cardiac arrest. We expect to find significant improvement in neurological outcome in animals receiving the opioid and that this will be mediated by decreases in metabolic demand and body core temperature.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Matthew Francis Pye (2006)

Enhancing the Efficacy of bioherbicides

There are many plant pathogens that will attack weeds, but only a few have proven virulent enough to control invasive weed species and compete with chemical herbicides. In nature, there is strong selection against highly virulent pathogens, as survival of the pathogen depends upon survival of the host. Total eradication of the host would be evolutionary suicide. However, this deficiency of kamikaze agents does not imply that effective biocontrol is beyond our means. Rather, it challenges biocontrol researchers to develop innovative strategies using formulation, genetics, and synergy to enhance the effectiveness of their biocontrol pathogens. It has been discovered that the virulence and efficacy of bioberbicides can be greatly enhanced by selecting variants of the weed pathogen that overproduce and excrete amino acids that are inhibitory to the target plant. If funded, I plan to continue Professor David Sands work with enhancing the efficacy of bioherbicides.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Matthew Francis Pye (2006)

NSF 0336717 Collaborative Research: Coordinate Induction of Sink Strength and Polyphenol Metabolism in Trees

Carbohydrates and secondary metabolism of forest trees

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


John L Pyott (1996)

Cell Regulation of Gene Expression

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Michael Roberts


Slade Dylan Reisner (2017)

Pulmonary Hypertension

During my time at National Jewish Health I am researching Pulmonary Hypertension, and more specifically Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. It is a disease that causes the lining of the left ventricle of the heart to grow larger and makes the right ventricle grow smaller as a result. This causes an increase in heart pressure and eventually leads to death. The patients that are involved in the study I am conducting are both healthy and sick participants.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Slade Dylan Reisner (2017)

Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Blood flow topologies in the proximal pulmonary vasculature demonstrate helical formations whose functional significance remains unexplored in pulmonary hypertension (PAH). Four-dimensional cardiac magnetic resonance (4D CMR) can generate high-fidelity spatial and temporal renderings of these complex flow patterns and allow for quantitative characterization. Helicity, the novel hemodynamic index measuring the linkage of vortex lines in blood flow, may serve to quantitate these helical formations and provide novel insights into pulmonary vasculature fluid-tissue interactions. We tested the relationship between 4D CMR-computed helicity and pulmonary vascular stiffness obtained from same-day right heart catheterization (RHC).

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Alissa Resnikoff (2018)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification:Collaborative Research: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Anthony Pires


Amanda Cynthia Reynolds (2002)

Neurochemical Diversity in Gastropod Metamorphosis

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Anthony Pires


Amanda Cynthia Reynolds (2002)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Anthony Pires


Amanda Cynthia Reynolds (2002)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Spring 2002
Professor: Anthony Pires


Emily Elizabeth Rhode (2004)

NSF 0336716 RUI Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of induced pathogen resistance in seagrasses

Nutrient enrichment and seagrass phenolic metabolism

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Cole Douglas Rinehart (2017)

Effects of intracerebroventricular benzamil on osmotic responses to hypertonic sodium chloride infusion.

"Increases in plasma sodium concentration are sensed by neurons in the hypothalamus to stimulate thirst, secretion of vasopressin (AVP), and blood pressure. Previous research suggests these neurons express the epithelial sodium channel, and central blockade of these channels was reported to attenuate several forms of salt-sensitive hypertension and reduce AVP secretion (Nishimura et al. 1998). It was hypothesized intracerebroventricular (ICV) injection of benzamil, a non-voltage gated Na channel blocker, will attenuate osmotically-induced thirst."

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Courtney Lynn Ritchie (2001)

Neurophysiological Analysis of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Anthony Pires


Courtney Lynn Ritchie (2001)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2001
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Jacey Ann Roberts (2003)

A DNA Microarray Analysis of Gene Expression during Human Cell Differentiation

The human leukemia cell line HL-60 can be induced to differentiate into macrophage-like cells. This transformation from a rapidly dividing, cancer cell into a non-dividing "normal" cell is the result of a re-programming of the cell's genetic machinery. DNA microarray analysis allows for the global inspection of gene expression in cells at various times. These experiments will identify genes that are activated, repressed or unchanged during the differentiation process.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Michael Roberts


Jacey Ann Roberts (2003)

A DNA Microarray Analysis of Gene Expression during Human Cell Differentiation

The human leukemia cell line HL-60 can be induced to differentiate into macrophage-like cells. This transformation from a rapidly dividing, cancer cell into a non-dividing "normal" cell is the result of a re-programming of the cell's genetic machinery. DNA microarray analysis allows for the global inspection of gene expression in cells at various times. These experiments will identify genes that are activated, repressed or unchanged during the differentiation process.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Michael Roberts


Anita Diana Lee Robin (2012)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Mary Alles Robinson (2001)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Norah Elizabeth Roderick (2005)

NSF 0336717 Collaborative Research: Coordinate Induction of Sink Strength and Polyphenol Metabolism in Trees

Carbohydrates and secondary metabolism of forest trees, tomato

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Megan Samantha Rosenberg (2013)

Physiological Performance of Snakes During Constriction

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Scott Boback


Patrick James Rowsey (1990)

Biology of Barnacles on genus Octolasmis Epizoic on Crustacea in the Gulf of Mexico

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: William Jeffries


Max Oliver Rubinstein (2016)

Tracking brown tree snakes in Guam.

Student-alumni research team tracks snakes by night in Guam by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson They stowed away on U.S. military ships from the South Pacific just after World War II, and in the six decades since reaching shore, they've silently infiltrated nearly every aspect of day-to-day life. We're talking brown tree snakes, said to be one of the most successful invasive species, with approximately 1,300,000 slithering across the 30-mile-long island of Guam. More than simply power-cord-gnawing, home-infesting nuisances, the nocturnal snakes have caused the extinction of many of Guam's native vertebrates, including 10 species of birds. And with exploding populations of snakes in the forests and vegetation skirting shorelines and surrounding the island's Andersen Air Force Base, the possibility of stowaway snakes traveling by boat or plane to Hawaii and other Pacific islands-and then taking over those ecosystems-is very real. This summer, students and former students of Associate Professor of Biology Scott Boback are investigating how best to combat that possible Snakes on a Plane scenario by taking part in a research project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The idea is to refine the USGS's current snake-sleuthing techniques, using high-tech devices to track the snakes' movements, night to night, so they can better predict future behavior. Circling in For four nights each week, John Capano '13, Andrew Veselka '15, Elizabeth Schultz '15 and Max Rubinstein '16 use radio frequencies to track 21 snakes that were previously implanted with radio transmitters and live in the Andersen Air Force Base's Habitat Management Unit. Because the 136-acre study area is surrounded by a snake-proof fence and the snake population within the unit has been reduced with an environmentally safe toxicant, it offers a unique chance to observe how the snakes behave in low population densities. This can help scientists better find brown tree snakes after possible introduction on other islands, but before the population explodes to Guam-like levels. Beginning at about a half-hour after sundown, two of the Dickinsonians travel north, and two, south, walking transects or bushwhacking their way toward their specimens. As a subteam gets close to a snake, the two team members split up and surround the presumed location to reduce angles of attack. When the target is confirmed they circle around it, gradually zeroing in until they see the snake and make a note of its GPS location. Then it's off to the next specimen, until all have been found-usually by around midnight. "Some of the snakes are easy to track because they don't move a whole lot, but there are a couple that like to move fairly far distances," says Schultz-who co-researched boa constrictors with Boback while at Dickinson and plans to pursue a career in medicine-noting that the team already has discovered some of the snakes' favorite spots. "When we see them in the trees and even on the ground, we've seen that they have amazing cantilever ability-it's really easy to see why they have been so successful here." While the Dickinsonians use radio transmitters to track the snakes, a team of USGS biologists performs visual surveys along the same patch of woods. "The overarching goal is to help create more effective detection methods for the snakes by comparing the two datasets and seeing if the snakes are located where the visual teams can find them," says Capano, the Dickinson research crew leader, who completed a senior research project with Boback on the biomechanics of ventilation in the boa constrictor, and will pursue a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, beginning in August. "If visual teams are consistently missing snakes that the radio tracking crew is finding on their nightly paths, new detection methods can be developed." Dashing up that curve As the summer continues, the Dickinson research team will work inside the Guam National Wildlife Refuge on two projects that it has independently developed. They will study the invasive cane toad on Guam, noting the differences in movement distance versus displacement to help determine home ranges and facilitate land management with possible control measures. They also will use bait stations and camera traps to estimate feral hog densities within the refuge. All signs point to a successful run, says the USGS's Robert Reed, who heads the brown tree snake project, and brought on Boback, an expert in snake ecology, to help refine the ideas that led to the current work. John Capano '13, Andrew Veselka '15, Elizabeth Schultz '15 and Max Rubinstein '16 "Even though these Dickinson [researchers] didn't have a whole lot of snake research experience or tropical island research experience, and their learning curve was steep, they're sharp and motivated, and they picked things up very, very quickly," he says. "They're flexible and adaptable, and we're very pleased with their work." The researchers are likewise thrilled, says Rubinstein, a biochemistry & molecular biology major who took Boback's First-Year Seminar in 2012. "I've always loved snakes, and the chance to spend my summer outdoors is pretty incredible," he says.

Term Funded:Summmer 2015
Professor:


Max Oliver Rubinstein (2016)

Behavior Assessment of Brown Tree Snakes at Low Population Densities

During the summer of 2015 I assisted the US Geological Survey's Brown Treesnake Lab in Guam, working on the control and containment of the Brown Treesnake. Brown Treesnakes are invasive and their introduction has caused the extirpation of at least 17 species, and disrupted the ecological balance of the island. The data gathered in this project will help optimize the snake's containment on Guam and their capture if they reach another location. Twenty snakes were implanted with radio transmitters and released in a 50 hectare closed unit containing predominantly limestone forest. Four nights a week we located each of the snakes and collected data on their behavior and location. Our findings indicate that the Brown Treesnake's adaptable physiology has allowed them to be so successful on Guam, and any effort to contain a non-native population will be extremely difficult and need to be comprehensive. For a predominantly arboreal snake, the Brown Treesnake was often found on the ground, obscured by thick ferns, or within karst. These behaviors may allow the snake to remain hidden during the day, or shelter it during digestion or shedding, and conceal it from prey or predators. These findings can help refine search and capture techniques for the Brown Treesnake in the likely event that individuals make their way off the island. Placing traps at various heights and exploiting the snake's physiological capabilities can make for efficient and timely containment of this costly species.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Christian Charles William Ruhl (2014)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

Term Funded: 2012-2013
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Marissa Christina Ruschil (2019)

Cellular Interaction in Inflammation

In autoinflammatory disease, the innate immune system is overly active and therefore generates inflammatory molecules under circumstances that normally would not warrant such activation. The increased activation of the innate immune system causes episodes of general inflammatory symptoms including fever, joint pain, rash, and fatigue. Most autoinflammatory diseases are caused by mutations in genes that control the innate immune system and are therefore categorized by genetic mutation. One group of autoinflammatory diseases, collectively called Mevalonate Kinase Deficiency (MKD), is caused mutations in the mevalonate kinase (MVK) gene, which is responsible for the production of isoprenoid compounds. These isoprenoid molecules are involved in many different cellular processes including cell division, movement, and communication with the environment. This project aims to understand the cellular mechanisms by which alterations to isoprenoid levels causes inflammatory symptoms. Investigation into how isoprenoids control inflammation provides valuable information for treating inflammatory diseases.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Max H Russo (2015)

Human UDP-Glucuronosyltransferase

The research question I am studying this summer at Bristol Myers Squibb is the Optimized Assay for Human UDP-Glucuronosyltransferase Activities.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Max H Russo (2015)

Drug metabolism Research

his summer I am returning to intern at Bristol-Myers Squib. The project I am working on this summer is to explore a key area of Drug Metabolism research, specifically tissue distribution of pharmacological agents,

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Max H Russo (2015)

Evaluation of Sandwich-Cultured Human Hepatocytes for Prediction of Drug-Induced Liver Injury

Evaluation of Sandwich-Cultured Human Hepatocytes for Prediction of Drug-Induced Liver Injury

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Michael John Sakatos (1998)

Experimental Recolonization of Woodrats (Neotoma Magister) at an Extirpated Site)

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Janet Wright


Harold Irvin Salmons (2014)

Detecting double strand break occurrence in Palindromic AT-rich repeat (PATRR) regions

Detecting double strand break occurrence in Palindromic AT-rich repeat (PATRR) regions

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Michael David Salvatore (2003)

Ecology, demography, and recovery of a rare wildflower Euphorbia Purpurea

Long-term studies that students and I have carried out on Pennsylvania populations of glade spurge, Euphorbia purpurea, indicate that this globally rare and scientifically interesting wildflower is declining locally. Sexual reproduction is necessary for the maintenance of the population size. However, seedlings are rare and survival of young plants is poor, even after five or six years of growth. This summer I hope to 1) continue long-term monitoring at all five sites, 2) assess the effects of new deer fences and removal of competing vegetation on performance of the plants at three locations, 3) complete initial location of plants in two more recently located populations, with particular attention to small plants such as seedlings that may have been overlooked, 4) experiment to determine the best conditions for rearing seedlings, and 5) work up certain portions of our long-term data set that have remained unanalyzed until now because of time constraints.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Bakary Samasa (2019)

G protein regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the cleavage stage embryo

"The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: John Henson


Jennifer Ann Sanders (1999)

NIH-Roberts

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Michael Roberts


Laura Sappelsa (1990)

An Investigation of the Synthesis and Metabolism of Hydrogen Peroxide in Higher Plants

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Laura Sappelsa (1990)

An Investigation of the Synthesis and Metabolism of Hydrogen Peroxide in Higher Plants

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Thomas Brennan


Andrew Robert Sas (2003)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Anthony Pires


Youki Sato (2016)

Discovery, Identification, and Analysis of Ascomycete Yeast Beetle Endosymbionts

Yeasts are essential symbionts of many different organisms and are the source of many enzymes, drugs, and food products important to humans. The proposed research seeks to collect and identify new species of yeasts from mushroom-eating beetles, and to use the resulting samples to study key questions related to evolution and ecology. Because mushroom-eating beetles have been poorly sampled for microbes, the proposed research is expected to improve our understanding of biodiversity and to identify new species of yeasts with potential benefits for humans. Additionally, the collected species of beetles and yeasts will be used to establish a laboratory colony, with which questions related to the origin, evolution, persistence, and biological function of symbioses will be studied.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Dana Somers


Lauren Carel Saunders (2010)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Svenja Mareike Schneider (2013)

Changes in connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and the basal amygdala during adolescence

Changes in connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and the basal amygdala during adolescence

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Katrina Louise Schulberg (2001)

Actin-Based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Coelomocytes: Development of a Permeabilized Cell Model

The mechanisms underlying how cells move and change shape have puzzled cell biologists for over a hundred years. Although a great deal of detailed molecular knowledge has been generated, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. My lab employs cells isolated from the coelomic fluid of sea urchins (coelomocytes) as an experimental system for studying an aspect of cell motility termed retrograde flow. This process consists of the centripetal movement of the cell surface membrane and underlying protein scaffold (the cytoskeleton) from the cell periphery to the center. The sea urchin coelomocyte has a number of attributes, including ease of isolation, geometry, and optical clarity, which makes it an excellent system for studying this form of motility. However the types of experiments that can be performed with these cells has been limited by the fact that they are not amenable to microinjection. In this proposal we plan to develop a permeabilized cell model of the coelomocyte. In order to do this my students and I will have to test a wide array of permeabilizing agents (detergents and membrane toxins) as well as intracellular buffers. Permeabilized cell models have been instrumental in studying a number of cellular processes including cell division, secretion and intracellular transport. The development of the coelomocyte permeabilized model will allow for us to use membrane impermeant reagents (fluorescent proteins, function blocking antibodies, toxins, etc.) as tools in experiments aimed at gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms mediating the flow process.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: John Henson


Katrina Louise Schulberg (2001)

NIH 1R15GM60925-01 Mechanism and Regulation of Actin-based Retrograde Flow

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: John Henson


Nicholas Milan Schwab (2014)

Ecological and Environmental Influences on Nest-Site Selection of the Painted Turtle

In Painted turtles, the temperature of the nest determines the gender of the hatchlings: warm temps result in female hatchlings while cooler temps result in male hatchlings. As a result, painted turtles are susceptible to climate change. We aim to understand how increases in average daily temperature may affect how females choose suitable sites to lay their eggs and whether these nests are successful in producing hatchlings. In this study, we investigate the patterns of nest-site selection in a local population of Painted turtles in an attempt to discover the interaction between local (roads, railroad tracks, buildings) and global (climate change) anthropogenic factors in determining the behavior of turtles and the survival of their offspring. By recording and analyzing basic parameters such as temperature, location, and exposure we will begin to understand how organisms respond to changes in temperature and therefore the biological consequences of global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Scott Boback


Heather Blumberg Schwartzbauer (1991)

Construction of Recombinant Strains of Aspergillus Nidulans

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Craig Jurgensen


Abir Adnan Senz (2004)

Glucocorticoid Receptor Fundtion in a Conditionally Immortalized Hippocampal Cell Line

Glucocorticoid hormones exert wide-ranging effects in nearly all tissues in the body and act through a soluble receptor protein, the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Although widely distributed throughout the brain, the GR is particularly enriched in the hippocampus where it appears to mediate many of the actions of glucocorticoid hormones in central control of stress responses. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in understanding the roles of glucocorticoid hormones in prenatal development, particularly as it relates to the effects of prenatal stress. As a model for assessing the function of GRs in developing hippocampus we will use the HiB-5 hippocampal cell line. HiB-5 cells were derived from the infection of embryonic rat hippocampal neurons with a temperature-sensitive Simian Virus 40 (SV40). Due to the temperature sensitive properties of the transforming SV40 virus, the HiB-5 cells have become conditionally immortalized. In other words, these cells grow continuously when cultured at 33ºC, the permissive temperature of the SV40 virus, and do not express a neuronal phenotype under these conditions However, when shifted to the restrictive temperature of 39ºC, which inactivates the transforming and immortalizing functions of the SV40 virus, the HiB-5 cells undergo a form of differentiation that culminates in their growth arrest, extension of long neuronal processes and expression of various neuronal markers. We plan to study GR function in immortalized and undifferentiated HiB-5 cells (i.e. grown at 33ºC) and in differentiated HiB-5 cells (i.e. grown at 39ºC). In particular, we will use Western blot analysis to study the turnover of GR and various transfection assays to study the transcriptional regulatory properties of the receptor. The ultimate goal of the project will be to establish conditions%

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Kristen Eileen Severi (2004)

NSF 0110832 RUI: Neural Regulation of Metamorphosis in a Gastropod Mollusc

Development of many types of animals is marked by a dramatic structural transformation, or metamorphosis, between larval and adult forms. Although metamorphosis is gradual and driven by hormones in well-studied developmental systems such as frogs and fruit flies, in other animals it is sudden, rapid, and driven by the larval nervous system. This is especially true in the marine environment, where metamorphosis is triggered by a chemical signal associated with food or habitat required by the adult form. The role of the nervous system in the control of such metamorphoses is poorly understood and has been the focus of Prof. Pires' research for the last decade. Working with larvae of gastropod molluscs (snails), he has shown that one family of chemical signals within the nervous system, the catecholamines, are important regulators of metamorphosis. It is now important to determine if this is a general feature of gastropod metamorphosis or is peculiar to certain species. Differences between species can be considered "experiments of nature" to clarify neurochemical control mechanisms in metamorphosis. Pilot experiments last summer revealed surprising diversity among species, in responses to pharmacological manipulation of endogenous catecholamines. This summer Prof. Pires hopes to see if this diversity can be related to quantitative differences in catecholamine content, or qualitative differences in the distribution of catecholamine-containing cells in larval nervous systems. This project will bring a student into the dynamic research environment of the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories, a world-class center for research in neural and developmental marine biology.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Anthony Pires


Scott Adam Sheeder (1997)

Experimental Recolonization of Woodrats (Neotoma Magister) at an Extirpated Site)

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Janet Wright


James L Shoemaker (1997)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1998
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Stephanie Eckenrode Shreiner (1996)

Second-year study of population ecology of the rare glade spurge Euphorbia Purpurea

Euphorbia purpurea or glade spurge is a rare swamp wildflower still known to exist at only about 30 sites, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Over the last seven years we have monitored populations at three of the six PA sites: at Lambs Gap in Perry Co., at Mt. Holly Marsh Preserve, and at Hunters Run (map on next page). Whitaker students and I conducted surveys of two additional PA sites (Goat Hill and Cowans Gap) in 1999 and 2000, in conjunction with State Parks and Bureau of Forestry personnel and with Nature Conservancy botanists. Because both populations appear to have declined alarmingly, we worked with these groups to erect fences to exclude deer at both sites and have obtained permission to intensify our population monitoring and our attempts to rear seedlings from these two sites. This summer I hope to 1) continue long-term monitoring at all five sites, 2) conduct a thorough search to locate additional plants that we think exist at Goat Hill, 3) obtain and analyze soil samples from all five sites to help us better understand the species' requirements, and 4) experiment to determine the best conditions for rearing seedlings, not only of this species but of two rare goldenrod species. We have begun using our long-term data set to document effects of deer on the plants, and I would like to expand the data analysis this year to assess the effects of early senescence in some plants on their growth and reproduction in the following season.

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Stephanie Eckenrode Shreiner (1996)

Second-year study of population ecology of the rare glade spurge Euphorbia Purpurea

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Carol Loeffler


James W Sierotko (2004)

Population and propagation studies of three rare wildflowers, Euphorbia purpurea, Solidago speciosa, and Aster radula

Over the last nine years, students and I have been monitoring populations of several rare wildflower species and investigating various aspects of their reproduction in hopes of 1) gaining a thorough understanding of their population ecology, and the ecology of rare plants in general, which is poorly studied, and 2) devising management plans which can ensure the continued existence of these species. Our strategy with our most studied species, glade spurge (Euphorbia purpurea), has been to determine through monitoring if these plants' populations are stable, increasing, or declining, and to use measurement, careful observation, and where possible experimental manipulations to identify the factors that affect their reproduction and survival. This summer, we hope to continue monitoring five Pennsylvania populations of glade spurge with special attention to the relative reproductive success and survival of plants given protection from deer and plant competition in the last one to five years. We will initiate some new analyses of the impact of deer browsing on plant size and reproduction that will add important refinements to our previous analyses. We also want to continue ongoing searches for new populations of glade spurge and to initiate searches for two other species, showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) and rough-leaved aster (Aster radula). Finally, in the laboratory, we would like to study the effects of fertilization and watering treatments on the early growth of glade spurge and showy goldenrod, and we are planning a germination experiment that should refine our understanding of cold dormancy in showy goldenrod seeds.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Kayla Christine Simpson (2018)

Integrated Pest Management for Cattle Fly Pests on the Dickinson Farm

Horn flies are a major pest of pasture-raised cattle, costing the beef industry several hundred million US dollars per year. They are also problematic at the Dickinson Farm, where an integrated pest management plan (IPM) is needed. Here we propose a collaborative student-faculty summer research project that will critically examine the merits of three management tactics for horn flies: the release of parasitoid wasps (to eat immature flies), the introduction of dung beetles (to remove manure in which immature flies develop), and walk-through traps (to catch and kill adult flies). Our efforts will help to develop and refine an IPM plan for horn flies at the Dickinson Farm and shed light on the broader question of how to manage this pest in rotational pasture cattle systems. At the same time, the student collaborator will develop their capacities for quantitative and qualitative research, independent thinking, and communication.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Jason Smith


Jessica Kristine Sinchi (2014)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Jessica Kristine Sinchi (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: John Henson


Charles Ethan Slusher (2016)

Thiolactones as prodrugs of thiol-based glutamate carboxypeptidase II (GCPII) inhibitors

Served as a laboratory assistant in a medicinal chemistry laboratory at the Johns Hopkins Department of Neurology. Synthesized small organic molecules as potential therapeutics for neurodegenerative disease. Characterized the compounds using NMR, LC/MS and HPLC.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Camille Ariel Sogin (2012)

The Role of Nitrite as a Control on N Cycling Pathways in Marine Sediments

Marine sediments host complex chemical interactions that can have far reaching effects in the environment on a local and global scale. Generally these sediments act as a sink for bioavailable nitrogen and produce N2 in low oxygen conditions. Traditionally, it is thought that the majority of nitrate removal in these systems is caused by heterotrophic denitrifying bacteria converting nitrate and organic carbon to N2 gas. As recently as the 1990's, a new type of denitrification pathway has been described where nitrite and ammonium are converted to N2 gas. This autotrophic Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (Anammox) can be a key pathway in sedimentary nitrogen cycling, but little is known about what controls Anammox activity. Preliminary results reveal that Anammox is not influenced by excess nitrite and may be limited by other nutrients in our experimental system.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Emily Elizabeth Souder (2005)

Induction of HAART-Persistent HIV-1 Expression

We are trying to solve the problem of HIV-1 latency. HIV-1 latency is defined as those viruses, in individuals infected with the AIDS virus that are "dormant" and persist in patient cells despite their use of anti-viral medications, collectively referred to as HAART. We are investigating novel compounds such as prostratin that are able to force the latent viruses to emerge from cells so that the immune system will recognize these infected cells and eliminate them or eradicate them. The use of compounds to force the expression of latent virus is called immune activation therapy or IAT. I will be treating cells of patients on HAART that retain latent virus with compounds such as prostratin to get virus produced from the treated cells. I will also be isolating and characterizing the virus to try to determine why they remain latent as also to determine if the compounds are able to force the release of only some or many of the latent viruses that remain in patient's cells despite their use of HAART.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Natalie Mary Stanley (2013)

NASA GCCE Grant: Ecological and Environmental Influences on Nest Site Selection in the Painted Turtle

Ecological and Environmental Influences on Nest Site Selection in the Painted Turtle

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Scott Boback


Natalie Mary Stanley (2013)

Mathematical Techniques for the Analysis of Human Leukemia

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts


Natalie Mary Stanley (2013)

Molecular Analysis of Human Leukemia

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Michael Roberts


Cory Michael Staub (1999)

The Role of AP-1 in Macrophage Differentiation of HL-60 Cells

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Michael Roberts


Cory Michael Staub (1999)

NIH-Roberts

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Michael Roberts


Danielle Leigh Staunton (2013)

Ecological and environmental influences on nest-site selection in the Painted turtle

In contrast to most vertebrates which possess sex chromosomes, the gender of many reptile species is determined by the temperature experienced during the middle third of embryonic development. Painted turtles exhibit this strategy known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD); warm temperatures produce females, cool temps produce males, and intermediate temps produce both sexes. As average global temperatures increase over the next decade, an increasing number of female Painted turtles may be produced unless females adjust nest parameters to reduce their internal temperatures. In this study, we investigate the patterns of nest-site selection in a local population of Painted turtles in an attempt to discover the influence of local (roads, railroad tracks, buildings) and global (climate change) anthropogenic factors on the plasticity of this behavior. By recording and analyzing these variables, we will begin to understand how organisms respond to changes in temperature and therefore the biological consequences of global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Scott Boback


Megan Ann Stekla (2015)

Characterization of a Mitochondrial-Associated Novel Myosin (MYO19)

Mitochondria are organelles that play a critical role in cellular energy metabolism. They are often referred to as "cellular power plants" because they generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used as a source of chemical energy. In addition to ATP production, mitochondria are also involved in cell signaling, differentiation, cell death, and the cell cycle. Because mitochondria have an essential ole in cellular energy metabolism, mitochondrial dysfunction plays a prominent role in human diseases including neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic disorders, and cancer. Proper distribution of mitochondria within the cell is critical for proper function and it is therefore essential to understand how mitochondria are localized in the cell in both normal and disease states. Myosins are a family of ATP-dependent motor proteins involved in cellular processes such as muscle contraction and organelle transport through the production of force. Most myosin molecules are composed of a head (motor), neck, and tail domain. In particular, the motor domain binds to actin (a component of the cellular skeleton) and uses ATP hydrolysis to generate force and "walk" along the actin. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the founding member of a novel myosin class, myosin- XIX (MYO19), localizes to mitochondria and plays a role in mitochondrial movement (Quintero, 2009).In fact, increased levels of MYO19 in lung cells, induced by the addition of an exogenous MYO19 DNA construct, leads to a gain-of-function where the majority of mitochondria move continuously (Quintero, 2009). The MYO19 motor domain appears to power the movement of mitochondria through interaction with actin filaments (Quintero, 2009). The goal of this project is to increase understanding of how the MYO19 motor domain contributes to mitochondrial movement and will take place in two phases. Phase I involves the generation of the molecular tools necessary to address the role of the MYO19 motor domain in mitochondrialmovement. Phase II involves the use of these tools in molecular assays. It is expected that the work of the Dana assistant will result in a poster presentation at Penn State College of Medicine in August 2012 and contribute to a poster for the 2012 American Society for Cell iology Annual Meeting as well as a scientific publication.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Jerone Tyler Stoner (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Jerone Tyler Stoner (2015)

Identification and Characterization of Enterococcus faecalis Biofilm Phenotypes

This research will complement my major in two significant manners: 1) It will allow me to apply knowledge I ve learned in previous classes and summers of research and 2) The knowledge I gain this summer will be directly applicable to classes I have in the upcoming year. I ve already utilized knowledge I learned from taking Infection and Immunity, Cancer Biology, and Biochemistry last year to aid me in understanding the background of my research as well as techniques to be used. Furthermore, I have no doubt that this research experience, as it has a strong focus on microbiology, will provide me with at least an introductory level of understanding for the Microbiology course (with lab) I will be taking in the fall. I also believe that this experience will enhance my ability to collect and interpret data as well as improve my scientific writing/oral skills.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Mary Caitlin Strahota (2008)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Suleiman Yousef Sudah (2015)

Ventilatory Changes in Male and Female Mice in Response to Whole Animal Exposure to Carbon Dioxide

My lab recently discovered a sex difference in the activation of the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) in mice in response to 5% crbon dioxide (CO2). There are more than three times as many RTN cells that respond to 5% C2 in males than in females. Our data are intriguing given that the RTN regulates breathing in response to changes in blood carbon dioxide and is defective in several conditions that disproportionately affect males, including the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The proposed study will address an important follow-up question: do females increase their breathing in response to 5% C2 even though the RTN isn't activated? We will collect ventilatory data and correlate numbers of CO2-activated RTN cells with changes in ventilation in mice of each sex. These data will further our understanding of the sex difference in the mouse RTN and also may explain why females are less susceptible to SIDS.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Mary Niblock


Suleiman Yousef Sudah (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Katelyn Maria Swade (2015)

Role of Cholesterol Biosynthetic Pathway Intermediates in the Inflammatory Response

Mevalonate kinase deficiency (MKD) is a rare, autosomal recessive genetic mutation in which patients experience a systematic inflammatory phenotype marked by recurrent episodes of disturbed cytokine function and fever attacks. MKD is caused by a block in the mevalonate pathway, the pathway responsible for the production of non-sterol isoprenoid compounds such as farnesyl- and gerynylgeranylpyrophospahte (FPP and GGPP). FPP and GGPP are lipid molecules that are responsible for the proper functioning of Ras, Rho, and Rab families of small GTP-binding proteins. MKD has been linked to GGPP depletion in monocytes and macrophages. The gene for MKD is expressed when a bacteria is introduced to the cell. CD14 is the primary binding site on myeloid cells for the bacterial, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and therefore plays a key role in cytokine production. In order to further examine the effect of isoprenoid depletion on the monocyte and macrophage response to LPS, cellular production of isoprenoid compounds was blocked with statins on RAW 264.7 (murine macrophage cell lines) and MM6 (Mono-Mac 6 human monocyte cell lines). Statins are a class of drugs that inhibit 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl CoA (HMG-CoA) reductase. This inhibition mimics the block on the mevalonate pathway in patients with MKD. CD14 expression is analyzed following statin treatment using a luciferase assay protocol. Co-incubation of lovastatin treated cells with either mevalonate or GGPP blocks alterations in CD14 expression and release, indicating that these effects are dependent on inhibition of isoprenoid biosynthesis. Therefore, immune cell response to isoprenoid depletion may vary and a more mechanistic understanding of these differences has the potential to impact treatment of inflammatory diseases.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Katelyn Maria Swade (2015)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

CD14 is an immune system cellular receptor that plays a critical role in host defense against invading pathogens. It binds primarily to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a component of the outer wall of Gram-negative bacteria. CD14 is found as two protein isoforms: a membrane protein (mCD14) and a soluble serum protein (sCD14). Aberrant expression of sCD14 has been associated with a number of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Therefore, a deeper mechanistic understanding of CD14 expression and release from the cell is critical to understand its contribution to inflammatory diseases. Previous work has shown that treatment of immune cells with lovastatin, a drug primarily prescribed for cardiovascular disease that has anti-inflammatory properties, increases the expression of mCD14 while decreasing the release of sCD14 following LPS stimulation. Since lovastatin modulates CD14 expression, this project aims to use this drug as a tool to uncover novel mechanisms of this process

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Amelia Linger Szabat (2013)

Molecular Analysis of Human Leukemia

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts


Holleh Fatima Tajalli (2012)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Christine Elyse Talbot (2013)

Impacts of climate change on grazing fishes near Myora Springs, North Stradebroke Island, Australia.

Impacts of climate change on grazing fishes near Myora Springs, North Stradebroke Island, Australia.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Christine Redulla Tallo (2013)

Clinical factors affecting recruitment into a study of the etiology of breast cancer

The subject of my research was observing how clinical factors affect recruitment into a research study of the etiology of breast cancer in young African American women. This research contributes to continuing work to reduce health disparities within minority populations. Through this research, I studied a population predisposed to breast cancer and identified factors that affect recruitment into a cancer genetics study. I plan to use this experience to fulfill the research requirement for my biology major. I have also produced a poster and an abstract from this research, which I plan to present at the science symposium at Dickinson in the spring.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Zafar Subhani Tariq (1999)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1999
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Jason William Tarpley (1999)

Electrophysiological Study of Metamorphosis in Gastropod Molluscs

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Anthony Pires


Jason William Tarpley (1999)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 1999
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Natalie Rizzo Taylor (2000)

Merck Scholars Program: Students engage in integrative physiology, anatomy and microanatomy training and research on-campus;and participate in summer internships at Merck Research Labs, Rahway, NJ

This cooperative agreement has provided funds for the development of a world class physiology research and teaching facility at Dickinson while also providing for the on-site training (at MRL) of three highly qualified undergraduates per year. Additionally, the program provided all students taking physiology, anatomy and microanatomy with an unsurpassed experience with instrumentation they would normally not encounter until graduate or medical school.

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Rulaiha Elizabeth Taylor (2018)

NSF 1416690: Ocean Acidification:Collaborative Research: Effects of Ocean Acidification on Larval Competence, Metamorphosis, and Juvenile Performance in a Planktotrophic Gastropod

The proposed study will help us to understand the ways in which ocean acidification (OA) will impact the development, dispersal, and metamorphosis of the marine gastropod Crepidula fornicata, and the mechanism responsible for the effects observed. Larvae will be reared pH levels representing current (390 ppm) and projected 22nd century (800 ppm) atmospheric pCO2, at both normal (20 C) and elevated temperature (25 C) and with and without nutritional stress. We will determine the following: 1) impact of OA on rates of larval tissue growth and shell growth; 2) latent effects of larval exposure to OA on juvenile survival and growth; 3) influence of elevated OA on gene expression patterns in larvae; 4) impact of OA on duration of the pre-competent larval swimming period; 5) impact of OA on the response of competent larvae to a variety of metamorphic inducers; 6) impact of larval diet quality on vulnerability to OA, both in the larval stages and following metamorphosis (latent effects); 7) influence of OA exposure in the larval stage on gene expression patterns in juveniles; and 8) impact of OA on larval swimming ability, settlement behavior, and time to metamorphic competence.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Anthony Pires


Christopher Aristos Theodorou (2013)

Biomechanics of Ventilation in Boa Constrictor

Biomechanics of Ventilation in Boa Constrictor

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Scott Boback


Jason Christopher Theriault (1995)

The Function of Kinesin in Organelle Movements in Sea Urchin Cells

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: John Henson


Elizabeth Carney Thorsteinson (2009)

Characterization of Central Chemoreceptors in the Mouse Cerebellum

The goals of this project are to identify and characterize chemosensitive cells in the mouse cerebellum. These specialized neurons, called central chemoreceptors, are able to sense changes in blood levels of carbon dioxide and respond to those changes by increasing breathing. A defect in central chemoreception is thought to be one of the causes of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The proposed experiments will take advantage of a unique transgenic mouse model that allows cells activated by exposure of the whole animal to carbon dioxide to be identified and characterized in tissue sections of the post-mortem brain. This project uses an entirely novel approach to identify and characterize central chemoreceptors in the cerebellum. Knowledge of the number, location, and morphology of these important cells in the mouse not only will further our understanding of central chemoreceptor neuroanatomy, but also will lay the groundwork necessary for future studies to take advantage of the numerous transgenic mouse models specifically suited for studying SIDS.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Mary Niblock


Benjamin James Tiede (2005)

Host Gene Expression Induced by the Brome Mosaic

By studying virus-host interactions one can learn how viruses manipulate host-cell machinery to propagate their genetic material, yet also gain a better understanding of biological processes within cells. Positive-strand RNA viruses include many pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the SARS coronavirus. Brome mosaic virus (BMV), a mild plant pathogen, is a representative positive-strand RNA virus whose life cycle processes have been reproduced in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast is a powerful genetic system and is currently the organism of choice for whole genome studies (genomics). This study will use microarray technology to identify yeast (host) genes that are expressed, and therefore may contribute to, establishment of the membrane-associated complex within the yeast cell where viral genome replication occurs. Such results may indicate anti-viral targets but will also complement previous work that identified over one hundred yeast genes with roles in BMV RNA replication.

Term Funded:Winter 2005
Professor: David Kushner


Benjamin James Tiede (2005)

Host gene expression induced by the brome mosaic virus la protein

By studying virus-host interactions one can learn how viruses manipulate host-cell machinery to propogate their genetic material, yet also gain a better understanding of biological processes within cells. Positive-strand RNA viruses include many pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the SARS coronavirus. Brome mosaic virus (BMV), a mild plant pathogen, is a representative positive-strand RNA virus whose life cycle processes have been reproduced in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast is a powerful genetic system and is currently the organism of choice for whole genome studies (genomics). This study will use microarray technology to identify yeast (host) genes that are expressed, and therefore may contribute to, establishment of the membrane-associated complex within the yeast cell where viral genome replication occurs. Such results may indicate anti-viral targets but will also complement previous work that identified over one hundred yeast genes with roles in BMV RNA replication.

Term Funded:Winter 2004
Professor: David Kushner


Benjamin James Tiede (2005)

Host Gene Expression Induced by the Brome Mosaic

By studying virus-host interactions one can learn how viruses manipulate host-cell machinery to propagate their genetic material, yet also gain a better understanding of biological processes within cells. Positive-strand RNA viruses include many pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the SARS coronavirus. Brome mosaic virus (BMV), a mild plant pathogen, is a representative positive-strand RNA virus whose life cycle processes have been reproduced in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast is a powerful genetic system and is currently the organism of choice for whole genome studies (genomics). This study will use microarray technology to identify yeast (host) genes that are expressed, and therefore may contribute to, establishment of the membrane-associated complex within the yeast cell where viral genome replication occurs. Such results may indicate anti-viral targets but will also complement previous work that identified over one hundred yeast genes with roles in BMV RNA replication.

Term Funded:Winter 2005
Professor: David Kushner


Benjamin James Tiede (2005)

Antibody Isolation and Characterization

This project will be in the Antibody Phage Display Group at Centocor Pharmaceuticals, one of the leaders in monoclonal antibody drug development. Previous research on the development of monoclonal antbodies has been done with the use of hybridomas and screening for particular properties. The Phage Display Group is able to use bacterial systems to develop the antibodies of choice rather than screening fro particular antibodies. A specific property of an antibody will be chosen and then antibodies with this property will be isolated. Antibodies in this experiment will be amplified, cloned and purified and sequenced to study their properties.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Benjamin James Tiede (2005)

Host gene expression induced by the brome mosaic virus la protein

By studying virus-host interactions one can learn how viruses manipulate host-cell machinery to propogate their genetic material, yet also gain a better understanding of biological processes within cells. Positive-strand RNA viruses include many pathogens such as hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, and the SARS coronavirus. Brome mosaic virus (BMV), a mild plant pathogen, is a representative positive-strand RNA virus whose life cycle processes have been reproduced in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast is a powerful genetic system and is currently the organism of choice for whole genome studies (genomics). This study will use microarray technology to identify yeast (host) genes that are expressed, and therefore may contribute to, establishment of the membrane-associated complex within the yeast cell where viral genome replication occurs. Such results may indicate anti-viral targets but will also complement previous work that identified over one hundred yeast genes with roles in BMV RNA replication.

Term Funded:Winter 2004
Professor: David Kushner


Valerie Anne Trabosh (2003)

Molecular Mechanism of Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Ceolomocytes

Cell motility, which plays a fundamental role in a number of crucial cell processes including migration, cell division, and secretion, is mediated by a host of motor and structural proteins know collectively as "the cytoskeleton." In this proposal we plan to extend our studies on the cytoskeletal mechanisms underlying a specific form of motility termed retrograde flow. This flow process involves the movement of the cell's membrane and underlying cytoskeletal scaffold from the cell periphery towards the cell center and it is present in the majority of nucleated cells. The sea urchin coelomocyte offers a number of distinct advantages as a model experimental system for studying retrograde flow, including ease of isolation, lack of cytoskeletal complexity and optical clarity. We plan to use coelomocytes combined with pharmacological treatments, digitally-enhanced video microscopy, and immunofluorescent localization microscopy to extend our understanding of the molecular mechanisms which mediate retrograde flow.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: John Henson


Valerie Anne Trabosh (2003)

Molecular Mechanism of Actin-based Retrograde Flow in Sea Urchin Ceolomocytes

Cell motility, which plays a fundamental role in a number of crucial cell processes including migration, cell division, and secretion, is mediated by a host of motor and structural proteins know collectively as "the cytoskeleton." In this proposal we plan to extend our studies on the cytoskeletal mechanisms underlying a specific form of motility termed retrograde flow. This flow process involves the movement of the cell's membrane and underlying cytoskeletal scaffold from the cell periphery towards the cell center and it is present in the majority of nucleated cells. The sea urchin coelomocyte offers a number of distinct advantages as a model experimental system for studying retrograde flow, including ease of isolation, lack of cytoskeletal complexity and optical clarity. We plan to use coelomocytes combined with pharmacological treatments, digitally-enhanced video microscopy, and immunofluorescent localization microscopy to extend our understanding of the molecular mechanisms which mediate retrograde flow.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: John Henson


Valerie Anne Trabosh (2003)

Molecular Mechanisms of Muscular Dystrophy

During the 2002 summer, I would be working in Dr. Yiumo Chan's laboratory at the Weis Center for Research in Danville, PA. The projects that I would be involved in would focus on the molecular mechanisms of muscular dystrophy, specifically the structure and function of the proteins mutated in the disease. These proteins, which are commonly called the dystrophin-associated protein complex (DAPC), are thought to play an important role in maintaining muscle membrane integrity by providing "a physical connection between the actin cytoskeleton and the extracellular matrix." (Chan) Mutated sarcoglycans, transmembrane proteins, are responsible for certain cases of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Sarcoglycans stabilize the DAPC connection between the actin cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix. During the summer, we would also be looking at the role of sarcoglycans in signal transduction and their role in maintaining the integrity of the muscle membrane. Using cultured myotubes, the role of post-translational modifications in the transport and assembly of the sarcoglycans to the muscle membrane would be investigated. From the molecular perspective, we would be looking for novel genes involved in muscular dystrophy as well as the role of sarcoglycans.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor:


Robin Jill Turin (1993)

Genetic Structure of Allegheny Woodchucks

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Janet Wright


Courtney Jean Ullrich (2001)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Michael Roberts


Sara Van Meerbeke (2010)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced Sink Strength" (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Sara Van Meerbeke (2010)

NSF 0614893 Collaborative Research: Competing Sinks as Constraints on Plant Defense Responses

Under a previous award the PIs discovered that young, heterotrophic poplar leaves must import carbon resources to be able to respond to insects or jasmonate elicitation with increased phenolic defense synthesis. Increased import, or "Induced Sink Strength" (ISS), determines leaf responsiveness, and helps explain why some leaves are more inducible than others and why plant defenses are spatially and temporally heterogenous. This project would examine the generality of ISS by studying two additional plant species whose inducible defenses differ from those in poplar: alkaloids in tomato and glucosinolates in Arabidopsis thaliana. Young (sink) leaves will be elicted by wounding oral secretions from insects that stimulate defenses; changes in defense production, carbon and nitrogen import (using stable isotopes), and cell wall invertase then will be assessed. Transport will be blocked with non-damaging steam girdling in some plants to demonstrate the requirement for importation in induced defenses. In addition to alkaloids and glucosinolates in tomato and Arabidopsis, the dependence on ISS of induction of protein defenses (chitinases, polyphenoloxidases, peroxidases, proteinase inhibitors) will be examined in these species and poplar. Previous results suggested that competing sinks may alter leaf responses to elicitation by hampering material or signal transport. A series of experiments is proposed with combinations of the 3 study plants in which the number, size, proximity of and damage to potentially competing sinks (lateral branches, nearby leaves, fruits) is manipulated and the impact on the responsiveness of young target leaves is assessed. The ability of one herbivore to block or enhance responses to a second by feeding nearby on competing or cooperating sinks will be examined.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Thomas Arnold


Michael A Vecchio (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Andrew Jacobovitz Veselka (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:summer 2012
Professor: David Kushner


Andrew Jacobovitz Veselka (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. Veselka conducted his research at the Sevilleta (New Mexico) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project under the auspices of the Universitty of New Mexico. The prairie dog (Cynomys sp.), due to its burrowing and grazing behavior, is widely recognized as an ecosystem engineer throughout the North American grassland. Their modification and regulation of habitat affects vegetation structure and animal communities throughout their ecosystem. In order to better understand these effects, many studies have been conducted on the responses of small mammals to the presence of prairie dogs. However, most of these have been conducted on the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) and extrapolated to the other four species in the genus. In this study, the effects of the reintroduction of the Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) on the abundance and diversity small mammal populations were surveyed on a short grass steppe habitat. During June of 2014 small mammals were trapped on four 16 hectare plots. Two of these plots were Gunnison's prairie dog reintroduction sites and two were not. The abundance of small mammals was significantly higher for several species as well as for the combined total in plots containing prairie dogs. Over twice the amount of small mammals were caught compared to the same study conducted a year before, a result possibly attributable to an increase in rainfall over the past year.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Eric Thomas Vogt (2017)

Inflammatory Mechanisms in Mevalonate Kinase Deficiency

In autoinflammatory disease, the innate immune system is overly active and therefore generates inflammatory molecules under circumstances that normally would not warrant such activation. The increased activation of the innate immune system causes episodes of general inflammatory symptoms including fever, joint pain, rash, and fatigue. Most autoinflammatory diseases are caused by mutations in genes that control the innate immune system and are therefore categorized by genetic mutation. One group of autoinflammatory diseases, collectively called Mevalonate Kinase Deficiency (MKD), is caused mutations in the mevalonate kinase (MVK) gene, which is responsible for the production of isoprenoid compounds. These isoprenoid molecules are involved in many different cellular processes including cell division, movement, and communication with the environment. This project aims to understand the cellular mechanisms by which alterations to isoprenoid levels causes inflammatory symptoms. Investigation into how isoprenoids control inflammation provides valuable information for treating inflammatory diseases.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Eric Thomas Vogt (2017)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: John Henson


Meagen Kathleen Voss (2007)

NIH 1R15GM60925-02 Mechanism and Regulation of Actin-based Retrograde Flow

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: John Henson


Bryan Glenn Wacker (2015)

Investigating the HSF1-HSF2 Interaction

Over the summer I had the privilege of performing research in the Thiele Lab at Duke University Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology. I worked in the Heat Shock Response department of the lab and specifically looked at HSF1 and HSF2. HSF1 is a regulator of the transcriptional activation of heat shock proteins. The research I performed investigated the interaction between HSF1 and HSF2. Both HSF1 and HSF2 play a huge role in cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and ALS. In conclusion, I was able to be a part of a project that showed major results and produced publication quality data. I gained a huge amount of knowledge in biochemistry and its application in disease therapies. I also gained vital experience in many laboratory techniques that included protein purification, protein optimization, Thermo Flour, tissue-cell culturing, bacterial cell culturing, immunoblotting, and primer construction. Overall, my experience at the Duke University Medical Center this summer significantly increased my passion and knowledge into biochemistry and medicine.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Karrie Anne Walker (2008)

NSF 0744261: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors n the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:fall 2007
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Heather Grace Ward (2002)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Michael Roberts


Matthew Julius Weddig (2013)

Scalloped Expression During Larval Development

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Richard Matthew Weeks (2013)

NASA GCCE Grant: Impact of Near Future Climate Change Scenarios on Sea Urchin Embryogenesis

A variety of models of anthropogenic carbon dioxide enrichment-based climate change predict a dramatic acidification of the world's oceans and current measurements indicate that this is already occurring. Often referred as "the other CO2 enrichment problem" there is a great deal of concern about the impact of this lowering of pH on marine organisms, particularly those that rely on the process of calcification that is inhibited by acidic pH levels. Recent studies have indicated that increased carbon dioxide-dependent acidified seawater can have a negative impact on the development of a number of marine planktonic larvae. In the proposed work, we plan to examine the impact of acidified seawater and increased temperature on specific aspects of sea urchin embryo development. We are particularly interested in the effects on cell division, tissue patterning, neurogenesis and generation of the calcium carbonate-based larval skeleton. The results of this study will contribute to our understanding of how anthropogenic CO2-driven alterations in the ocean environment are going to impact the reproduction of marine invertebrates.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: John Henson


Brett Cameron Wegner (1999)

Population Ecology of Euphorbia Purpurea (Glade Spurge), a Rare Plant Species

Population Ecology of Euphorbia Purpurea (Glade Spurge), a Rare Plant Species

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Brett Cameron Wegner (1999)

Optimization of Gene Transfer into Human Myeloid Cell Lines by Electroporation

Optimization of Gene Transfer into Human Myeloid Cell Lines by Electroporation

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Michael Roberts


Madison Weirick (2018)

Sequencing and Characterization of Novel Insect-Associated Yeasts

Many yeasts that live in symbiotic association with detritivorous beetles (whose main food source consists of dead and rotting woody plant material) are likely to exhibit novel mechanisms of carbon metabolism and have the potential to be useful for improved biofuel production. The proposed research seeks to fully characterize ten previously undescribed species of insect yeast symbionts through complete genome sequencing and gene expression analysis. The results of this analysis will implicate genetic features involved in initiation or maintenance of symbiotic association, as well as new genes responsible for carbon metabolism.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Dana Somers


Eleonore P Werner (2006)

DNA Microarray Analysis of Retinoic Acid-Induced Granulocyte Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The human promyelocytic cell line, HL-60, can be induced to differentiate in culture into several different white blood cell types. Retinoic acid is an inducer that directs differentiation along the granulocyte pathway. Rapidly dividing HL-60 leukemia cells take on granulocyte structure and function and stop dividing as they are genetically reprogrammed by the signalling system that is activated by the inducer. These changes in genetic program are not well understood but the system is amenable to DNA microarray analysis which is capable of elucidating changes in the expression of thousands of genes in a single experiment. This study proposes to utilize microarray technology and bioinformatics tools to define the new genetic program that transforms cancer cells into non-dividing granulocytes.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Roberts


Eleonore P Werner (2006)

DNA Microarray Analysis of Retinoic Acid-Induced Granulocyte Differentiation of Human Leukemia Cells

The human promyelocytic cell line, HL-60, can be induced to differentiate in culture into several different white blood cell types. Retinoic acid is an inducer that directs differentiation along the granulocyte pathway. Rapidly dividing HL-60 leukemia cells take on granulocyte structure and function and stop dividing as they are genetically reprogrammed by the signalling system that is activated by the inducer. These changes in genetic program are not well understood but the system is amenable to DNA microarray analysis which is capable of elucidating changes in the expression of thousands of genes in a single experiment. This study proposes to utilize microarray technology and bioinformatics tools to define the new genetic program that transforms cancer cells into non-dividing granulocytes.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Roberts


Max Evan Widawski (2014)

NSF 0918624: Collaborative Research/RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3' portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5' portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI's RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: David Kushner


Lindsay Michelle Wieland (2004)

Isolation of Subpopulation of in a Woodrat (Neotoma Magister) Metapopulation

The Allegheny woodrat is a native mammal designated as threatened or endangered in all the states of its range in the northeastern US. Our previous studies suggest that its long-term existence may depend on effective dispersal between habitat patches, and that without such recolonization small population units would decline to extinction, so determining the degree of isolation of population units is important. Our most recent data implicate young males as the most likely dispersers between units. To test this proposal and as part of a continuing investigation of woodrat dispersal, my student collaborator and I will live-trap and radiocollar up to 8 woodrats in a local population and then will monitor their position from spring through summer (8 weeks for student). In a related study, we will collect tissue samples and initiate a genetic analysis with microsatellite markers to quantify population isolation along the current eastern edge of the woodrat's diminishing range.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Janet Wright


Kevin Andrew Wood (2011)

Population Ecology of Central Pennsylvania Snake Communities

Snakes are secretive animals and under most circumstances are not readily observed in the field. This is particularly true of smaller species that spend most of their time under leaf litter or underground. Consequently little is known about the basic biology of these snakes despite the fact that they are an important component of mixed hardwood forest ecosystems in Pennsylvania. This project aims to determine population and life-history parameters for Pennsylvania snake communities at the Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary and the Dickinson College Farm using artificial shelters that facilitate their detection. In spring 2009 we established three coverboard arrays in forest and grassland habitats at the two sites. Data from summer 2009 indicates that these boards are effective in attracting snakes. In this proposal I am seeking support for one Dickinson student to monitor the snake communities in these habitats.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Scott Boback


Daniel Allerton Wright (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Daniel Allerton Wright (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Daniel Allerton Wright (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Daniel Allerton Wright (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Daniel Allerton Wright (2009)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: David Kushner


Jacob Clifton Wright (2005)

Population ecology and management of rare plant species, especially Euphorbia purpurea, glade spurge

The ecology of long-lived, slowly-reproducing wildflowers is poorly understood, because of the scarcity of long-term studies. We will census five populations of a globally rare wildflower, glade spurge (Euphorbia purpurea), in a multi-year attempt to understand why these populations are declining. This year we will evaluate the light environment and soil conditions near plants that have grown to large size over the last several years, versus conditions around plants that have grown smaller. The light measurements will help us to assess how shading by trees and lower vegetation affects glade spurge growth and to develop management recommendations for the Game Commission and other agencies overseeing the sites. We will also continue experiments to evaluate the effects of deer browsing on glade spurge growth and reproduction. To develop appreciation of plant species differences, we will also briefly investigate two other rare species of wildflowers.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Jacob Clifton Wright (2005)

Population and propagation studies of three rare wildflowers, Euphorbia purpurea, Solidago speciosa, and Aster radula

Over the last nine years, students and I have been monitoring populations of several rare wildflower species and investigating various aspects of their reproduction in hopes of 1) gaining a thorough understanding of their population ecology, and the ecology of rare plants in general, which is poorly studied, and 2) devising management plans which can ensure the continued existence of these species. Our strategy with our most studied species, glade spurge (Euphorbia purpurea), has been to determine through monitoring if these plants' populations are stable, increasing, or declining, and to use measurement, careful observation, and where possible experimental manipulations to identify the factors that affect their reproduction and survival. This summer, we hope to continue monitoring five Pennsylvania populations of glade spurge with special attention to the relative reproductive success and survival of plants given protection from deer and plant competition in the last one to five years. We will initiate some new analyses of the impact of deer browsing on plant size and reproduction that will add important refinements to our previous analyses. We also want to continue ongoing searches for new populations of glade spurge and to initiate searches for two other species, showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) and rough-leaved aster (Aster radula). Finally, in the laboratory, we would like to study the effects of fertilization and watering treatments on the early growth of glade spurge and showy goldenrod, and we are planning a germination experiment that should refine our understanding of cold dormancy in showy goldenrod seeds.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Carol Loeffler


Shucheng Yang (2016)

NSF 1412688: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH/RUI: G Protein Regulation of the Actin Cytoskeleton in the Cleavage Stage Embryo

The actin cytoskeleton in animal cells is the primary architectural element that both structures and animates the cell. Thirty years of biochemical, molecular and biophysical studies have contributed to our understanding of how the spatiotemporal regulation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton facilitates cell motility, adhesion and division. However, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of the mechanics of shape change, particularly the challenges faced by very large, non-adherent cells such as eggs and embryonic blastomeres, whose isotropic cytoskeletons undergo cell cycle-dependent remodeling to facilitate rapid cell division. In this application, a combination of live cell imaging, biophysical, and high resolution microscopy approaches will be applied to examine the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in the context of cytokinesis-related shape change in the early sea urchin embryo, whose synchronous divisions, optical clarity and ease of injection and manipulation offer an excellent experimental system for these studies. The experimentation in this proposal will focus on defining the roles of the Rho GTPase family of actin regulatory proteins in the process of cytokinesis in early sea urchin embryos.

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: John Henson


Sarah E Yeskel (2005)

Assessment of Cenomic Instability in Breast Cancer Patients

In this study, I will be putting together the early data for The Breast Cancer Genomic Instability project for a grant proposal. It will involve chart review, abstraction and exploratory analysis on the case and control subjects gathered thus far. The study, involving 275 women, deals with collecting information about health, diet, and exposure history of these women and collecting blood for DNA and tumor tissue. We will be studying the organization of the demographic, health history, and tumor characteristic data on these subjects. I will also be involved in interim data analysis that will need to be completed by the end of the summer, for the grant proposal due in the early fall. This will be wonderful research experience for me, as I will be studying in a UNC oncology laboratory examining DNA repair genes and functional assays of DNA stability and repair to determine whether the ability to repair DNA predisposes women to breast cancer.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor:


Mesrob Yeterian (2014)

The Mechanism of Motility at the Cell Edge

The cytoskeleton is the system of structural and motor proteins that mediates a wide range of crucial cellular processes, including cell division, migration, immune defense and adhesion. My laboratory has long used the sea urchin coelomocyte as a model experimental system for the study of the cytoskeletal basis of cellular movement and process/protrusion formation. In the past we have used structural and pharmacological approaches to infer the mechanisms underlying motility, however our studies have been hindered by the lack of specificity of the drugs we have used. This summer we plan to employ two newly discovered and highly specific small molecule inhibitors of the actin cytoskeleton along with RNA interference-based approaches. These new tools will allow us to address a significant current debate in the field about the relative contributions of two regualtory proteins that help mediate actin cytoskeletal structure and dynamics at the cell edge. We are confident that this new research will help corroborate and extend our previous work and contribute important new insights into the molecular basis for cell movement.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: John Henson


Rachel A Yonker (2011)

NSF 0744261: Transcriptional control of neural differentiation in drosophila

A research aim of the project is to characterize the expression patterns of biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system. Biogenic amine receptors are in a class of G-protein coupled receptors that function in communication via neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The project for the summer was to characterize the nine members of our "short list" of putative or published biogenic amine receptors in the Drosophila embryonic central nervous system.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Kirsten Guss


Ashley Serwah Young (2014)

NSF 0918624 RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA

This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3' portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5' portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny ( )-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PIs RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: David Kushner


Jennifer Mercedes Zapata (2017)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - Analyzing the Biomechanics of Two Police Pistol Firing Styles

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Charles Zwemer


Songhui Zhao (2013)

Sensory Regulation of Metamorphosis

Term Funded:
Professor: Anthony Pires


Lindsey Samantha Zwecker (2017)

The Effect of Isoprenoid Depletion on the Inflammatory Response of Blood Cells

In autoinflammatory disease, the innate immune system is overly active and therefore generates inflammatory molecules under circumstances that normally would not warrant such activation. The increased activation of the innate immune system causes episodes of general inflammatory symptoms including fever, joint pain, rash, and fatigue. Most autoinflammatory diseases are caused by mutations in genes that control the innate immune system and are therefore categorized by genetic mutation. One group of autoinflammatory diseases, collectively called Mevalonate Kinase Deficiency (MKD), is caused mutations in the mevalonate kinase (MVK) gene, which is responsible for the production of isoprenoid compounds. These isoprenoid molecules are involved in many different cellular processes including cell division, movement, and communication with the environment. This project aims to understand the cellular mechanisms by which alterations to isoprenoid levels causes inflammatory symptoms. Investigation into how isoprenoids control inflammation provides valuable information for treating inflammatory diseases.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Biology, Mathematics & Computer Science

Christina Elizabeth Baum (2014)

NSF 0827262: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


David Charles Bittner (2011)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Sarah Elisabeth Brnich (2011)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Tracy Erin Campbell (2013)

NSF 082726: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem. An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Eric Benjamin Collins (2014)

NSF 0827262: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Bryan William Conner (2011)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Carla Elise Cox (2011)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Ryan David Deeds (2010)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Eric Mark Epstein (2014)

NSF 0827262: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Julia Elizabeth Filiberti (2012)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Michael Jude Grant (2011)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Abby Christine Larson (2010)

Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The research project will address the question: What are the molecular differences between human leukemia cells and differentiated human blood cells? Profs. Roberts and Forrester will direct the team of 6 students in research combining molecular biological and computational methods to elucidate the differences between the "cancer" genetic program and the "normal cell" genetic program utilizing the human leukemia cell line HL-60. Changes in genetic programs will be determined using DNA microarray analysis as the leukemia cells are induced to assume normal cell properties in culture. A variety of bioinformatics tools will then be applied to the large data sets generated to uncover the molecular mechanisms in play and to model and predict changes in gene activity that mediate the cancer to normal cell conversion. The ultimate goal of this project is to more fully understand the genetic differences between normal and cancer cells and, in the process, identify new targets for chemotherapy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Abby Christine Larson (2010)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Michael Webster Mansuy (2012)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Senaka Yoshio Ratnayake (2010)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Rizwan Mohamed Saffie (2014)

NSF 0827262: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course i҈n Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Kathryn Anna McAndrew Schlechtweg (2014)

NSF 0827262: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Adnan Zahir Solaiman (2010)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Amelia Linger Szabat (2013)

NSF 0827262: UBM-Group: An Integrative Analysis of Human Cancer: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Amy Louise Williamson (2010)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Biology, Spanish & Portuguese

Audrey Ling (2018)

El problema de los Huarpes con el agua. http://blogs.dickinson.edu/huarpes-y-agua/

The Huarpe people are an indigenous community located in the west of Argentina who have historically faced discrimination from their colonizers. Since being pushed off their land in the 1500's where their ancestors had constructed an intricate maze of irrigation canals that are still heavily utilized and maintained in Mendoza today, the Huarpe community has continued to face unjust hardships including, but not limited to, access to water. In the early 2000s the Potrerillos Dam was constructed in order to provide water for those living in Mendoza Capital. This resulted in the river (Río Mendoza) and lake (Laguna del Rosario) that many in the community depended on, for food and economic livelihood, to run dry. Furthermore, the Huarpe community have always lacked potable drinking water since being pushed off their original lands, a problem which the government is making feeble attempts to solve. The problems this community faces are not talked about nearly enough and the goal of this project is to share the personal stories of people from the Huarpe community.

Term Funded:Winter 2017
Professor:


Biology, Sustainability

Cecilie Olrik Macpherson (2020)

Phenology and Population Dynamics of the Turtles at Wildwood Lake

Phenology and Population Dynamics of the Turtles at Wildwood Lake

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Harold Wingert


Emma Frances Sullivan (2019)

Phenology and Population Dynamics of the Turtles at Wildwood Lake

Phenology and Population Dynamics of the Turtles at Wildwood Lake

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Harold Wingert


Campus Life

Grace Hemphill Lange (2012)

Sustainable Communities Eco-Reps

Sustainable Communities Eco-Reps

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Elizabeth Farner


Center for Sustainability Education

Jordan Emily Haferbier (2013)

Playing for Keeps Along the Susquehanna: A Community-Integrated GIS of Land and Water Uses and Rights in Rural Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Play

The sabbatical project will result in two conference presentations and one publication in peer reviewed journal (three different, but related topics).

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: David Perry


Laura Stone Jackson (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant:Taking Aim at Climate Change

Taking Aim at Climate Change

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Cornelius Leary


Grace Hemphill Lange (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant: Climate Change Mosaic

Climate Change Mosaic

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Cornelius Leary


Rizwan Mohamed Saffie (2014)

Taking Aim at Climate Change

Taking Aim at Climate Change

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Cornelius Leary


Tomas Sanguinetti (2014)

Playing for Keeps Along the Susquehanna: A Community-Integrated GIS of Land and Water Uses and Rights in Rural Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Play

This community-based project will use a participatory process to create a Geographic Information System (GIS) that describes the local socio-cultural interpretations attached to one or more sub-basins of the Susquehanna River within the extent of the Marcellus Shale natural gas play in rural Pennsylvania. The project seeks to ask the question: What are the different meanings local rural landowners attach to the Susquehanna River, and how do those meanings relate spatially to negotiations over competing uses and rights to surface water and groundwater in light of natural gas exploration and development? Using focus groups, local landowners will cognitively and spatially explore their "sense of place" within the Susquehanna River watershed, share experiences related to environmental and social changes, cognitively and spatially map relationships to social, political, and economic factors, and access their roles in on-going negotiations over the river's development and management related to natural gas exploration and development.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: David Perry


Brett Andrew Shollenberger (2011)

NASA GCCE Grant: Climate Education & Media

Climate Education & Media

Term Funded:Fall 2010
Professor: Sarah Brylinsky


Chemistry

Caroline Estabrook Allison (2004)

Synthesis of TFIIIA uising in vitro reactions

In order for a cell to encode and transmit genetic information, specific proteins must interact and bind to certain nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) molecules. These interactions can be investigated using various biochemical and physical in vitro ("outside of the cell") techniques. Currently, the use of chemical nucleases have proven extremely useful in determining the nature of how proteins use their amino acids to identify and contact a nucleic acid. The chemical nuclease is first attached onto the protein which then interacts with nucleic acid molecules. When the nuclease cuts the nucleic acid molecule at a specific point, then a possible contact between the amino acid of the protein and the nucleic acid can be identified. The use of chemical nucleases requires the production of a protein using in vitro extract reactions while maintaining the protein's ability to interact with nucleic acids. In the proposed project, we will determine optimal conditions for producing TFIIIA (protein capable of binding DNA and RNA) during in vitro reactions and then investigate the ability of this TFIIIA to interact with nucleic acid molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Pamela Higgins


Caroline Estabrook Allison (2004)

Synthesis of TFIIIA uising in vitro reactions

In order for a cell to encode and transmit genetic information, specific proteins must interact and bind to certain nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) molecules. These interactions can be investigated using various biochemical and physical in vitro ("outside of the cell") techniques. Currently, the use of chemical nucleases have proven extremely useful in determining the nature of how proteins use their amino acids to identify and contact a nucleic acid. The chemical nuclease is first attached onto the protein which then interacts with nucleic acid molecules. When the nuclease cuts the nucleic acid molecule at a specific point, then a possible contact between the amino acid of the protein and the nucleic acid can be identified. The use of chemical nucleases requires the production of a protein using in vitro extract reactions while maintaining the protein's ability to interact with nucleic acids. In the proposed project, we will determine optimal conditions for producing TFIIIA (protein capable of binding DNA and RNA) during in vitro reactions and then investigate the ability of this TFIIIA to interact with nucleic acid molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Pamela Higgins


Kimberly C Anderman (1992)

Matrix-isolation of two Hydrocarbon Complexes Characterized by Infrared Spectroscopy

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Cindy Samet


Kimberly C Anderman (1992)

Matrix Isolation and ab Initio Study fo the 1:1 complexes of Bromocyclopropane with NH3 and (CH3)3N: evidens for a novel C-H---N Hydrogen Bond

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Cindy Samet


Kimberly C Anderman (1992)

Matrix Isolation and ab Initio Study fo the 1:1 complexes of Bromocyclopropane with NH3 and (CH3)3N: evidens for a novel C-H---N Hydrogen Bond

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Year 1992
Professor: Cindy Samet


Laura Ashley Bahorich (2007)

The Transition Metal-Arene Bond: A Laxer Flash Photolysis Study

I am requesting supplemental funding for this project that is primarily supported through a grant from the American Chemical Society (PRF). As indicated on the PRF budget sheet, I will be hiring two students to conduct research with me this summer. Both will be responsible for setting up the experiment, acquiring and then analyzing the data. I will expect them to prepare a poster detailing the results and with the budgeted travel funds, we will present the results at a national American Chemical Society meeting. In the past, students have found that the projects they have worked on have been beneficial to their growth as scientists. The students are exposed to experiments that involve the use of equipment and techniques that are not formally introduced in the classroom and associated labs.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Laura Ashley Bahorich (2007)

Investigating the n2 bonding interactions between aromatic molecules and transition metal centers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Sunil Baidar (2009)

SACP--Investigating sources of contamination to the Conodoguinet Creek Watershed

Many secreted and cell-surface proteins in mammals and bacteria are glycoproteins. Glycoproteins are proteins in which multiple sugar residues are covalently attached to the protein backbone through an asparagine or serine residue. Because sugar attachment often occurs through a nitrogen atom, the sugars are referred to as N-linked glycans. The structures of N-linked glycans are complex and as a result, their biological functions were largely ignored until recently. This project involves teaching two undergraduates the analytical methods for characterizing N-linked glycans in a model organism, marine bacteria. Marine bacteria are chosen because they grow quickly, and because I have an on-going collaboration with a colleague who is an expert in marine microbiology. Additionally, their genomes have recently been sequenced, allowing us to ask broader questions based on preliminary results from these studies.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Amy Witter


Sunil Baidar (2009)

High Performance Liquid Chromatograph with fluorescence detection studies

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Amy Witter


Alexander Bernard Dante Baker (2004)

Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons

Funding from NSF would support the continuation of studies involving C-H---N(O) hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon-base complexes. The technique of matrix isolation combined with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy will be employed to probe the interaction between the hydrocarbon and base. In the short term, this work will serve to elucidate the conditions necessary for hydrogen bond formation to occur and will allow a correlation between hydrogen bond strength and extent of substitution of the hydrocarbon. In the long term the behavior of the proposed binary acid-base complexes will serve as a model for hydrogen bonding in more complicated systems such as organic liquid crystals and large biomolecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Cindy Samet


Alexander Bernard Dante Baker (2004)

NSF 0107777 RUI: Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen bases, II

Funding from NSF would support an in-depth study of the hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon base complexes. The binary complexes proposed involve a hydrocarbon that acts as a weak acid and a nitrogen or oxygen base that is likely to interact with the hydrocarbon acid via the lone pair of electrons on its electronegative nitrogen (N) or oxygen (0) atom. The hydrocarbons to be studied are cyclopropane, cyclopentadiene, and benzene, all of which are cyclic hydrocarbons. Several substituted analogs of each hydrocarbon will be studied. The bases that will be used to form the hydrocarbon acid-base binary complex are ammonia, trimethylamine, and dimethyl ether. The technique of matrix isolation combined with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy will be employed to probe the interaction between the hydrocarbon and base. The "parent" hydrocarbons and bases will be matrix-isolated in argon separately and then codeposited in the same matrix. The product or complex spectrum will then be compared to parent or "blank" spectra. Preliminary work done in the laboratory of the Principal Investigator demonstrates that the hydrogen bonding in the proposed binary complexes is extremely weak, resulting in frequency shifts (from parent to complex spectrum) on the order of 1-3 cm-1. Such weak hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon-base complexes containing it-bonding electrons has received little attention, and it is not known whether the base will interact with the pi system of the hydrocarbon ring or with the acidic proton on the ring. A primary goal of the project is to investigate C-H hydrogen bonding and its dependence on the hybridization of the s and p orbitals of the C and on the presence of electron withdrawing substituents. The behavior of the proposed binary acid-base complexes will serve as a model for hydro

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Cindy Samet


Alexander Bernard Dante Baker (2004)

NSF 0107777 RUI: Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen bases, II

Funding from NSF would support an in-depth study of the hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon base complexes. The binary complexes proposed involve a hydrocarbon that acts as a weak acid and a nitrogen or oxygen base that is likely to interact with the hydrocarbon acid via the lone pair of electrons on its electronegative nitrogen (N) or oxygen (0) atom. The hydrocarbons to be studied are cyclopropane, cyclopentadiene, and benzene, all of which are cyclic hydrocarbons. Several substituted analogs of each hydrocarbon will be studied. The bases that will be used to form the hydrocarbon acid-base binary complex are ammonia, trimethylamine, and dimethyl ether. The technique of matrix isolation combined with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy will be employed to probe the interaction between the hydrocarbon and base. The "parent" hydrocarbons and bases will be matrix-isolated in argon separately and then codeposited in the same matrix. The product or complex spectrum will then be compared to parent or "blank" spectra. Preliminary work done in the laboratory of the Principal Investigator demonstrates that the hydrogen bonding in the proposed binary complexes is extremely weak, resulting in frequency shifts (from parent to complex spectrum) on the order of 1-3 cm-1. Such weak hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon-base complexes containing it-bonding electrons has received little attention, and it is not known whether the base will interact with the pi system of the hydrocarbon ring or with the acidic proton on the ring. A primary goal of the project is to investigate C-H hydrogen bonding and its dependence on the hybridization of the s and p orbitals of the C and on the presence of electron withdrawing substituents. The behavior of the proposed binary acid-base complexes will serve as a model for hydro

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Cindy Samet


Alexander Bernard Dante Baker (2004)

NSF 0107777 RUI: Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen bases, II

Funding from NSF would support an in-depth study of the hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon base complexes. The binary complexes proposed involve a hydrocarbon that acts as a weak acid and a nitrogen or oxygen base that is likely to interact with the hydrocarbon acid via the lone pair of electrons on its electronegative nitrogen (N) or oxygen (0) atom. The hydrocarbons to be studied are cyclopropane, cyclopentadiene, and benzene, all of which are cyclic hydrocarbons. Several substituted analogs of each hydrocarbon will be studied. The bases that will be used to form the hydrocarbon acid-base binary complex are ammonia, trimethylamine, and dimethyl ether. The technique of matrix isolation combined with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy will be employed to probe the interaction between the hydrocarbon and base. The "parent" hydrocarbons and bases will be matrix-isolated in argon separately and then codeposited in the same matrix. The product or complex spectrum will then be compared to parent or "blank" spectra. Preliminary work done in the laboratory of the Principal Investigator demonstrates that the hydrogen bonding in the proposed binary complexes is extremely weak, resulting in frequency shifts (from parent to complex spectrum) on the order of 1-3 cm-1. Such weak hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon-base complexes containing it-bonding electrons has received little attention, and it is not known whether the base will interact with the pi system of the hydrocarbon ring or with the acidic proton on the ring. A primary goal of the project is to investigate C-H hydrogen bonding and its dependence on the hybridization of the s and p orbitals of the C and on the presence of electron withdrawing substituents. The behavior of the proposed binary acid-base complexes will serve as a model for hydro

Term Funded:Fall 2004
Professor: Cindy Samet


Alexander Bernard Dante Baker (2004)

NSF 0107777 RUI: Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen bases, II

Funding from NSF would support an in-depth study of the hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon base complexes. The binary complexes proposed involve a hydrocarbon that acts as a weak acid and a nitrogen or oxygen base that is likely to interact with the hydrocarbon acid via the lone pair of electrons on its electronegative nitrogen (N) or oxygen (0) atom. The hydrocarbons to be studied are cyclopropane, cyclopentadiene, and benzene, all of which are cyclic hydrocarbons. Several substituted analogs of each hydrocarbon will be studied. The bases that will be used to form the hydrocarbon acid-base binary complex are ammonia, trimethylamine, and dimethyl ether. The technique of matrix isolation combined with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy will be employed to probe the interaction between the hydrocarbon and base. The "parent" hydrocarbons and bases will be matrix-isolated in argon separately and then codeposited in the same matrix. The product or complex spectrum will then be compared to parent or "blank" spectra. Preliminary work done in the laboratory of the Principal Investigator demonstrates that the hydrogen bonding in the proposed binary complexes is extremely weak, resulting in frequency shifts (from parent to complex spectrum) on the order of 1-3 cm-1. Such weak hydrogen bonding in hydrocarbon-base complexes containing it-bonding electrons has received little attention, and it is not known whether the base will interact with the pi system of the hydrocarbon ring or with the acidic proton on the ring. A primary goal of the project is to investigate C-H hydrogen bonding and its dependence on the hybridization of the s and p orbitals of the C and on the presence of electron withdrawing substituents. The behavior of the proposed binary acid-base complexes will serve as a model for hydro

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Cindy Samet


Stephen Brennan Barone (1990)

An Application of the Multiple Time-Dependent Calibration Curve

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Robert Leyon


Eric Larson Barth (2007)

Design, synthesis and assay ofcyclopropane-containing agonists of a-adrenergic agents

In our previous report, we described work toward the coupling of aromatic rings, formation of the cyclopropyl group from an cz4S-unsaturated nitrile and the conversion of the nitrile into an imidazoline ring. During the summer of 2006, our work on this project focused on two primary areas: completing the study of the microwave-mediated Suzuki couplings with aryltrifluoroborate salts and bringing the individual transformations together into a complete synthetic pathway leading to the target molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: R David Crouch


Eric Larson Barth (2007)

Design, synthesis and assay ofcyclopropane-containing agonists of a-adrenergic agents

In our previous report, we described work toward the coupling of aromatic rings, formation of the cyclopropyl group from an cz4S-unsaturated nitrile and the conversion of the nitrile into an imidazoline ring. During the summer of 2006, our work on this project focused on two primary areas: completing the study of the microwave-mediated Suzuki couplings with aryltrifluoroborate salts and bringing the individual transformations together into a complete synthetic pathway leading to the target molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: R David Crouch


Taylor Nicole Bednar (2019)

Colorimetric detection of substitution reactions in living cells

The goal of this project is to determine if synthetic dye molecules may be used to monitor the progress of an unnatural chemical reaction occurring inside living cells. Peptides containing the uniquely reactive sulfhydryl group (-SH) will be expressed in E. coli. These sulfhydryl groups, when part of a particular amino acid sequence, are known to react with certain organic tag molecules in a manner that generates fluoride ions (F-). While this reaction has been successfully optimized in cell lysates and extracts, it has yet to be observed inside a living cell. A number of synthetic dyes containing silyl ethers (-SiR3) have been used to quantify the presence of fluoride in living cells, simply by observing a color change resulting from a second chemical reaction. Using these dyes, this project will explore whether this first reaction can also occur in vivo.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Megan Christine Blair (2002)

Purification and Analysis of Phytochelatins

This research project focuses on the environmental problem of metal pollution and addresses understanding environmental cleanup efforts of these metals through the use of plants. Phytochelatins are intracellular peptides in plants that are produced in response to sub-lethal metal concentrations. These peptides vary in length from five amino acids to twenty-three amino acids and contain alternating glutamic acid and cysteine residues with a terminal glycine residue. Phytochelatins bind to and sequester the metal ions, rendering them non-toxic to the plant. The study of phytochelatin production and the metal binding properties should be explored in order to expand our understanding of plant response to metal stress. To investigate this process, we plan to use yeast as a model system because they possess the same ability as plants to produce phytochelatins. Initial work in my lab has shown that we can obtain partial purification through bulk methods. The final purification step will utilize high pressure liquid chromatography, and it is this method that we will continue to develop. Preliminary results from this semester using the copper-phytochelatin complex show that this method should purify the phytochelatins to homogeneity. This summer we will utilize a metal with a different ionic radius and determine the length of the phytochelatin produced. By doing a systematic study where only the size of the metal ion used is varied, we can learn more about the production of these short peptides. Additionally, we would like to explore the oxidation-reduction chemistry of these systems. An increase in our knowledge of natural response to metal toxicity can be extended toward enhancing environmental cleanup efforts through processes such as rhizofiltration.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Joyce Whitehead


Erin Boyd (2000)

The Role of Metals in the Cytotoxic Activity of the Anthracycline Drugs

The Role of Metals in the Cytotoxic Activity of the Anthracycline Drugs

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Joyce Whitehead


Erin Boyd (2000)

The Effect of the First Row Transition Metals on the Metal Uptake, Culture Health and Phytochelatin Production in Yeast

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Joyce Whitehead


Allyson Jane Boyington (2015)

An Investigation of Microwave-acceleration of Silyl Deprotection Reactions

This project will investigate the use of microwave irradiation to accelerate the removal of silyl protecting groups from phenolic oxygens. Silyl groups contain a silicon atom and are often used to temporarily render an alcohol or phenol unreactive. This allows another reaction with which the alcohol might interfere to proceed. Recently, the use of catalytic amounts of lithium acetate have been reported to allow such deprotection reactions to occur. Although this method uses an especially mild reagent, the reactions times are quite lengthy. We wish to investigate the use of modern laboratory microwave ovens to accelerate this reaction. Preliminary experiments show that high yields of deprotected product can be achieved using microwave irradiation over a 30 - 60 minute period, considerably less than the 8 - 24 hours reported. But we need to establish the optimal conditions for the microwave version of this reaction and then test its generality on other silyl protected alcohols and phenols.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: R David Crouch


Aaron Dale Brumbaugh (2014)

Synthesis and Analysis of Bioreduced Nanoparticles

This project will involve the synthesis and characterization of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles. The nanoparticles used in this study range in size from spheres of less than 5 nm in diameter to hexagonal or triangular platelets that are several hundred nanometers per side. All particles will be synthesized with leaf teas as chemical reducing agents. Lemongrass and ginkgo leaves can be boiled (separately), and the resulting teas aid in the formation of gold, silver, mixed gold and silver, and copper oxide particles. We will use a variety of analytical techniques, including electron microscopy, to help us understand the sizes and compositions of our nanoparticles. With more knowledge about the reactions and the particles, we can look forward to finding applications - in catalysis or spectroscopy - for our nanoparticles.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Amy Beth Cadwallader (2001)

Study of the ZnCl2-H20 Mediated Removal of Silyl Protecting Groups

Study of the ZnCl2-H20 Mediated Removal of Silyl Protecting Groups

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: R David Crouch


Tianyi Cai (2013)

Synthesis of Alpha-Methylene Butyrolactones

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Catherine Bridget Campbell (2012)

Microwave Acceleration of the Orthoester Claisen Rearrangement

This project will investigate the use of microwave irradiation to accelerate the orthoester Claisen reaction, allowing chemists to complete the reaction more quickly than the typical 1 to 12 hours that is typical of this reaction. In the last 20 years, microwave ovens have been developed for laboratory use. Reactions can safely be heated rapidly to high temperatures not attainable in a regular flask and, as a result, reactions can be completed in minutes instead of hours. Despite the utility of the orthoester Claisen rearrangement, to date, no reports of modern microwave techniques - in which temperature and pressure are monitored and controlled - to accelerate this reaction have been reported. If this project is successful, we anticipate publishing the results in a mainline organic chemistry journal.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: R David Crouch


Thanprakorn Chiramanewong (2013)

Investigation of the contribution of structure and reactivity to the selective cytotoxicity of germacranolide natural products

The natural product parthenolide has been shown to selectively ablate leukemia stem cells, and its derivative, dimethylaminoparthenolide, is currently in clinical trials for treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia. Parthenolide is a member of the sesquiterpene lactone family of natural products, which bear an α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone reactive group that can modify proteins through Michael addition of biological nucleophiles, such as thiols. In order to determine the effect of structure on the reactivity of α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone-containing natural products with cellular proteins, we will synthesize alkynylated derivatives of the parthenolide, as well as two model compounds. These lactones will be evaluated for toxicity and cellular response in the human acute myelogenous leukemia cell line, THP-1, in comparison to the natural products themselves using cell viability assays, Western blotting, and cell-based apoptosis assays.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Thanprakorn Chiramanewong (2013)

Cellular Effects of Parthenolide Derivatives

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Gregory Alan Clark (2014)

Microwave Ritter Reaction

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: R David Crouch


Rebecca Anne Cleiman (2002)

Selective Removal of Triphenylsilyl Protecting Groups

This proposal describes a study of the use of a basic, non-aqueous system to selectively remove the triphenylsilyl group from alcohols without affecting other silyl protecting groups. Such selective desilylation reactions have become increasingly important in synthetic organic chemistry as targets for synthesis have become more intricate and challenging. Preliminary work last summer and during the current academic year indicates that our previously-developed system of NaOH in 1,4-dioxane might be effective in this process. We have already demonstrated that most silyl groups are largely inert to these conditions while the more base-sensitive triphenylsilyl group appears to be susceptible to removal.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: R David Crouch


Rebecca Anne Cleiman (2002)

Selective Removal of Triphenylsilyl Protecting Groups

This proposal describes a study of the use of a basic, non-aqueous system to selectively remove the triphenylsilyl group from alcohols without affecting other silyl protecting groups. Such selective desilylation reactions have become increasingly important in synthetic organic chemistry as targets for synthesis have become more intricate and challenging. Preliminary work last summer and during the current academic year indicates that our previously-developed system of NaOH in 1,4-dioxane might be effective in this process. We have already demonstrated that most silyl groups are largely inert to these conditions while the more base-sensitive triphenylsilyl group appears to be susceptible to removal.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: R David Crouch


Andrew Geoffrey Cohen (1999)

Selective Removal of Silyl Protecting Groups

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: R David Crouch


Kristina Ann Cole (1992)

Synthesis of Molecules usingO-arylhydroxylamines

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Michael Holden


Grace Elizabeth Crossland (2018)

Characterization of the effect of sesquiterpene lactones on the heat shock response in leukemia cells

We have previously shown that the natural product, parthenolide, chemically modifies the heat shock protein Hsp70 in vitro. The protein Hsp70 is a protective protein that allows cells to survive external stresses and regulates cellular function as part of the larger heat shock response system. We will study how parthenolide treatment affects the heat shock response in leukemia cells. We will measure activation of the heat shock element transcription factor as well as gene expression of several heat shock proteins after treatment with parthenolide. This project will clarify the effect of parthenolide, a potential chemotherapeutic, on the stress response system of leukemia cells.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Francis Furst Daily (2013)

Matrix Isolation Studies

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Cindy Samet


Francis Furst Daily (2013)

Matrix Isolation Studies

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Cindy Samet


Bryce Allen Descavish (2020)

Pteridine reductase interface peptides as antileishmanial agents

Leishmaniasis affects approximately 1 million people per year, with an estimated 30,000 annual deaths, primarily in the Global South. Pteridine reductase (PTR1) is an indispensable enzyme in the parasite that causes this disease, performing an essential biological role in nucleotide and cofactor synthesis, while also conferring resistance to the drug methotrexate. Recent computational work in our lab has led to the hypothesis that interface peptides derived from the native sequence of PTR1 may be effective inhibitors of this enzyme, and thus potential antileishmanial agents. Ongoing work in our research group is focused on validating this approach through in-vitro assays of mutant proteins. Continuation of this project through the summer will focus on the synthesis of potential peptide inhibitors of PTR1 and their evaluation in vitro.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Gabriel J DiNatale (2014)

Exploring the mechanism of action of the anti-leukemic drug, parthenolide

Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) occurs in about 1 out of 250,000 people and long-term survival with AML is poor. This project will study how a potential anti-leukemia therapeutic, parthenolide, interacts with cells and proteins. We will use compounds derived from parthenolide to identify the components of the original molecule that are required to maintain anti-leukemia activity. We will also identify the patterns of proteins within leukemia cells that are modified by parthenolide and our synthesized derivatives using activity-based protein profiling. Understanding how the component parts of parthenolide affect its anti-leukemic properties and interact with proteins in cancer cells can guide the development of new cancer therapeutics.

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Gabriel J DiNatale (2014)

Investigation of the cellular action of the natural product, parthenolide.

Parthenolide, a natural product from the plant feverfew, has well documented chemotherapeutic properties. Water-soluble derivatives of parthenolide are currently undergoing clinical trials for treatment of leukemia. Despite these successes, the mechanism by which parthenolide and its derivatives interfere with celular processes in cancer cells is not well understood. Using derivatives of parthenolide synthesized in the lab, we plan to identify the action of parthenolide that contributes to its efficacy as a chemotherapeutic. We will use a chemoselective ligation reaction to label cellular targets of the drug with an affinity tag, biotin for subsequent detection and purification. Further understanding of the mecahnism of parthenolide action will pave the way for development of similar chemotherapeutic agents.

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Thai Uyen Phuoc Dinh (2020)

NSF 1413074: RUI: Electrophilic Modulation of the Heat Shock Response System

This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1. Peptide enrichment of affinity tagged parthenolide derivatives combined with MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis will identify the amino acids covalently adducted. Mutation of these residues as well as covalent adduction sites previously published in the literature will be used in combination with kinetic binding, protein refolding, co-immunoprecipitation and electrophoretic shift assays to build a complete picture of the effect of modification on heat shock protein (Hsp) function. The association/dissociation rates of mutant proteins both treated and untreated with electrophilic compounds will be measured against native members of the complex using biolayer optical interferometry (BLI), a recently developed optical method for the measurement of biomolecular interactions. In an approach complementary to the quantification of binding affinity for mutant and electrophile-modified Hsps, in vitro complex reconstitution will verify qualitatively the binding affinities observed using BLI. The effect of mutation and electrophile-modification on the protein refolding activity of chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 will be determined using luciferase and beta-galactosidase refolding assays. Any inhibitory or activating effect by mutation or electrophilic modification of Hsf1 will be determined using electrophoretic mobility shift assays.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Rebecca Jaye Driesen (2009)

Synthesis and stability of 1,2-diazetidine derivatives

1,2-Diazetidine derivatives have anti-bacterial activity and serve as active ingredients in ointments. Due to the enormous ring strain in the four-membered dinitrogen molecule; it is prone to facile ring opening and subsequent loss in reaction yields. Methods used to prepare this compound include the [2 2] cycloaddition and intramolecular ring closure. While some of these procedures suffer from poor yields, successful ones are plagued with separation problems and the use of methylene chlwide - a known carcinogen. Therefore the goal of this project shall be to prepare 1,2-diazetidine derivatives employing the intramolecular ring closure of azine derivatives, with loss of unsaturation promoted by vanadium (I) reagent in tetrahydrofruan. It is expected that this method be high yielding and attract the attention of pharmoceutical companies.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Paul Fregene


Alice Ann Duchon (2011)

Synthesis of a Copper-Distamycin Conjugate and its Reactivity with DNA

The goal of this project is to synthesize an artificial nuclease that will selectively bind to and cleave DNA for use as an anticancer drug. This will be accomplished by tethering a DNA binding domain to a copper(II)-containing catalytic domain to generate a copper-distamycin conjugate. Once the compound has been thoroughly characterized, its reactivity with DNA will be evaluated. Analysis of this type will ideally lead to a greater understanding of the factors responsible for oxidative damage to DNA by copper and should aid in the design of new compounds with pharmaceutical potential.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Kristi Humphreys


Rebecca Lynn Duttry (2007)

Design, Synthesis and Assay of Cyclopropane-Containing Analogs of a-Adrenergic Agents

This is an expedited proposal seeking room and board for a summer research student who will be working on a Research Corporation-funded project. This request includes $500 in matching funds for the purchase of lab supplies and reagents. The student will assist in the development of synthetic protocols aimed at preparing a series of compounds that are analogs of a-adrenergic agents. Specifically, we hope to develop solid-phase procedures that will allow us to efficiently prepare a series of compounds for testing on a1 receptors by a collaborator at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. The student will perform reactions to bond the starting material to the solid support and carry out studies to determine the optimum conditions for subsequent reactions. The student will purify and characterize reaction products using techniques such as column chromatography and high field NMR spectroscopy.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Rebecca Lynn Duttry (2007)

Design, synthesis and assay ofcyclopropane-containing agonists of a-adrenergic agents

In our previous report, we described work toward the coupling of aromatic rings, formation of the cyclopropyl group from an cz4S-unsaturated nitrile and the conversion of the nitrile into an imidazoline ring. During the summer of 2006, our work on this project focused on two primary areas: completing the study of the microwave-mediated Suzuki couplings with aryltrifluoroborate salts and bringing the individual transformations together into a complete synthetic pathway leading to the target molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Rebecca Lynn Duttry (2007)

Design, synthesis and assay ofcyclopropane-containing agonists of a-adrenergic agents

In our previous report, we described work toward the coupling of aromatic rings, formation of the cyclopropyl group from an cz4S-unsaturated nitrile and the conversion of the nitrile into an imidazoline ring. During the summer of 2006, our work on this project focused on two primary areas: completing the study of the microwave-mediated Suzuki couplings with aryltrifluoroborate salts and bringing the individual transformations together into a complete synthetic pathway leading to the target molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: R David Crouch


Brian Richard Elford (1994)

Carbonylation of Organoiron Systems

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Michael Holden


Robert Raymond Fehnel (2005)

Investigating the reactivity of metal-arene bonds

My expectation is that the students will be involved in every aspect of the proposed research effort, from obtaining data to analyzing and then presenting it at regional and national conferences. Because successful completion of the project will require setting up a laser flash photolysis apparatus, the students will be able to learn skills that have not been formally introduced in the classroom. From a pedagogical perspective a further benefit of the proposed research is that it will allow students to learn about the application of lasers in chemistry. Lasers have become an important tool in chemistry and their widespread use has made it necessary to introduce laser based experiments into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. The proposed experiments are therefore part of a vision that aims to provide undergraduates with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the use of modern instrumentation employed in the study of chemistry.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Robert Raymond Fehnel (2005)

Investigating the n2 bonding interactions between aromatic molecules and transition metal centers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Nicholas Philip Ferenz (2003)

Effects of Nutrient limitation on phytoplankton-derived organic matter and consequences for bacterial community structure

We have a reasonable understanding of how Fe and N availability influence the production of particulate organic carbon by phytoplankton and the resulting consequences for carbon export and storage in the ocean. However, we know very little about how Fe and N limitation affects the production and composition of the largest reservoir of marine fixed carbon, the dissolved organic pool. Our preliminary data make a compelling case that both Fe and N limitation cause large changes in the monosaccharide composition of extracellular carbohydrates produced by phytoplankton. Qualitative changes in labile DOM in turn have large implications for bacterial growth and community composition, and thus for the remineralization of fixed carbon in the sea. This project will take the first important steps toward exploring the linkage between phytoplankton Fe and N limitation and the quantity and quality of labile DOM, and begin to examine the consequences for the marine microbial community.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Amy Witter


Nicholas Philip Ferenz (2003)

Effects of Nutrient limitation on phytoplankton-derived organic matter and consequences for bacterial community structure

We have a reasonable understanding of how Fe and N availability influence the production of particulate organic carbon by phytoplankton and the resulting consequences for carbon export and storage in the ocean. However, we know very little about how Fe and N limitation affects the production and composition of the largest reservoir of marine fixed carbon, the dissolved organic pool. Our preliminary data make a compelling case that both Fe and N limitation cause large changes in the monosaccharide composition of extracellular carbohydrates produced by phytoplankton. Qualitative changes in labile DOM in turn have large implications for bacterial growth and community composition, and thus for the remineralization of fixed carbon in the sea. This project will take the first important steps toward exploring the linkage between phytoplankton Fe and N limitation and the quantity and quality of labile DOM, and begin to examine the consequences for the marine microbial community.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Amy Witter


Julia Rose Ferris (2018)

NSF 1413074: RUI: Electrophilic Modulation of the Heat Shock Response System

This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1. Peptide enrichment of affinity tagged parthenolide derivatives combined with MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis will identify the amino acids covalently adducted. Mutation of these residues as well as covalent adduction sites previously published in the literature will be used in combination with kinetic binding, protein refolding, co-immunoprecipitation and electrophoretic shift assays to build a complete picture of the effect of modification on heat shock protein (Hsp) function. The association/dissociation rates of mutant proteins both treated and untreated with electrophilic compounds will be measured against native members of the complex using biolayer optical interferometry (BLI), a recently developed optical method for the measurement of biomolecular interactions. In an approach complementary to the quantification of binding affinity for mutant and electrophile-modified Hsps, in vitro complex reconstitution will verify qualitatively the binding affinities observed using BLI. The effect of mutation and electrophile-modification on the protein refolding activity of chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 will be determined using luciferase and beta-galactosidase refolding assays. Any inhibitory or activating effect by mutation or electrophilic modification of Hsf1 will be determined using electrophoretic mobility shift assays.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Abby Nicole Flinchbaugh (2015)

Characterization of the effect of sesquiterpene lactones on the heat shock response in leukemia cells

We have previously shown that the natural product, parthenolide, chemically modifies the heat shock protein Hsp70 in vitro. The protein Hsp70 is a protective protein that allows cells to survive external stresses and regulates cellular function as part of the larger heat shock response system. We will study how parthenolide treatment affects the heat shock response in leukemia cells. We will measure activation of the heat shock element transcription factor as well as gene expression of several heat shock proteins after treatment with parthenolide. This project will clarify the effect of parthenolide, a potential chemotherapeutic, on the stress response system of leukemia cells.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Joshua Foong (2011)

Synthesis and Characterization of an Iron-Salen-Glutamic Acid Molecule

A synthetic scheme has been devised to produce a potential chemical nuclease compound (an iron-salen-glutamic acid) that may be instrumental in probing how DNA interacts with proteins in a cell. The multiple reactions required to construct this new nuclease compound must be optimized so that proper analysis of the compound's structure can be conducted. In addition, the ability of the iron-salen-glutamic acid to cut DNA will be assessed in nicking assays to determine if this compound can serve as an effective chemical nuclease molecule.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Pamela Higgins


Nicole Perry Fultz (2010)

Incorporation of Nanoscience into the Chemistry Curriculum at the Introductory Level

This is an expedited proposal that requests room and board for a student participating in a National Science Foundation funded project to develop nanoscience activities for Chem 111, 141, 241 and 242. The student will adapt and modify published lab activities for these courses and devise new experiments using examples in the nanoscience literature. We hope to have the Scanning Tunneling Microscopes and Atomic Force Microscopes operating by summer and, if this occurs, a large effort will involve developing experiments in which Chem 241 and 242 students can observe the nanoscale behavior of molecules synthesized in the lab.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Nicole Perry Fultz (2010)

NSF 0406837 NUE: Incorporation of Nanoscience into the Chemistry Curriculum at the Introductory Level

This is an expedited proposal that requests room and board for a student participating in a National Science Foundation funded project to develop nanoscience activities for Chem 111, 141, 241 and 242. The student will adapt and modify published lab activities for these courses and devise new experiments using examples in the nanoscience literature. We hope to have the Scanning Tunneling Microscopes and Atomic Force Microscopes operating by summer and, if this occurs, a large effort will involve developing experiments in which Chem 241 and 242 students can observe the nanoscale behavior of molecules synthesized in the lab.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Nicole Perry Fultz (2010)

Incorporation of Nanoscience into the Chemistry Curriculum at the Introductory Level

This is an expedited proposal that requests room and board for a student participating in a National Science Foundation funded project to develop nanoscience activities for Chem 111, 141, 241 and 242. The student will adapt and modify published lab activities for these courses and devise new experiments using examples in the nanoscience literature. We hope to have the Scanning Tunneling Microscopes and Atomic Force Microscopes operating by summer and, if this occurs, a large effort will involve developing experiments in which Chem 241 and 242 students can observe the nanoscale behavior of molecules synthesized in the lab.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Samantha Garcia ()

Developing new bioluminescent sensors for monitoring intracellular interactions

Bioluminescent proteins derived from deep sea shrimp have proven broadly useful in the fields of preclinical imaging and biological sensors. One class of such proteins has been engineered to emit light in response to cross-talk between molecules of interest in cells. Though useful, the current sensors cannot detect multiple signals simultaneously. Researchers in the Rathbun lab will seek to expand the utility of this tool through a process called directed evolution. This project will begin by first accumulating collections of peptide binders and mutant proteins. Peptides will be chemically synthesized, and proteins will be produced in bacteria. Second, each peptide binder will be tested (for bioluminescent light emission) with each mutant protein. Finally, machine learning techniques will be employed to predict the best binders, and the process will repeat until the desired performance is attained. Initially, we will seek to develop two sets of binding proteins that operate orthogonally, to enable detection of multiple interactions in cells simultaneously.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Colin Rathbun


Amanda Gellett Seward (2006)

Synthesis and Characterization of Nuclease Activity of Amino Acid Containing Compounds

Chemical nucleases (molecules that damage/cleave DNA) have become a frequently used tool for investigation of the interactions that occur when a nucleic acid binding protein forms a complex with DNA or RNA. Common chemical nucleases incorporated into nucleic acid binding proteins can help elucidate the specific contacts formed in the complex. However, inherent limitations in current chemical nucleases have led to the development of new nuclease compounds. Salen [N, N' bis (salicylidene)-1,2-ethylenediamine] complexes have recently emerged as possible nucleases due to their ability to self-induce DNA damage upon binding. A lysine-ferrocene compound derived in my laboratory has also exhibited some unique abilities in cleaving DNA as well. The current project seeks to synthesize a salen-metal ion complex attached onto an amino acid and investigate subsequent ability of the new compound to cleave DNA molecules. The nuclease activity of this new compound will be compared to that of the lysine-ferrocene compound and common chemical nucleases. These studies will allow determination of whether either/both of these new nuclease compounds are suitable for incorporation into nucleic acid binding proteins and for subsequent use as probes of interaction in protein-nucleic acid complexes.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Pamela Higgins


Amanda Gellett Seward (2006)

Synthesis and Characterization of Nuclease Activity of Amino Acid Containing Compounds

Chemical nucleases (molecules that damage/cleave DNA) have become a frequently used tool for investigation of the interactions that occur when a nucleic acid binding protein forms a complex with DNA or RNA. Common chemical nucleases incorporated into nucleic acid binding proteins can help elucidate the specific contacts formed in the complex. However, inherent limitations in current chemical nucleases have led to the development of new nuclease compounds. Salen [N, N' bis (salicylidene)-1,2-ethylenediamine] complexes have recently emerged as possible nucleases due to their ability to self-induce DNA damage upon binding. A lysine-ferrocene compound derived in my laboratory has also exhibited some unique abilities in cleaving DNA as well. The current project seeks to synthesize a salen-metal ion complex attached onto an amino acid and investigate subsequent ability of the new compound to cleave DNA molecules. The nuclease activity of this new compound will be compared to that of the lysine-ferrocene compound and common chemical nucleases. These studies will allow determination of whether either/both of these new nuclease compounds are suitable for incorporation into nucleic acid binding proteins and for subsequent use as probes of interaction in protein-nucleic acid complexes.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Pamela Higgins


Christopher Ernest Gentchos (1993)

Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Hydrogen Bonds involving C-H bonds: Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen Bases

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Cindy Samet


Christopher Ernest Gentchos (1993)

Matrix Isolation and ab Initio Study of the 1:1 complexes of Bromocyclopropane with NH3 and (CH3)3N: evidence for a novel C-H---N Hydrogen Bond

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Fall 1992
Professor: Cindy Samet


Christopher Ernest Gentchos (1993)

Matrix Isolation and ab Initio Study of the 1:1 complexes of Bromocyclopropane with NH3 and (CH3)3N: evidence for a novel C-H---N Hydrogen Bond

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Cindy Samet


Leah Goldfarb (1991)

Study of hydro-carbon-ammonia bonding

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Cindy Samet


Leah Goldfarb (1991)

Matrix Isolation and ab Initio Study of the 1:1 complexes of Bromocyclopropane with NH3 and (CH3)3N: evidence for a novel C-H---N Hydrogen Bond

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Fall 1990
Professor: Cindy Samet


Leah Goldfarb (1991)

Matrix Isolation and ab Initio Study of the 1:1 complexes of Bromocyclopropane with NH3 and (CH3)3N: evidence for a novel C-H---N Hydrogen Bond

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Spring 1991
Professor: Cindy Samet


Leah Goldfarb (1991)

Matrix Isolation Fourier-Transform Infrared Studies of Hydrocarbon-Ammonia Complexes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Cindy Samet


Breanna Sophie Goldner (2014)

Analysis of the Effect of BAG5 Truncation Mutants on Chaperone and Ubiquitin Ligase Activity

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's are estimated to affect over 5.9 million U.S. adults (NINDS, Alzheimer's Association). Both diseases are characterized by protein aggregation leading to neuronal malfunction and eventually neuronal death. Molecular chaperone proteins have been shown to ameliorate some of the protein aggregation observed in the disease states. We are studying the effects of a newly identified molecular chaperone protein, BAG5 on aspects of protein regulation in cells to identify its role in normal cellular processes as well as in neurodegenerative disease. We will also be studying the effects of small domain structures within BAG5 for their effects on protein regulation individually and in combination.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Michael James Gortakowski (2007)

Investigating the n2 bonding interactions between aromatic molecules and transition metal centers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Zev Joshua Greenberg (2016)

Determination of Nicotine in Cigars with RP-HPLC SPME GC/MS

Term Funded: 2013
Professor: Amy Witter


Zev Joshua Greenberg (2016)

EPA-GRO Summer Internship

I was located in Athens, GA, for my summer [2015] GRO internship, at the National Exposure Research Laboratory, Ecosystems Research Division. My internship project was "Fecal Indicators and Host‐specific qPCR Markers in Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment" and I focused on measuring bacteriophage (viruses which infect bacteria) concentrations in wastewater treatment plant effluent as a model for human viruses in the water. I worked in the lab of Dr. Marirosa Molina.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Zev Joshua Greenberg (2016)

NSF 0942579 A natural approach to problem-based learning in the undergraduate curriculum: development of an interdisciplinary course, Chemical Analysis in Chemical Ecology.

This funding will support the creation of a new interdisciplinary course. The focus of the course will be to bring together students from the departments of chemistry and biology to learn about modern chemical methods of analysis used to study naturally-occurring chemicals with bioactive properties, including dietary compounds, toxins, pollutants, and chemical cues.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Amy Witter


Jie Gu (2008)

Investigating the n2 bonding interactions between aromatic molecules and transition metal centers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Christine Lynn Hannon (1990)

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

n/a

Term Funded:spring 1990
Professor: Cindy Samet


Christine Lynn Hannon (1990)

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

n/a

Term Funded:fall 1989
Professor: Cindy Samet


Christine Lynn Hannon (1990)

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

n/a

Term Funded:summer 1989
Professor: Cindy Samet


Gavin Robert Harter (2017)

Development of new Trypanothione Reductase Inhibitors as Potential Therapeutics for Chagas Disease

This research aims to develop new treatments for Chagas Disease, a parasitic infection that affects approximately 300,000 Americans. Current drugs for Chagas have limited efficacy and numerous side effects. Trypanothione Reductase (TryR) is an enzyme unique to the parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, that causes Chagas, and is essential for its survival. Inhibitors of TryR are an emerging class of new drugs for Chagas. This research will develop new TryR inhibitors that operate through a different mechanism than existing inhibitors. While current inhibitors target the active site of this enzyme, competing with its native substrate (trypanothione), inhibitors designed as part of this project will alter the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme, preventing both binding and reduction of trypanothione. Beyond Chagas Disease, TryR is found in other parasites such as those that cause African Sleeping Sickness and Leishmaniasis. Thus, new TryR inhibitors may have therapeutic value for multiple tropical diseases of poverty.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Erica Lynn Hartz (2011)

Synthesis via Green Chemistry and Characterization of Metal and Mixed Metal Anisotropic Nanoparticles for Assembly into SERS Substrates

Very small metallic particles with dimensions that can be measured in nanometers (1 nm = 1 x 10-9 m) can be synthesized by reacting metal ions with extracts of lemongrass and ginkgo leaves. We have produced nanoparticles composed of Au, Ag, and Cu (gold, silver, and copper) with interesting shapes and optical properties, and we will continue research into controlling synthetic conditions and nanoparticle properties. Anisotropic nanoparticles (non-spherical) of Au and Ag have potential applications with a very sensitive spectroscopy called Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS). We wish to investigate the production of anisotripic Au and Ag nanoparticles via reduction with lemongrass and ginkgo for SERS applications. We have also found that reducing Cu ions with lemongrass produces fluorescent copper-containing particles. These particles are extremely small--only a few nanometers in diameter (SFR report Summer 2009)--and are difficult to thoroughly characterize. We will attempt more thorough characterization of these particles in terms of crystal structure, composition, and fluorescence.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Erica Lynn Hartz (2011)

Synthesis of Bimetallic Collidal Triangles for Surface Enhanced Raman

The work proposed herein will investigate the possibility of using colloidal triangles with varying ratios and conformations of Au and Ag as substrates for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Over the course of the summer research term, my student and I will work closely to develop and refine colloidal synthesis strategies in order to produce particles with narrow distributions in size and shape. We will also manipulate the composition of our particles-primarily the relative amounts of gold and silver-by altering starting conditions and by investigating multistep or sequential reduction of the metals. The particles will be characterized by optical spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, electron microscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy, and will be evaluated for surface enhancement of Raman scatter.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Denise Raab Hess (1990)

Matrix Isolation Fourier-Transform Infrared Studies of Hydrocarbon-Ammonia Complexes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Cindy Samet


Denise Raab Hess (1990)

Matrix Isolation Fourier-Transform Infrared Studies of Hydrocarbon-Ammonia Complexes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Cindy Samet


Kyle R Hess (2008)

Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Meldrum's Acid with Nitrogen and Oxygen Bases

Fuding from R&D would support the continuation of hydrogen bonding studies that have been ongoing in my research laboratory for 19 years. In particular, I propose to study the hydrogen-bonded complex formed between Meldrum's Acid and nitrogen and oxygen bases using the matrix isolation technique combined with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. In addition, molecular modeling will be used to support the experimental evidence for complex formation. Meldrum's Acid is interesting in its own right in that its unusually high acidity has puzzled researchers for years. The proposed work aims to understand how this unusual acidity correlates with the strength of the C-H---N(O) hydrogen bond. Most important, however, Meldrum's Acid will serve as a model for understanding hydrogen bonding in more complicated systems such as proteins and biomolecules, thereby moving my research into the realm of modeling complex biological systems.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Cindy Samet


Mark Alan Hilfiker (1995)

Infrared Matrix Isolations Studies of Hydrogen bonds Involving C-H bonds: Cyclopentadiene with Selected Bases

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Cindy Samet


Mark Alan Hilfiker (1995)

Infrared Matrix Isolations Studies of Hydrogen bonds Involving C-H bonds: Cyclopentadiene with Selected Bases

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Cindy Samet


Russell Christopher Holz (2013)

Characterization and selection for association of the binding of BAG5 domains to potential molecular chemotherapeutic target, Hsp70

Targeted molecular therapies for cancer have revolutionized cancer treatment in the last twenty years. Potential molecular therapy target, Hsp70, has proved recalcitrant to small molecule inhibition. We propose to study the binding of Bcl-2 athanogene (BAG) domains to Hsp70 as a route to the development of a biological Hsp70 inhibitor. We plan to select through mutagenesis variants of BAG domains that bind more effectively to Hsp70 for the future design of multivalent Hsp70 inhibitor protein therapeutics.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Peter Graham Howard (2015)

High Resolution Genomic Sequencing of High Grade Urothelial Carcinomas

In the summer of 2014, I will be returning to the lab of Dr. William LaFramboise at UPMC Shadyside hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. The main topic of research in the lab is investigation into possible genomic markers for various types of cancer. The project that I will be taking part in will be an investigation into High Grade urothelial carcinomas (HGUC). Any data that I produce could be used in any publications that the lab publishes. In addition, because I worked in this lab last year and built up a report as a trustworthy and effective investigator, I will be working on the HGUC project with very little oversight from the other investigators in the lab. I will be responsible for analyzing my own data and producing it all from scratch. The work that I will be doing will be reinforcing my understanding of cancer and its roots in genetics, and my lab work will improve my general laboratory technique. The process that I will be following is a very sensitive one, so I will have to be professional in my care and focus in order to succeed.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Peter Graham Howard (2015)

Radar resistant and weather resistant aircraft coatings

During the summer of 2012, I worked in a coating formulation lab in Coraopolis, PA under the direction of Dr. David Vituccio. While on staff there, I was given the project of formulating radar resistant and weather resistant aircraft coatings.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Erik Jonathan Humbert (1994)

New Methods for Generating Organometallic Species

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Michael Holden


Denise Marie Hurst (2003)

Effects of Nutrient limitation on phytoplankton-derived organic matter and consequences for bacterial community structure (Nutrient limitation effects on phytoplankton-derived organic carbon composition in the ocean)

Iron and/or nitrogen limitation constrains the amount of carbon fixed by phytoplankton over most of the surface ocean. A large fraction of this carbon is released into the dissolved organic pool, where it can either be quickly utilized by the microbial community, or stored in the vast oceanic reservoir of refractory dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Consequently, both nutrient limitation and DOC production are critically important components of marine carbon cycles. However, little is known about the relationship between these processes-that is, how iron and nitrogen limitation affect the composition and fate of phytoplankton-derived DOC. This proposal describes research that will explore the linkage between Fe and N limitation, and the composition of extracellular organic carbon released by phytoplankton. Our preliminary data demonstrate that Fe- and N-limited phytoplankton release dissolved carbohydrates with different monosaccharide compositions from those produced by nutrient-replete cells. These changes in phytoplankton exudate composition with Fe and N limitation have potentially large implications for bacterial growth and diversity. This project will be a collaborative partnership between the undergraduate analytical chemistry group of PI Witter, and the graduate biogeochemical and biological oceanography lab of PI Hutchins. The aim of this project is to begin to understand how phytoplankton iron and nitrogen limitation influence the flux and quality of labile DOM entering the microbial food web. This is a research area that remains virtually unexplored, despite the obvious potential consequences for biological production and community structure in coastal and oligotrophic regimes, and for carbon biogeochemistry throughout the world's oceans.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Amy Witter


Denise Marie Hurst (2003)

Electrochemical Investigations of Polysaccharide Metal Interactions in Aqueous Solutions

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Amy Witter


Denise Marie Hurst (2003)

Electrochemical Investigations of Polysaccharide Metal Interactions in Aqueous Solutions

The influence of the trace nutrient iron on bacterial growth and metabolism will be studied using high performance liquid chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPLC-PAD). Metabolic products and their concentrations will be measured and should allow for a qualitative and quantitative assessment of nutrient availability on carbon production in aquatic systems.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Amy Witter


Denise Marie Hurst (2003)

Effects of Nutrient limitation on phytoplankton-derived organic matter and consequences for bacterial community structure (Nutrient limitation effects on phytoplankton-derived organic carbon composition in the ocean)

Iron and/or nitrogen limitation constrains the amount of carbon fixed by phytoplankton over most of the surface ocean. A large fraction of this carbon is released into the dissolved organic pool, where it can either be quickly utilized by the microbial community, or stored in the vast oceanic reservoir of refractory dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Consequently, both nutrient limitation and DOC production are critically important components of marine carbon cycles. However, little is known about the relationship between these processes-that is, how iron and nitrogen limitation affect the composition and fate of phytoplankton-derived DOC. This proposal describes research that will explore the linkage between Fe and N limitation, and the composition of extracellular organic carbon released by phytoplankton. Our preliminary data demonstrate that Fe- and N-limited phytoplankton release dissolved carbohydrates with different monosaccharide compositions from those produced by nutrient-replete cells. These changes in phytoplankton exudate composition with Fe and N limitation have potentially large implications for bacterial growth and diversity. This project will be a collaborative partnership between the undergraduate analytical chemistry group of PI Witter, and the graduate biogeochemical and biological oceanography lab of PI Hutchins. The aim of this project is to begin to understand how phytoplankton iron and nitrogen limitation influence the flux and quality of labile DOM entering the microbial food web. This is a research area that remains virtually unexplored, despite the obvious potential consequences for biological production and community structure in coastal and oligotrophic regimes, and for carbon biogeochemistry throughout the world's oceans.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Amy Witter


Denise Marie Hurst (2003)

Electrochemical Investigations of polysaccharide-metal interactions in aqueous systems

The influence of the trace nutrient iron on bacterial growth and metabolism will be studied using high performance liquid chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPLC-PAD). Metabolic products and their concentrations will be measured and should allow for a qualitative and quantitative assessment of nutrient availability on carbon production in aquatic systems.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Amy Witter


Denise Marie Hurst (2003)

Electrochemical Investigations of polysaccharide-metal interactions in aqueous systems

The influence of the trace nutrient iron on bacterial growth and metabolism will be studied using high performance liquid chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPLC-PAD). Metabolic products and their concentrations will be measured and should allow for a qualitative and quantitative assessment of nutrient availability on carbon production in aquatic systems.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Amy Witter


Tomoko Virginia Jensen-Otsu (1999)

DOE - F&M Holden

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Michael Holden


Tomoko Virginia Jensen-Otsu (1999)

NSF Summer Seminar

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Michael Holden


Tomoko Virginia Jensen-Otsu (1999)

NSF Summer Seminar

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Michael Holden


Jun Jiang (2012)

Electron Microscopy of Nanoparticles Synthesized via Green Chemistry

Green chemistry methods for metal nanoparticle syntheses are less common than for other kinds of chemistry. Green chemistry ascribes to several principles, including use of less toxic reagents, reduced use of solvents, employment of energy efficient syntheses, and reduction of waste. The nanoparticle syntheses investigated by our work will use extracts derived from lemongrass and ginkgo leaves - both are nontoxic substances that are often ingested. All syntheses will be conducted in water, and most will be at or near room temperature. Waste is reduced by the small volumes required for analysis. Preliminary work has shown that lemongrass and ginkgo reduce gold, silver and copper ions to form spherical nanoparticles and nanoplatelets. In order to characterize the size and shape of our green nanoparticles, we must use transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a technique not available at Dickinson College. With CSE funding, we will access TEM through Penn State University facilities.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Meredith Johnson (2018)

Increasing the sensitivity of kinetoplastid parasites to oxidative stress

The goal of this project is to validate new drug targets in kinetoplastid parasites responsible for a number of neglected tropical diseases of poverty. These parasites rely on a unique and specific metabolic pathway that allows for the evasion of oxidative stress caused by the host's immune response. Central to this pathway is a number of multimeric enzymes, which only function properly when two separate proteins come together. By disrupting the association of these multimeric enzymes, the parasite's own detoxification mechanism can be inhibited, validating this new approach as a mechanism for druggability for these infections.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Philip Edward Joyce (1998)

An Organorhenium Approach to Amino Acids

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Michael Holden


Alexander Jon Kasznel (2015)

Characterization of Proteins that Regulate Pre-mRNA Splicing

My research mentor, Dr. Tara Davis' biographical page (http://www.drexelmed.edu/Home/AboutourFaculty/TaraDavis.aspx) indicates that the research in which I will be participating will be focused on understanding and developing methods for the control of mRNA splicing in order to harness it in pharmaceutical applications. The three-dimensional crystal structure of the spliceosome is as of yet unknown. Thus, the goal of the research in which I will be participating in the Davis lab at Drexel University College of Medicine this summer is to begin to discern this three-dimensional structure. The knowledge gleaned from this research will ultimately help to determine the function of the spliceosome in a variety of biological and biochemical processes, particularly with regard to mRNA splicing.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Alexander Jon Kasznel (2015)

Mutational Analysis of PRPF4:PPIH Interactions

Last summer, I began work on an ongoing research project regarding the characterization of proteins that regulate pre-mRNA splicing in the Davis Lab at the Drexel University College of Medicine.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Matoli Vifansi Keely (2007)

Size-controlled synthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles using biomatter

The primary goal of this project was the development of methods to prepare nanoparticles of gold, silver and gold-silver alloys of predictable size and shape using plant matter as the reducing and capping agent in an environmentally-friendly or green process. A longer term goal was to grow these nanoparticles on glass in order to take advantage of their optical properties in sensor technology. Although this latter goal remains to be completed, we have been able to prepare nanoparticles of varying size and shape using extracts of the Asian herb, lemon grass, and the more common herb, basil.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: R David Crouch


Richard Thomas Keiser (1990)

Kinetic and Equilibrium Studies of Isotope Exchange on the Hypophosphite Anion Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Seth Roper


Margaret Mintz Kelly (2000)

Formal Synthesis of O-Methyljoubertiamine

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Michael Holden


Danielle Marie Klinger (2002)

Electrochemical Investigations of Polysaccharide Metal Interactions in Aqueous Solutions

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Amy Witter


Douglas Allan Klinger (1990)

Kinetic and Equilibrium Studies of Base-catalyzed Deuterium Exchange on the Hypophosphite Anion

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Seth Roper


Susan LaRusse Eckert (1994)

The Role of Thrombospondin in Proteglycan Processing

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor:


Amanda Elizabeth Leicht (2002)

Desolvation Kinetics of the CpRe(CO)3(THF) (THF=tetrahydrofuran) Complex

When UV light interacts with the CpRe (CO)3 (Cp = C5H5) molecule in solution, one Re-CO bond is broken resulting in the generation of the CpRe (CO)2 complex. This complex is extremely reactive and the site vacated by the CO ligand is rapidly taken up by the solvent molecule. Before the resulting CpRe (CO)2S (S=solvent) species can participate in a chemical reaction, it is necessary to displace the solvent molecule from the E center. We will investigate the mechanism by which the solvent molecule is replaced by an incoming two electron donor ligand. In addition to determining the mechanism of this reaction, we will also attempt to obtain an estimate of the Re-solvent bond energy by studying the reaction at several temperatires.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Yike Li-Eng (2014)

Matrix Isolation Studies

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: Cindy Samet


Yike Li-Eng (2014)

Matrix and Polymer Soft-Landing Isolation Studies

This summer, we will continue the hydrogen-bonding studies involving C-H---N and C-H---O linkages (the dashed line represents a hydrogen bond) that have been ongoing in my laboratory for the past 25 years. This work, however, represents a new direction in my research, one that began when we moved into Rector. In particular, the proposed studies, which involve hydrogen-bonding "matrix-isolated" molecules onto a polymer surface, provide a key link between my field of matrix isolation and the world of nanotechnology. The work I have completed over these past few years resulted in a very exciting publication (January 2012), which describes this new technique, titled "polymer soft-landing," that my students and I have pioneered. As stated in the paper, this work is "an exciting first step into using the matrix isolation laboratory to probe the building of nanostructures."

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Cindy Samet


Austin Reed Lieber (2017)

NSF 1413074: RUI: Electrophilic Modulation of the Heat Shock Response System

"This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1. Peptide enrichment of affinity tagged parthenolide derivatives combined with MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis will identify the amino acids covalently adducted. Mutation of these residues as well as covalent adduction sites previously published in the literature will be used in combination with kinetic binding, protein refolding, co-immunoprecipitation and electrophoretic shift assays to build a complete picture of the effect of modification on heat shock protein (Hsp) function. The association/dissociation rates of mutant proteins both treated and untreated with electrophilic compounds will be measured against native members of the complex using biolayer optical interferometry (BLI), a recently developed optical method for the measurement of biomolecular interactions. In an approach complementary to the quantification of binding affinity for mutant and electrophile-modified Hsps, in vitro complex reconstitution will verify qualitatively the binding affinities observed using BLI. The effect of mutation and electrophile-modification on the protein refolding activity of chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 will be determined using luciferase and beta-galactosidase refolding assays. Any inhibitory or activating effect by mutation or electrophilic modification of Hsf1 will be determined using electrophoretic mobility shift assays."

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: R David Crouch


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Year 2003
Professor: R David Crouch


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: R David Crouch


Jennifer Lynn Majchrzak (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

That project which Jenn will focus on for the remainder of her time as a Beckman Scholar is the synthesis of cyclopropane-containing adrenergic agents. Although the synthetic scheme is relatively straightforward, the sequence of steps and the precise conditions for each of those steps needed to be worked out. Jenn focused on three specific steps: the Suzuki coupling needed to build the biaryl fragment of the target, the cyclopropanation reaction needed to convert an alkene into the desired cyclopropyl group and the formation of the imidazoline ring required for binding to the adrenergic receptor. By the end of the summer, Jenn had determined that cyclopropanation was best achieved through a "cycling" of the reaction mixture through multiple reactions. Since the reaction does not go to completion and the reactant alkene is nearly impossible to separate from the cyclopropanated product, the best result was gained by exposing the a quantity of alkene to diazomethane and Pd(II) catalyst three times. She also found conditions that will allow the coupling of arylboronic acid to bromobenzaldehyde in high yield. The imidazoline formation is the last piece of the puzzle and when that reaction is developed, Jenn should be able to begin preparing some of the analogs. At this stage of the project, it is difficult to determine how her lab experience as a Beckman Scholar will impact Jenn's future. Clearly, she is already thinking like a scientist, asking questions and beginning to come up with her own ideas about reactions such as why they sometimes fail and developing possible solutions to make them work. She is performing her own literature searches. Jenn has also grown considerably in the lab. She has become quite adept at separating the components of complex mixtures and handling relatively sensitive reagents.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Gerard Steven Mattei (2012)

Reactivity of a Distamycin-Copper Conjugate with DNA

The goal of this project is to evaluate the chemical reactivity of an artificial nuclease designed to selectively bind to and cleave DNA. The compound of interest contains a distamycin DNA binding domain tethered to a copper(II)-containing catalytic domain. Preliminary reactivity studies with plasmid DNA will allow for evaluation of the DNA binding and cleavage abilities of the distamycin-copper conjugate. These studies will be followed by cleavage assays using 32P-radiolabeled oligonucleotides to determine the actual site of cleavage and possible mechanisms for the reaction. Finally, the compound will undergo cytoxicity assays with bacterial and mammalian cells. These tests will assess cellular uptake of the compound as well as its degree of interaction with DNA inside cells. Analyses of this type will ideally lead to a greater understanding of the factors responsible oxidative damage to DNA by copper and should aid in the design of new compounds with pharmaceutical potential.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Kristi Humphreys


Andrew Shriver McGowan (2016)

Electrophilic Modulation of the Heat Shock Response System

"This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1. Peptide enrichment of affinity tagged parthenolide derivatives combined with MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis will identify the amino acids covalently adducted. Mutation of these residues as well as covalent adduction sites previously published in the literature will be used in combination with kinetic binding, protein refolding, co-immunoprecipitation and electrophoretic shift assays to build a complete picture of the effect of modification on heat shock protein (Hsp) function. The association/dissociation rates of mutant proteins both treated and untreated with electrophilic compounds will be measured against native members of the complex using biolayer optical interferometry (BLI), a recently developed optical method for the measurement of biomolecular interactions. In an approach complementary to the quantification of binding affinity for mutant and electrophile-modified Hsps, in vitro complex reconstitution will verify qualitatively the binding affinities observed using BLI. The effect of mutation and electrophile-modification on the protein refolding activity of chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 will be determined using luciferase and beta-galactosidase refolding assays. Any inhibitory or activating effect by mutation or electrophilic modification of Hsf1 will be determined using electrophoretic mobility shift assays."

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Benjamin Kyle Mezick (2005)

Investigating the Strangth and Reactivity of the Re-MenTHF Bond

This proposal is centered around a study of the factors that influence the strength and reactivity of weak metal-solvent bonds. The LnRe-MenTHF complexes will be generated photochemically and the strength of the resulting Re-MenTHF bond will be investigated by substitution kinetics. The weakly bound MenTHF solvent molecule will be displaced from the Re center by acetonitrile and the energetics of this substitution reaction is expected to yield insights into the strength of the Re-MenTHF interaction. The effect of systematically varying the donor and steric properties of the MenTHF ligand (by increasing n) on the strength of the Re-MenTHF bond will be studied. The influence of the steric and electronic properties of the metal on the strength of this interaction will be investigated by varying the ligands bound to the Re center. It is expected that the results of this experiment will allow us to better understand the role of the metal-solvent bond in important chemical reactions.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Benjamin Kyle Mezick (2005)

Investigating the Strangth and Reactivity of the Re-MenTHF Bond

This proposal is centered around a study of the factors that influence the strength and reactivity of weak metal-solvent bonds. The LnRe-MenTHF complexes will be generated photochemically and the strength of the resulting Re-MenTHF bond will be investigated by substitution kinetics. The weakly bound MenTHF solvent molecule will be displaced from the Re center by acetonitrile and the energetics of this substitution reaction is expected to yield insights into the strength of the Re-MenTHF interaction. The effect of systematically varying the donor and steric properties of the MenTHF ligand (by increasing n) on the strength of the Re-MenTHF bond will be studied. The influence of the steric and electronic properties of the metal on the strength of this interaction will be investigated by varying the ligands bound to the Re center. It is expected that the results of this experiment will allow us to better understand the role of the metal-solvent bond in important chemical reactions.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Kim E Mooney (1999)

A Mechanistic Investigation of the Reaction between Metal Carbonyls and Diazoesters

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Erin Ross Mysak (2001)

Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Hydrogen Bonds involving C-H Bonds

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Cindy Samet


Erin Ross Mysak (2001)

NSF 9501428 Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen Bases

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Fall 1998
Professor: Cindy Samet


Erin Ross Mysak (2001)

NSF 9501428 Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen Bases

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Cindy Samet


Alexis N Newton (2017)

NSF 085670: STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Cuong Van Nguyen (2019)

NSF 1413074: RUI: Electrophilic Modulation of the Heat Shock Response System

"This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1. Peptide enrichment of affinity tagged parthenolide derivatives combined with MALDI-TOF/TOF analysis will identify the amino acids covalently adducted. Mutation of these residues as well as covalent adduction sites previously published in the literature will be used in combination with kinetic binding, protein refolding, co-immunoprecipitation and electrophoretic shift assays to build a complete picture of the effect of modification on heat shock protein (Hsp) function. The association/dissociation rates of mutant proteins both treated and untreated with electrophilic compounds will be measured against native members of the complex using biolayer optical interferometry (BLI), a recently developed optical method for the measurement of biomolecular interactions. In an approach complementary to the quantification of binding affinity for mutant and electrophile-modified Hsps, in vitro complex reconstitution will verify qualitatively the binding affinities observed using BLI. The effect of mutation and electrophile-modification on the protein refolding activity of chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 will be determined using luciferase and beta-galactosidase refolding assays. Any inhibitory or activating effect by mutation or electrophilic modification of Hsf1 will be determined using electrophoretic mobility shift assays."

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Minh Huu Nguyen (2011)

Assembling CHEM 131, 132, and 141 Labs for the 09-10 Academic Year

Work with three professors in Chemistry to develop laboratory courses in Chemistry 131, 132, and 141. Witter: Chemistry 141 (Accelerated General Chemistry) during Fall 2009; Crouch: develop some new experiments for the organic chemistry sequence; Humphreys: development of laboratory experiments for the new general chemistry sequence, CHEM 131 and CHEM 132

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Amy Witter


Minh Huu Nguyen (2011)

Conodoguinet Creek and Diesel Exhaust Markers

Conodoguinet Creek and Diesel Exhaust Markers

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Amy Witter


Minh Huu Nguyen (2011)

Investigating the utility of nitro-PAHs and diesel exhaust markers in sediments from the Conodoguinet Creek, Cumberland County, PA

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Amy Witter


Amy Grunbeck Perea (2007)

The Transition Metal-Arene Bond: A Laxer Flash Photolysis Study

I am requesting supplemental funding for this project that is primarily supported through a grant from the American Chemical Society (PRF). As indicated on the PRF budget sheet, I will be hiring two students to conduct research with me this summer. Both will be responsible for setting up the experiment, acquiring and then analyzing the data. I will expect them to prepare a poster detailing the results and with the budgeted travel funds, we will present the results at a national American Chemical Society meeting. In the past, students have found that the projects they have worked on have been beneficial to their growth as scientists. The students are exposed to experiments that involve the use of equipment and techniques that are not formally introduced in the classroom and associated labs.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Amy Grunbeck Perea (2007)

Investigating the n2 bonding interactions between aromatic molecules and transition metal centers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Emily Ann Peterpaul (2013)

Reactivity of a Distamycin-Copper Conjugate with DNA

The goal of this project is to evaluate the chemical reactivity of an artificial nuclease designed to selectively bind to and cleave DNA. The compound of interest contains a distamycin DNA binding domain tethered to a copper(II)-containing catalytic domain. Preliminary reactivity studies with plasmid DNA will allow for evaluation of the DNA binding and cleavage abilities of the distamycin-copper conjugate. These studies will be followed by cleavage assays using 32P-radiolabeled oligonucleotides to determine the actual site of cleavage and possible mechanisms for the reaction. Finally, the compound will undergo cytoxicity assays with bacterial and mammalian cells. These tests will assess cellular uptake of the compound as well as its degree of interaction with DNA inside cells. Analyses of this type will ideally lead to a greater understanding of the factors responsible oxidative damage to DNA by copper and should aid in the design of new compounds with pharmaceutical potential.

Term Funded:SummerSummer 2011
Professor: Kristi Humphreys


Emily Ann Peterpaul (2013)

Synthesis and Reactivity of Copper Nucleases

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Kristi Humphreys


Andrew John Piefer (1995)

New Oxidations Leading to Enantiomerically Pure Products

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Scott Miller


Jamie McNeil Rausch (1989)

Computer Interfacing for Improved Laboratory Instrumentation

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Robert Leyon


Karina Menconi Reed (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

Deprotection of silyl ethers remains an important reaction in synthetic chemistry. One problem with protection/deprotection protocols is the addition of two steps to any reaction sequence. In industrial settings, this represents a problem in terms of expense and the handling of waste streams. Thus, the development of reagents that are non-toxic and reusable is highly desired. One possible solution is the use of ionic liquids. Ionic liquids are organic compounds which consist of a positive and negative ion and possess an unusual capacity for dissolving normally incompatible reactants. In recent years, this property has been used increasingly in organic synthesis with the added advantage that the ionic liquid can be easily separated from the reaction mixture, purified and reused. Thus, ionic liquids are growing in popularity in the chemical industry. Recently, a pair of ionic liquids that contain an acidic residue was described. These "combination" compounds can serve as both reagent and solvent. And, like other ionic liquids, they are reusable. This project proposes an examination of the potential application of acidic ionic liquids to the problem of desilylation of silyl-protected alcohols. We will investigate whether these acids can effect desilylation, whether selectivity is possible and whether the ionic liquids can be reused and, if so, the effectiveness of the recycled reagent.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: R David Crouch


Karina Menconi Reed (2004)

Application of Ionic Liquids to the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers.

Deprotection of silyl ethers remains an important reaction in synthetic chemistry. One problem with protection/deprotection protocols is the addition of two steps to any reaction sequence. In industrial settings, this represents a problem in terms of expense and the handling of waste streams. Thus, the development of reagents that are non-toxic and reusable is highly desired. One possible solution is the use of ionic liquids. Ionic liquids are organic compounds which consist of a positive and negative ion and possess an unusual capacity for dissolving normally incompatible reactants. In recent years, this property has been used increasingly in organic synthesis with the added advantage that the ionic liquid can be easily separated from the reaction mixture, purified and reused. Thus, ionic liquids are growing in popularity in the chemical industry. Recently, a pair of ionic liquids that contain an acidic residue was described. These "combination" compounds can serve as both reagent and solvent. And, like other ionic liquids, they are reusable. This project proposes an examination of the potential application of acidic ionic liquids to the problem of desilylation of silyl-protected alcohols. We will investigate whether these acids can effect desilylation, whether selectivity is possible and whether the ionic liquids can be reused and, if so, the effectiveness of the recycled reagent.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: R David Crouch


Alissa Resnikoff (2018)

Cleavage of fluoroaromatic thioethers

The goal of this project is to develop a new technique for the capture of high-value sulfur-containing molecules from biological systems. The short-term goal, this summer, is to develop a model system that allows for the optimization of this technique. Sulfur-containing organic molecules have a unique reactivity with aromatic fluorocarbons. This has been exploited to great effect by the Pentelute group at MIT for the labeling of peptides containing a specific sequence, but has yet to be used to selectively capture sulfur-containing molecules from complex mixtures. The gap in existing knowledge is whether this reaction is reversible. We will develop a model system that releases a colored dye when the carbon-sulfur bond is broken, allowing for the rapid screening of reaction conditions in a 384-well microplate. Promising reactions will be re-run on preparative scale to verify the selectivity and efficiency of this process. The second phase of this project is to determine whether solid-supported fluoroaromatics can be used to capture sulfur-containing organics from an aqueous or organic solution, and whether sulfurs labeled in situ with a fluoroaromatic tag can be separated efficiently from a complex mixture.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Nathaniel Marc Rickles (1991)

The Interaction between Theophylline and Antipyrine

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor:


James August Ridenour (2014)

Assessing the Sonolytic Denaturation of the Enzyme Pepsin A

Medical procedures such as endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) use high frequency sound waves to produce images. To understand potential molecular effects of ultrasound, aqueous pepsin A (from porcine gastric mucosa) aqueous solutions will be sonicated in an ultrasonic bath. The data obtained will be used to assess pepsin degradation and to determine reactions with radicals (generated by the thermally breakdown of water during sonication) and/or hydrodynamic sheer stress resulting from acoustic cavitation are the principal causes of degradation. Calorimetry, biochemical, and spectroscopic techniques will be used to assess the protein structure and function changes as a function of sonication time.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Keith Krise


Kayla J Robinson (2013)

Investigations of Microwave Assisted Orthoester Claisen Rearrangements

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: R David Crouch


Jeffrey M Rodgers (2010)

Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of the Hydrogen Bonding Involved in Layer-by-Layer Assembly of Nanoparticles: Pyridine as a Hydrogen Bond Acceptor

Funding from R&D would support the continuation of hydrogen bonding studies that have been ongoing in my research laboratory for 20 years. In particular, I propose to study hydrogen- bonding interactions that are becoming important in the field of nanotechnology. In particular, the hydrogen bond formed between an organic acid (called a carboxylic acid) and an organic base (pyridine) is currently being used in the layer-by-layer assembly of monolayers containing nanoparticles. Such hydrogen bonding interactions are not well characterized, and thus scientists in the field of nanotechnology can learn much from the wealth of information that the matrix isolation technique can yield about the nature and strength of this important hydrogen bond.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Cindy Samet


Jeffrey M Rodgers (2010)

High Performance Liquid Chromatograph with fluorescence detection studies

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Amy Witter


Jeffrey M Rodgers (2010)

SACP--Investigating the diversity of glycosylation in marine bacteria

Many secreted and cell-surface proteins in mammals and bacteria are glycoproteins. Glycoproteins are proteins in which multiple sugar residues are covalently attached to the protein backbone through an asparagine or serine residue. Because sugar attachment often occurs through a nitrogen atom, the sugars are referred to as N-linked glycans. The structures of N-linked glycans are complex and as a result, their biological functions were largely ignored until recently. This project involves teaching two undergraduates the analytical methods for characterizing N-linked glycans in a model organism, marine bacteria. Marine bacteria are chosen because they grow quickly, and because I have an on-going collaboration with a colleague who is an expert in marine microbiology. Additionally, their genomes have recently been sequenced, allowing us to ask broader questions based on preliminary results from these studies.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Amy Witter


Demetria Ariadne Ruhl (2020)

In vivo reaction monitoring with a fluoride-sensitive riboswitch

The goal of this project is to determine if an RNA aptamer (riboswitch) may be used to monitor the progress of an unnatural chemical reaction occurring inside living cells. Peptides containing the uniquely reactive sulfhydryl group (-SH) will be expressed in E. coli. These sulfhydryl groups, when part of a particular amino acid sequence, are known to react with certain organic tag molecules in a manner that generates fluoride ions (F-). While this reaction has been successfully optimized in cell lysates and extracts, it has yet to be observed inside a living cell. Using a sequence derived from the fluoride-binding crcB RNA motif combined with red fluorescent protein (mRFP1), this will provide a simple colorimetric indication of reaction progress.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Matthew Joseph Sansevere (2016)

Development of new Trypanothione Reductase Inhibitors as Potential Therapeutics for Chagas Disease

This research aims to develop new treatments for Chagas Disease, a parasitic infection that affects approximately 300,000 Americans. Current drugs for Chagas have limited efficacy and numerous side effects. Trypanothione Reductase (TryR) is an enzyme unique to the parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, that causes Chagas, and is essential for its survival. Inhibitors of TryR are an emerging class of new drugs for Chagas. This research will develop new TryR inhibitors that operate through a different mechanism than existing inhibitors. While current inhibitors target the active site of this enzyme, competing with its native substrate (trypanothione), inhibitors designed as part of this project will alter the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme, preventing both binding and reduction of trypanothione. Beyond Chagas Disease, TryR is found in other parasites such as those that cause African Sleeping Sickness and Leishmaniasis. Thus, new TryR inhibitors may have therapeutic value for multiple tropical diseases of poverty.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Robert Michael Sansevere (2014)

Microwave Organic Synthesis

Term Funded: 2013
Professor: R David Crouch


Chalise Saunders (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Michael Holden


Michael Joseph Scanish (2001)

Desolvation Kinetics of the CpRe(CO)2S(S=Solvent) complex: A Laser Flash Photolysis Study

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Michael Joseph Scanish (2001)

Determination of the nature of the oxidizing species generated by the Fenton reaction and its rate and mechanism of formation in aqueous and non-aqueous media.

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Katrina Louise Schulberg (2001)

The Rate of Methoxide Addition of Substituted (cyclopentadienyliron)arenes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Michael Holden


Andrew Ford Schwerin (2004)

Studies Towards the Synthesis of Metal-based Anti-malarial agents

Over the course of the last decade, a new subdiscipline of chemistry has emerged. This new field, given the name bioorganometallic chemistry, deals with the study of the biological chemistry of compounds containing metal carbon bonds. A number of systems have been studied, including an iron-containing tamoxifen derivative, envisioned as a possible treatment for breast cancer; a triosmium carbonyl-based cluster that has shown to be a useful telomerase inhibitor and technicium carbonyl-based compounds that are useful in biological imaging processes. Another interesting observation has been the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene (organoiron) moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity. The proposal details a project in which studies will be undertaken to move towards the synthesis of a metal-based derivative of the anti-malarial agent isoprophyl[(4-chlorophenyl)amino]iminomethylcarbamimidate.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Michael Holden


Andrew Ford Schwerin (2004)

Studies Towards the Synthesis of Metal-based Anti-malarial agents

Over the course of the last decade, a new subdiscipline of chemistry has emerged. This new field, given the name bioorganometallic chemistry, deals with the study of the biological chemistry of compounds containing metal carbon bonds. A number of systems have been studied, including an iron-containing tamoxifen derivative, envisioned as a possible treatment for breast cancer; a triosmium carbonyl-based cluster that has shown to be a useful telomerase inhibitor and technicium carbonyl-based compounds that are useful in biological imaging processes. Another interesting observation has been the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene (organoiron) moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity. The proposal details a project in which studies will be undertaken to move towards the synthesis of a metal-based derivative of the anti-malarial agent isoprophyl[(4-chlorophenyl)amino]iminomethylcarbamimidate.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Michael Holden


Amelia Rose Shillingsburg (1996)

A New Approach to the Asymmetric Baylis-Hillman Reaction

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: R David Crouch


Yurina Shim (2009)

Investigating the Interactions of Mononuclear Copper Compounds with Biomolecules

Several platinum and ruthenium metal complexes are in use clinically or undergoing testing as anticancer agents. The development of new compounds incorporating metals such as copper will increase treatment options and mitigate the effects of tumor cell resistance to current drugs. Two copper complexes have been identified that could advance this goal, but additional research is necessary to elucidate and capitalize on the source of their unique activities. Both complexes possess a critical, but poorly understood, ability to recognize and bind to specific regions on DNA. This proposal aims to investigate the interactions of small copper complexes with biomolecules such as DNA and serum proteins to gain an understanding of the fate of copper-based anticancer drugs during transport in the blood and at their final destination within tumor cells.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Kristi Humphreys


Myungsun Shin (2014)

Exploring the mechanism of action of the anti-leukemic drug, parthenolide

Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) occurs in about 1 out of 250,000 people and long-term survival with AML is poor. This project will study how a potential anti-leukemia therapeutic, parthenolide, interacts with cells and proteins. We will use compounds derived from parthenolide to identify the components of the original molecule that are required to maintain anti-leukemia activity. We will also identify the patterns of proteins within leukemia cells that are modified by parthenolide and our synthesized derivatives using activity-based protein profiling. Understanding how the component parts of parthenolide affect its anti-leukemic properties and interact with proteins in cancer cells can guide the development of new cancer therapeutics.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Myungsun Shin (2014)

Identification of Proteins Modified by Parthenolide Derivatives in Leukemia Cells

Some chemotherapeutic drugs are natural products of plants or microorganisms, such as taxol from the yew tree. Parthenolide is a molecule made by the plant, feverfew that has been shown to selectively kill leukemia stem cells; however, its mode of action is not fully understood. We have synthesized derivatives of parthenolide and we will use these derivatives to identify the proteins in leukemia cells targeted by this molecule. Through these experiments, we will gain an understanding of the action of parthenolide in biological systems and its potential targets in leukemic stem cells. It is the interaction with potential targets that gives rise to the potency of parthenolide and parthenolide derivatives as anti-cancer agents.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Myungsun Shin (2014)

Protein Modification by Parthenolide Derivatives

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Myungsun Shin (2014)

Investigation of the cellular action of the natural product, parthenolide.

Parthenolide, a natural product from the plant feverfew, has well documented chemotherapeutic properties. Water-soluble derivatives of parthenolide are currently undergoing clinical trials for treatment of leukemia. Despite these successes, the mechanism by which parthenolide and its derivatives interfere with celular processes in cancer cells is not well understood. Using derivatives of parthenolide synthesized in the lab, we plan to identify the action of parthenolide that contributes to its efficacy as a chemotherapeutic. We will use a chemoselective ligation reaction to label cellular targets of the drug with an affinity tag, biotin for subsequent detection and purification. Further understanding of the mecahnism of parthenolide action will pave the way for development of similar chemotherapeutic agents.

Term Funded:Fall 2011
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Studies Towards the Synthesis of Metal-based Anti-malarial agents

Over the course of the last decade, a new subdiscipline of chemistry has emerged. This new field, given the name bioorganometallic chemistry, deals with the study of the biological chemistry of compounds containing metal carbon bonds. A number of systems have been studied, including an iron-containing tamoxifen derivative, envisioned as a possible treatment for breast cancer; a triosmium carbonyl-based cluster that has shown to be a useful telomerase inhibitor and technicium carbonyl-based compounds that are useful in biological imaging processes. Another interesting observation has been the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene (organoiron) moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity. The proposal details a project in which studies will be undertaken to continue towards the synthesis of a metal-based derivative of the anti-malarial agent isopropyl [(4-chlorophenyl)amino]iminomethylcarbamimidate. To further our knowledge in this new field, a new direction of bioorganometallic chemistry will be investigated, namely the synthesis of ferrocenyl analogs of the biologically active dihydropyridines.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Studies Towards the Synthesis of Metal-based Anti-malarial agents

Over the course of the last decade, a new subdiscipline of chemistry has emerged. This new field, given the name bioorganometallic chemistry, deals with the study of the biological chemistry of compounds containing metal carbon bonds. A number of systems have been studied, including an iron-containing tamoxifen derivative, envisioned as a possible treatment for breast cancer; a triosmium carbonyl-based cluster that has shown to be a useful telomerase inhibitor and technicium carbonyl-based compounds that are useful in biological imaging processes. Another interesting observation has been the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene (organoiron) moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity. The proposal details a project in which studies will be undertaken to continue towards the synthesis of a metal-based derivative of the anti-malarial agent isopropyl [(4-chlorophenyl)amino]iminomethylcarbamimidate. To further our knowledge in this new field, a new direction of bioorganometallic chemistry will be investigated, namely the synthesis of ferrocenyl analogs of the biologically active dihydropyridines.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Michael Holden


Natalie Sue Shwaish (2006)

Ferrocenyl Analogs of Biologically Active Compounds

The proposed research encompasses a rather wide spectrum of chemistry with a goal of discovering one or several practical syntheses of biologically interesting compounds incorporating a ferrocenyl fragment. A primary area of interest is the synthesis of a ferrocenyl analogue of the anti-malarial agent proguanil. Recently, an emerging area of malaria research has been spawned by the discovery of ferrocenyl-based anti-malarial agents. Several different anti-malarial compounds have been subjected to conditions in which a fragment of the carbon backbone has been replaced by a ferrocene moiety. A number of these organometallic species have demonstrated an enhanced anti-malarial activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Michael Holden


Samuel Robert Silvershein (2014)

Mechanisms of CD14 Expression

CD14 is an immune system cellular receptor that plays a critical role in the defense against invading pathogens. It binds primarily to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a component of the outer wall of Gram negative bacteria. CD14 is found as two protein isoforms: a membrane protein (mCD14) and a soluble serum protein (sCD14). Aberrant expression of sCD14 has been associated with a number of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Therefore, a deeper mechanistic understanding of CD14 expression and release from the cell is critical to understand its contribution to inflammatory diseases. Previous work has shown that treatment of immune cells with lovastatin, a drug primarily prescribed for cardiovascular disease that has anti-inflammatory properties, increases the expression of mCD14 while decreasing the release of sCD14 following LPS stimulation. Since lovastatin modulates CD14 expression, this project aims to use this drug as a tool to uncover novel mechanisms of this process.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Tiffany Frey


Zachary Adam Simmons (2016)

Development of new Trypanothione Reductase Inhibitors as Potential Therapeutics for Chagas Disease

This research aims to develop new treatments for Chagas Disease, a parasitic infection that affects approximately 300,000 Americans. Current drugs for Chagas have limited efficacy and numerous side effects. Trypanothione Reductase (TryR) is an enzyme unique to the parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, that causes Chagas, and is essential for its survival. Inhibitors of TryR are an emerging class of new drugs for Chagas. This research will develop new TryR inhibitors that operate through a different mechanism than existing inhibitors. While current inhibitors target the active site of this enzyme, competing with its native substrate (trypanothione), inhibitors designed as part of this project will alter the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme, preventing both binding and reduction of trypanothione. Beyond Chagas Disease, TryR is found in other parasites such as those that cause African Sleeping Sickness and Leishmaniasis. Thus, new TryR inhibitors may have therapeutic value for multiple tropical diseases of poverty.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Jessica Kristine Sinchi (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Brooke Leigh Slaton (1998)

DOE - F&M Holden

U.S. Dept of Education (FIPSE)

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Michael Holden


Brooke Leigh Slaton (1998)

NSF 9501428 Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen Bases

Hydrocarbon-base matrix FTIR studies

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Cindy Samet


Brooke Leigh Slaton (1998)

NSF 9501428 Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen Bases

NSF 9501428 Infrared Matrix Isolation Studies of Cyclic Hydrocarbons with Nitrogen and Oxygen Bases

Term Funded:Spring 1996
Professor: Cindy Samet


Rachel Whitehead Spector (1997)

Synthetic Organometallic Chemistry

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Michael Holden


Rachel Whitehead Spector (1997)

Synthetic Organometallic Chemistry

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Michael Holden


Matthew John Stachowiak (2005)

Molecular characterization of phytoplankton-derived extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced under nutrient-limited conditions

Phytoplankton nutrient limitation has been a major focus of oceanographic research for many years. Recent evidence suggests that macronutrients such as nitrate and phosphate, and micronutrients such as iron, may limit CO2 fixation over large areas of the world's oceans. Nutrients exert both direct and indirect effects in marine systems. Direct effects include lower growth rates, lower photosynthetic efficiencies, and smaller cell sizes. Indirect effects may include biochemically-induced changes to the organic carbon byproducts of CO2 fixation. For example, nutrient limitation may affect the composition and quantity of phytoplankton-derived exudates, called extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), which may change its physical-chemical behavior. Because marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is one of the largest storage reservoirs of carbon on earth, and EPS is a major component of the DOC pool, these results have important implications for the field of marine geochemistry. We propose to test this hypothesis by growing phytoplankton under nutrient-replete and nutrient-limited conditions, and characterizing the physical and chemical properties of the resulting EPS. Extracellular polymers will be chemically characterized using both bulk (i.e. colorimetric) and molecular (i.e. anion-exhange HPLC-IPAD) methods. Physical-chemical properties of phytoplankton-derived organic matter grown under these two nutrient regimes will then be examined using three techniques: 1) size-exclusion chromatography; 2) metal binding assays; and 3) bioassays with marine bacteria. A broader implication of this work is to examine the "molecular packaging" of atmospheric CO2 that is sequestered in marine systems.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Amy Witter


Matthew John Stachowiak (2005)

Flame atomic absorption spectrometer studies

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Amy Witter


Molly E Sternick (2020)

Mutation, expression and purification of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70)

"This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Amie Marie Stewart (2005)

NSF 0406837 NUE: Incorporation of Nanoscience into the Chemistry Curriculum at the Introductory Level

This project sought to introduce nanoscience to a broad cross-section of Dickinson College with outreach to local school systems. The project consisted of three key points, each targeting a different segment of the community: the development of a nanoscience course for non-science majors, the integration of laboratory exercises in nanoscience into chemistry courses required for the majority of science majors at Dickinson and the introduction of a summer workshop on nanoscience for secondary science teachers. The plan of action for this project involved a stepwise introduction of previously-published lab activities, allowing the introduction of newly developed experiments into upper level courses at a later in the project.

Term Funded:Spring 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Amie Marie Stewart (2005)

NSF 0406837 NUE: Incorporation of Nanoscience into the Chemistry Curriculum at the Introductory Level

This project sought to introduce nanoscience to a broad cross-section of Dickinson College with outreach to local school systems. The project consisted of three key points, each targeting a different segment of the community: the development of a nanoscience course for non-science majors, the integration of laboratory exercises in nanoscience into chemistry courses required for the majority of science majors at Dickinson and the introduction of a summer workshop on nanoscience for secondary science teachers. The plan of action for this project involved a stepwise introduction of previously-published lab activities, allowing the introduction of newly developed experiments into upper level courses at a later in the project.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Amie Marie Stewart (2005)

NSF 0406837 NUE: Incorporation of Nanoscience into the Chemistry Curriculum at the Introductory Level

This project sought to introduce nanoscience to a broad cross-section of Dickinson College with outreach to local school systems. The project consisted of three key points, each targeting a different segment of the community: the development of a nanoscience course for non-science majors, the integration of laboratory exercises in nanoscience into chemistry courses required for the majority of science majors at Dickinson and the introduction of a summer workshop on nanoscience for secondary science teachers. The plan of action for this project involved a stepwise introduction of previously-published lab activities, allowing the introduction of newly developed experiments into upper level courses at a later in the project.

Term Funded:Fall 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Amie Marie Stewart (2005)

Use a Bismuth Salt--Silica Gel Mixture as a Reagent in the Deprotection of Silyl Ethers

This project involves the development of an extension of a method that we recently reported in Tetrahedron Letter. In our earlier work, we showed that some bismuth compounds can be used to remove silicon atoms attached to the oxygen atoms of alcohol groups. Such groups make the alcohol unreactive. In complex molecules, it is often necessary to perform a reaction on one alcohol and not another. So, the ability to selectively remove these silicon atoms (or silyl groups) is important. One drawback of our previously-reported method is the formation of a cloudy, white solid at the end of the reaction, making purification difficult. If, however, it is bound to a solid support, the bismuth reagent could still be available to perform the deprotection reaction but unavailable for reaction with water and base to form the milky white solid. The result would be a reaction that is much easier to perform.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Mike Stieff (1998)

Synthetic Routes to Enantiomerically-Pure Vicinal Ciols with C2 Symmetry

Synthetic Routes to Enantiomerically-Pure Vicinal Ciols with C2 Symmetry

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: R David Crouch


Jerone Tyler Stoner (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - The Synthesis of 4-Ferrocenyl Pyrimidines

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Michael Holden


Candice Anne Stumbaugh (2003)

Viability of Bismuth Salts to remove silyl protecting groups

This proposal describes a project to test the viability of using bismuth salts to remove silyl protecting groups. The development of new methods for removing such groups has become increasingly important as the target molecules of synthetic chemists have become more complex. The need for environmentally-friendly methods such as the use of bismuth reagents is of particular importance. Literature precedent indicates that bismuth salts might serve as Lewis acids, facilitating the removal of silyl groups in much the same fashion that zinc bromide has in ongoing work in our laboratory. The goal of the proposed work is to establish conditions by which a bismuth salt will remove some, if not all, silyl groups and determine whether the method allows for selective removal of one silyl group without affecting another such group.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: R David Crouch


Candice Anne Stumbaugh (2003)

Viability of Bismuth Salts to remove silyl protecting groups

This proposal describes a project to test the viability of using bismuth salts to remove silyl protecting groups. The development of new methods for removing such groups has become increasingly important as the target molecules of synthetic chemists have become more complex. The need for environmentally-friendly methods such as the use of bismuth reagents is of particular importance. Literature precedent indicates that bismuth salts might serve as Lewis acids, facilitating the removal of silyl groups in much the same fashion that zinc bromide has in ongoing work in our laboratory. The goal of the proposed work is to establish conditions by which a bismuth salt will remove some, if not all, silyl groups and determine whether the method allows for selective removal of one silyl group without affecting another such group.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: R David Crouch


Trent Fredrick Stumbaugh (2003)

Substitution reactions of the CpARe(CO)2(THF) Complex

The substitution of the THF solvent molecule from the Cp*Re (CO)2(THF) complex by cyclohexene will be studied to elucidate the mechanism and energetics of this important reaction. By adding methyl substitutes to the THF solvent, the electronic and steric properties of the THF ligand will be systematically varied and the subsequent affect on the Re-THF bond strength will be mapped out.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Rehab George Tabchi (2003)

The Baylis-Hillman Reaction Utilizing Chromium-complexed Styrenes

Many organic reactions can be made to take place more efficiently if a temporary metal template is attached to an organic fragment. This proposal details the use of an organochromium system to allow the completion of the Baylis-Hillman Reaction on an unsubstituted styrene. In the absence of the chromium fragment, the reaction will not take place, but the electron-withdrawing nature of the chromium moiety should permit successful completion of the reaction. This project will extend the Baylis-Hillman reaction to a new family of compounds, and will also add to the synthetic repetoire of organochromium compounds.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Michael Holden


Rehab George Tabchi (2003)

The Baylis-Hillman Reaction Utilizing Chromium-complexed Styrenes

Many organic reactions can be made to take place more efficiently if a temporary metal template is attached to an organic fragment. This proposal details the use of an organochromium system to allow the completion of the Baylis-Hillman Reaction on an unsubstituted styrene. In the absence of the chromium fragment, the reaction will not take place, but the electron-withdrawing nature of the chromium moiety should permit successful completion of the reaction. This project will extend the Baylis-Hillman reaction to a new family of compounds, and will also add to the synthetic repetoire of organochromium compounds.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Michael Holden


Pamela Gulden Thompson (1991)

investigating the use of computers in chemistry

n/a

Term Funded:summer 1990
Professor: Cindy Samet


Rebecca Sarah Katherine Thompson (2013)

Organic Research

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Michael Holden


Andrew Harper Tolbert (2015)

Applied Research and Photonics

Research internship

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Elizabeth Barbara Trost (2021)

Mutation, expression and purification of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70)

"This project is part of a long term research program studying the effects of electrophilic natural products on protein activity in human cells. Recently, interest in electrophilic natural products has increased due to promising chemotherapeutic candidates such as dimethylaminoparthenolide. Within this PI's research program, it has been shown that parthenolide derivatives covalently modify heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) in vitro, suggesting that, like other organic electrophiles, parthenolide can modulate the heat shock response (HSR) in human cells. This proposal will decipher how parthenolide and similar electrophiles chemically affect the HSR through covalent modification of the chaperone proteins Hsp70 and Hsp90 and the transcription factor, Hsf1."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Alexander Kevin Tucker-Schwartz (2005)

Ionic Liquids in theDeprotection of Silyl Ethers

Deprotection of silyl ethers continues to be an important step in many organic synthetic schemes. One problem with protection/deprotection protocols is the addition of extra steps to already long reaction schemes and, in industrial settings, the problem is exacerbated by large waste streams and the cost of their handling. So, the development of environmentally-friendly reagents and solvents that can be reused is very desirable. Ionic liquids are organic compounds consisting of a positive and negative ion and possess the unusual characteristic of being liquids near room temperature. In recent years, these chemical oddities have been used as solvents in organic reactions with the added advantage that they can be recovered, purified and reused in subsequent reactions. This explains the growing popularity of ionic liquids as solvents in organic chemistry. Recently, the role ionic liquids in organic systhesis has been expanded with the introduction of ionic liquids bearing reactive groups such as acids. These combination compounds serve as a solvent and a reactant in organic reactions and, like other ionic liquids, they can be recycled. This proposal describes some preliminary results obtained last summer that show that ionic liquids can effect deprotection of silyl ethers. It also suggests some approaches to solve the seemingly competitive issues of obtaining high chemical yields in the deprotection reaction and recovering and reusing the ionic liquid.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Alexander Kevin Tucker-Schwartz (2005)

Ionic Liquids in theDeprotection of Silyl Ethers

Deprotection of silyl ethers continues to be an important step in many organic synthetic schemes. One problem with protection/deprotection protocols is the addition of extra steps to already long reaction schemes and, in industrial settings, the problem is exacerbated by large waste streams and the cost of their handling. So, the development of environmentally-friendly reagents and solvents that can be reused is very desirable. Ionic liquids are organic compounds consisting of a positive and negative ion and possess the unusual characteristic of being liquids near room temperature. In recent years, these chemical oddities have been used as solvents in organic reactions with the added advantage that they can be recovered, purified and reused in subsequent reactions. This explains the growing popularity of ionic liquids as solvents in organic chemistry. Recently, the role ionic liquids in organic systhesis has been expanded with the introduction of ionic liquids bearing reactive groups such as acids. These combination compounds serve as a solvent and a reactant in organic reactions and, like other ionic liquids, they can be recycled. This proposal describes some preliminary results obtained last summer that show that ionic liquids can effect deprotection of silyl ethers. It also suggests some approaches to solve the seemingly competitive issues of obtaining high chemical yields in the deprotection reaction and recovering and reusing the ionic liquid.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: R David Crouch


Katelyn Ann Uribe (2012)

Electron Microscopy of Nanoparticles Synthesized via Green Chemistry

Green chemistry methods for metal nanoparticle syntheses are less common than for other kinds of chemistry. Green chemistry ascribes to several principles, including use of less toxic reagents, reduced use of solvents, employment of energy efficient syntheses, and reduction of waste. The nanoparticle syntheses investigated by our work will use extracts derived from lemongrass and ginkgo leaves - both are nontoxic substances that are often ingested. All syntheses will be conducted in water, and most will be at or near room temperature. Waste is reduced by the small volumes required for analysis. Preliminary work has shown that lemongrass and ginkgo reduce gold, silver and copper ions to form spherical nanoparticles and nanoplatelets. In order to characterize the size and shape of our green nanoparticles, we must use transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a technique not available at Dickinson College. With CSE funding, we will access TEM through Penn State University facilities.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Katelyn Ann Uribe (2012)

Electron Microscopy of Nanoparticles Synthesized via Green Chemistry

Green chemistry methods for metal nanoparticle syntheses are less common than for other kinds of chemistry. Green chemistry ascribes to several principles, including use of less toxic reagents, reduced use of solvents, employment of energy efficient syntheses, and reduction of waste.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Caitlin Mary Usavage ()

Developing New Bioluminescent Sensors for Monitoring Intracellular Interactions

Bioluminescent proteins derived from deep sea shrimp have proven broadly useful in the fields of preclinical imaging and biological sensors. One class of such proteins has been engineered to emit light in response to cross-talk between molecules of interest in cells. Though useful, the current sensors cannot detect multiple signals simultaneously. Researchers in the Rathbun lab will seek to expand the utility of this tool through a process called directed evolution. This project will begin by first accumulating collections of peptide binders and mutant proteins. Peptides will be chemically synthesized, and proteins will be produced in bacteria. Second, each peptide binder will be tested (for bioluminescent light emission) with each mutant protein. Finally, machine learning techniques will be employed to predict the best binders, and the process will repeat until the desired performance is attained. Initially, we will seek to develop two sets of binding proteins that operate orthogonally, to enable detection of multiple interactions in cells simultaneously.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Colin Rathbun


Leah M Wachsmuth (2019)

Identification of potential new drug targets for Neglected Tropical Diseases

This research aims to Identify new drug targets for neglected tropical diseases caused by protozoan parasites of the class kinetoplastida. These parasites are responsible for a number of diseases of poverty, such as Chagas Disease, Leishmaniasis, and African Sleeping Sickness. This project will involve computational analysis of known protein structures in these organisms to identify potentially druggable regions that have yet to be examined by conventional synthetic methods. Another project in our lab is currently dedicated to synthetic validation of one new potential target; we are curious as to how many more we can find.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Jason Gavenonis


Jennifer Burger Walker (2001)

Selective Protection of Alcohols in the Presence of beta- and gamma-hydroxyethers

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: R David Crouch


Heather Grace Ward (2002)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Joyce Whitehead


Xiang Wei (2017)

NSF 085670: STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Grant Braught


Jodi Elaine Wiegand (1999)

A Kinetic and Mechanistic Investigation of the Reacion Between CpMn(CO)2 and Diphenyl Diazomethane

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Ashfaq Bengali


Olivia Harper Wilkins (2015)

Quantitative Analysis of Resveratrol Using UV-vis and HPLC

Term Funded: 2013
Professor: Amy Witter


Olivia Harper Wilkins (2015)

HI Absorption against Pulsars

Pulsars are constant electromagnetic radiations from neutron stars, which are highly magnetized stars that rotate very quickly. Information from pulsars is collected in waves, which have periods equivalent to the neutron star's periods of rotation. This has been used to confirm gravitational radiation indirectly within the discipline of physics. In general, astronomical research allows scientists to learn more about the universe. This can be beneficial in a variety of ways helping scientists learn more about our own solar system and predicting astronomical events that may affect the future of Earth. At the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) data will be collected on site and analyzed at the Jansky Lab from the Robert C. Byrd Radio Telescope, the largest radio telescope in the world and one of the largest moveable structures on Earth. The pulsars will be analyzed to considering galactic HI (atomic hydrogen) emissions from the neutron star. Using various spectra, the absorption of HI will be used to determine properties such as the temperature of the star. More information regarding significance, methods, and the research question will be received upon arrival at the NRAO facility. This complements both of my majors of Chemistry and Mathematics. In terms of Chemistry, this research project considers atomic hydrogen. It also involves analysis of temperature, a property often considered in chemical analyses and experiments. The data analysis and modeling, while not strictly chemical in nature, involves the same critical thinking and general criteria as Chemistry. There will also be write-ups and reports, which will be similar to those in the Chemistry major. In terms of Mathematics, this experience at the NRAO involves a lot of applied mathematics and statistics. It may also involve algorithms that are fundamentally linear algebra. While this research is Physics and Astronomy in nature, it will be helpful in the greater sense of conducting research and critical analysis. Furthermore, physicists have implemented many of the theories and have made many of the discoveries relevant to chemistry. During this experience at the NRAO, I will have the opportunity to visit NRAO headquarters at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to meet with other research assistants where I will discuss my own research and learn more of the scope of what the NRAO does. Furthermore, I will be required to present my research at a luncheon to other researchers at Green Bank. Finally, if my research results in significant findings, it may result in publication or even the opportunity to present my research at the American Astronomical Society 223rd meeting in the winter of 2014 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Olivia Harper Wilkins (2015)

Carbon Chains during Low-Mass Star Formation

The study of organic species in interstellar and stellar bodies is important in understanding prebiotic chemistry in the formation of stars and planetary systems. This includes the study of protostars, which are clouds of gas on the path of becoming stars. Complex organic molecules (COMs) which in astrochemical terms refer to carbon-containing species with five atoms or more are particularly interesting because large molecules often dissociate in the extreme conditions of our Galaxy. Hence the presence of such large molecules is relatively uncommon. By assessing the abundances of COMs and unsaturated organic molecules generally, the chemical and physical structures of protostars can be studied.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Anna Beatrice Williams (2006)

Organic Synthesis on Solid Supports: Application to the preparation of a new adrenergic agonist

One of the challenges in organic synthesis is isolation of the product from complex reaction mixtures. In recent years, methods have been developed in which a small organic molecule can be attached to a polymer bead and after a reaction on the organic molecule, the product can be isolated as a solid. We wish to begin to apply this method - Solid Phase Organic Synthesis - to a project in which a new series of compounds that may have activity as an agonist of the a1A receptor in the human bladder neck. This project is supported by funds from the Research Corporation.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Anna Beatrice Williams (2006)

Design, synthesis and assay ofcyclopropane-containing agonists of a-adrenergic agents

In our previous report, we described work toward the coupling of aromatic rings, formation of the cyclopropyl group from an cz4S-unsaturated nitrile and the conversion of the nitrile into an imidazoline ring. During the summer of 2006, our work on this project focused on two primary areas: completing the study of the microwave-mediated Suzuki couplings with aryltrifluoroborate salts and bringing the individual transformations together into a complete synthetic pathway leading to the target molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Anna Beatrice Williams (2006)

Design, synthesis and assay ofcyclopropane-containing agonists of a-adrenergic agents

In our previous report, we described work toward the coupling of aromatic rings, formation of the cyclopropyl group from an cz4S-unsaturated nitrile and the conversion of the nitrile into an imidazoline ring. During the summer of 2006, our work on this project focused on two primary areas: completing the study of the microwave-mediated Suzuki couplings with aryltrifluoroborate salts and bringing the individual transformations together into a complete synthetic pathway leading to the target molecules.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: R David Crouch


Hanzhi Zhao (2017)

Investigation of the effects of parthenolide on the heat shock response system

Parthenolide, an electrophilic natural product from feverfew, reacts with biological nucleophiles and exhibits many cellular effects. Through covalent adduction of proteins NFinflammatory drug and a potential chemotherapeutic. Nonetheless, parthenolide also adducts other κB and IKK, parthenolide acts as an anti proteins in cells, which can lead to modification of many cellular processes. Using a reactive parthenolide derivative, we have evidence that heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) can also be adducted. The effect of parthenolide on heat shock response has not been fully explored and we propose to evaluate the interaction of parthenolide with the heat shock response system in human leukemia cells. We hypothesize that adduction of heat shock proteins results in disruption of their ability to form the heat shock chaperone complex, and thus activates the heat shock response. In order to evaluate our hypothesis, we will (1) measure the effect of parthenolide treatment on heat shock transcription, (2) identify adducted heat shock proteins and individual sites of adduction using a reactive parthenolide derivative, immunoblotting, and mass spectrometric analysis, and (3) determine the effect of parthenolide on the chaperone activity of heat shock proteins and on the in vitro reconstitution of the heat shock chaperone complex.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Rebecca Connor


Tianju Zhou (2012)

Linking Antimetastatic Acitivity to Reduction Potential and Rate of Hydrolysis in a Series of N-alkyl substituted NAMI-A derivatives

NAMI-A is a ruthenium containing compound currently undergoing phase II clinical trials for the treatment of metastatic tumors. This project will attempt to correlate the anticancer activity of a range of ruthenium containing compounds derived from NAMI-A with properties such as reduction potential, rate of hydrolysis, and energies of frontier orbitals. Prior research indicates that the first two properties may be linked to increased cytotoxicity. However, no direct correlation has been made that would facilitate the design of new drugs to take advantage of this effect.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Kristi Humphreys


Elizabeth Harrity de la Reguera (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Michael Holden


Chemistry, College Farm

Prerana Y Patil ()

Renewable Agriculture: Biogas Digestor, Compost, and Resultant Fertilizer Effects on Crop Growth and Nutritional Content

This Dana Assistantship is proposed to support the EPA grant, Co-digestion of Food Residues and Dairy Manure on a Diversified Small Farm, awarded to Principal Investigator Matt Steiman at the College Farm and Professor Sarah St. Angelo in Chemistry. The Dana student would work primarily at the Farm for the summer under the guidance of Matt Steiman. Daily responsibilities will include running small batch digestion trials, maintenance of the biogas digestor and associated research compost piles. The student will work with Professor St. Angelo on the design and execution of experiments related to digestor effluent and crops treated with various fertilizers. The student will collect metrics throughout the summer for the biogas digestor and compost. Crop experiments will require regular maintenance, timely measurements, and collection/preservation of samples for laboratory analysis.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Matthew Steiman, Sarah St. Angelo


Chemistry, Sustainability

Maxwell Lee (2019)

Phytochemicals

Phytochemicals

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Sarah St. Angelo


Classical Studies

Lars Patrick Arnesen (2015)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Development of database of grammatical structures in Caesar's Gallic War.

Development of online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries.

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Kaylin Marianne Bednarz (2015)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Digitization of Allen & Greenough's Latin Grammar

Digitizing the index to Allen & Greenough, and editing of Perseus XML of Allen & Greenough.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Christopher Francese


Kaylin Marianne Bednarz (2015)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Digitization of Allen & Greenough's Latin Grammar

Digitization of Allen & Greenough's Latin Grammar

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Brendan M Boston (2011)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Editing notes and commentary for Caesar, Selections from the Gallic War, multimedia edition.

Brendan Boston ('11) helped select comments for Caesar Gallic War selections, drawing from existing sources in the public domain; edited the Latin text to conform with the OCT; created first draft of vocabulary lists for Caesar commentary; and digitized many maps from older school editions of the Gallic War.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Christopher Francese


Joelle Taylor Cicak (2016)

Dickinson Commentaries: 4 original illustrations for Nepos commentary.

Joelle Cicak (Dickinson '16) drew 4 original illustrations for Nepos commentary.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Christopher Francese


Hugh Downs (2019)

Critical Edition of Maffei's Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI (1588)

This scholarly project is the first modern critical edition of the Latin work Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI (History of the Indies in 16 Books) by Giovanni Pietro Maffei. First published in 1588, it tells the story of the pioneering Portuguese voyages of the late 15th and 16th centuries, around the coast of Africa, to Brazil, along the Malabar Coast of India, to Malaysia, China, and Japan. It provides a detailed and admiring description of Chinese civilization, and the first substantial reports about Japan read in Europe. Maffei was a renowned Jesuit humanist, one of the most talented and learned writers of his day, and had unique access to Portuguese archives and informants. The work was widely published and read all over Europe for a hundred years or more, but remains without any modern edition or translation.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Christopher Francese


Christina Marie Errico (2015)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Digitization of Thomas Dwight Goodell's Greek Grammar for Schools

Christina Errico (Dickinson '15) worked on the digitization of Thomas Dwight Goodell's Greek Grammar for Schools

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Alice Florence Ettling (2012)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Creation of initial drafts of the core Greek and Latin vocabulary lists, making of map animations for Caesar commentary, adding Allen & Greenough references to Ovid commentary

Alice Ettling (Dickinson '12) created the initial drafts of the core Greek and Latin vocabulary lists, made map animations for Caesar commentary, added Allen & Greenough references to Ovid commentary

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Christopher Francese


Alice Florence Ettling (2012)

Dickinson Commentaries: Creation of Google Earth map animations to go with the Caesar Gallic War selections. Adding of links to Allen & Greenough's Latin grammar.

In this project the student will help to develop the innovative online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries. Alice Ettling ('11) created the Google Earth map animations to go with the Caesar Gallic War selections. She added links to Allen & Greenough's Latin grammar.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Christopher Francese


Kristin Elaine Fanciullacci (2009)

Emotional display in Roman elegy

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Meghan Reedy


Lara T Frymark (2012)

Dickinson College Commentaries: editing of core vocabularies, running lists for Cicero Pro Caelio, uploading and formating of content for Ovid, Amores 1

In this project the student will help to develop the innovative online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries. Derek Frymark (Dickinson '12) edited core vocabularies, worked on running lists for Cicero Pro Caelio, and uploaded and formatted content to Ovid commentary

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Christopher Francese


Lara T Frymark (2012)

An index for "Ancient Rome: An Anthology of Sources" by Christopher Francese

Derek Frymark (Dickinson '12) made spreadsheets for the core vocabularies, including frequency data, compiled index for Francese's book Ancient Rome: An Anthology of Sources.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Christopher Francese


Lara T Frymark (2012)

Dickinson College Commentary: Digitization of Henry Frieze's Vergilian Dictionary

Classics Summer Research Assistantship •Derek Frymark (Dickinson '12) worked on the digitization of Henry Frieze's Vergilian Dictionary.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Lara T Frymark (2012)

Dickinson College Commentaries: creation of vocabulary lists for the Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin; adding satellite map imagery.

In this project the student will help to develop the innovative online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries. Derek Frymark ('11) created the first draft of the vocabulary lists for the Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin, and added satellite map imagery.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Christopher Francese


Sai R S M Grandhi (2017)

Creation of module in Drupal 8 that allows for the use of Annotator by Hypothesis.

A third student will work under Todd Bryant to create module in Drupal 8 that allows for the use of Annotator by Hypothes.is in the Drupal platform. This module will allow for a sustainable, customizable vehicle for your project and for other text annotation projects at Dickinson and beyond.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Todd Bryant


Catalina Teodora Ionescu (2019)

The Rise of the Roman Republic: A Gaming Simulation

We propose to create a simulation of the expansion of Rome throughout the Italian peninsula using the game Civilization VI. Grounded on thorough research into the primary literary sources, the material record, and recent scholarship, the finished simulation will present the gamer with a historical simulation - accurate as far as the technology allows - in which players will have to consider social, economic, and technological factors of Rome's expansion while trying to replicate their rise to dominance. To create the simulation the students will need to modify the historical simulation and evaluate how accurately the resulting modification illustrates our best understanding of history. I will direct the students' research, and Todd Bryant will supervise their creation and modification of the simulation. We expect several concrete outcomes from the project.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Scott Farrington


Seth Andrew Levin (2019)

Latin-Chinese Dictionary Project

The students will begin digitization of the Latin-Chinese dictionary of Joaquim-Affonso Gonçalves (Lexicon magnum: latino-sinicum 1841), which will eventually result in a mobile application, and a database that will form an essential part of the infrastructure of the project Dickinson Classics Online (dco.dickinson.edu). Begun in 2015, DCO is intended to provide better access to the Greco-Roman classics to Chinese speakers. One student will edit Gonçalves Chinese definitions to make sure they are properly transcribed and modernized; the other will edit the Latin headwords to make them correspond to those of the base dictionary published by the Laboratoire d'Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes (LASLA). In many cases Goncalves' headwords will have to be split or combined to conform to the LASLA headwords, and in every case the format of the Latin headwords will have to be expanded to meet modern lexicographical standards. This means that the Chinese definitions, too, will often have to be split and combined, and the expertise of two students, one with excellent Chinese, the other with excellent Latin, will be essential.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Christopher Francese


Seth Andrew Levin (2019)

Critical Edition of Maffei's Historiarum Indicarum Libri XVI (1588)

This scholarly project is the first modern critical edition of the Latin work Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI (History of the Indies in 16 Books) by Giovanni Pietro Maffei. First published in 1588, it tells the story of the pioneering Portuguese voyages of the late 15th and 16th centuries, around the coast of Africa, to Brazil, along the Malabar Coast of India, to Malaysia, China, and Japan. It provides a detailed and admiring description of Chinese civilization, and the first substantial reports about Japan read in Europe. Maffei was a renowned Jesuit humanist, one of the most talented and learned writers of his day, and had unique access to Portuguese archives and informants. The work was widely published and read all over Europe for a hundred years or more, but remains without any modern edition or translation.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Christopher Francese


James Michael Martin (2013)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Editing of core vocabularies, running lists for Caesar and Ovid commentaries

In this project the student will help to develop the innovative online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries. James Martin (Dickinson '13) edited core vocabularies, worked on running lists for Caesar and Ovid commentaries.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Christopher Francese


Lucy Anne McInerney (2015)

Dickinson Commentaries: Editing of notes for Aeneid Book 1; uploading and annotating of Eimmart's illustrations for the Aeneid; creation of the bibliography of Aeneid editions.

Development of online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Michael Joe-Sheng Niu (2017)

Latin-Chinese Dictionary Project

The students will begin digitization of the Latin-Chinese dictionary of Joaquim-Affonso Gonçalves (Lexicon magnum: latino-sinicum 1841), which will eventually result in a mobile application, and a database that will form an essential part of the infrastructure of the project Dickinson Classics Online (dco.dickinson.edu). Begun in 2015, DCO is intended to provide better access to the Greco-Roman classics to Chinese speakers. One student will edit Gonçalves Chinese definitions to make sure they are properly transcribed and modernized; the other will edit the Latin headwords to make them correspond to those of the base dictionary published by the Laboratoire d'Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes (LASLA). In many cases Goncalves' headwords will have to be split or combined to conform to the LASLA headwords, and in every case the format of the Latin headwords will have to be expanded to meet modern lexicographical standards. This means that the Chinese definitions, too, will often have to be split and combined, and the expertise of two students, one with excellent Chinese, the other with excellent Latin, will be essential.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Christopher Francese


Elizabeth Marie Parker (2009)

Prudentius' Psychomachia

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Marc Mastrangelo


Daniel Plekhov (2014)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Pleiades/Pelagios/DCC integration, created Arc GIS maps for the Caesar commentary, created table of contents for the Callimachus, Aetia

Pleiades/Pelagios/DCC integration, created Arc GIS maps for the DCC Caesar commentary, created new table of contents for the Callimachus commentary.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Christopher Francese


Katherine Ruth Purington (2015)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Adding of image content to Aeneid commentary.

Development of online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries.

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Nicholas Walter Stender (2015)

Dickinson College Commentaries: editing of vocabulary lists for Callimachus, Aetia and Lucian, True Histories.

Development of online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Qingyu Wang (2014)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Mandarin Chinese translations for words in the Core Greek and Latin vocabularies.

Qingyu Wang (Dickinson '14) worked on Pleiades/Pelagios/DCC integration, created databases for core vocabularies, worked on new interface for Allen & Greenough's Latin Grammar.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Christopher Francese


Qingyu Wang (2014)

Dickinson College Commentaries: Pleiades/Pelagios/DCC integration, creation of databases for core vocabularies

Qingyu Wang (Dickinson '14) worked on Mandarin Chinese translations for words in the DCC Core Greek and Latin vocabularies.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Christopher Francese


Ian Richard White (2019)

The Rise of the Roman Republic: A Gaming Simulation

We propose to create a simulation of the expansion of Rome throughout the Italian peninsula using the game Civilization VI. Grounded on thorough research into the primary literary sources, the material record, and recent scholarship, the finished simulation will present the gamer with a historical simulation - accurate as far as the technology allows - in which players will have to consider social, economic, and technological factors of Rome's expansion while trying to replicate their rise to dominance. To create the simulation the students will need to modify the historical simulation and evaluate how accurately the resulting modification illustrates our best understanding of history. I will direct the students' research, and Todd Bryant will supervise their creation and modification of the simulation. We expect several concrete outcomes from the project.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Scott Farrington


Meredith Ashley Wilson (2013)

Dickinson College Commentaries: editing of core vocabularies, running lists for Ovid commentary, Google Earth maps for Ovid and Sulpicius Severus commentaries.

In this project the student will help to develop the innovative online text and commentary series for intermediate classical language learners, the Dickinson Commentaries. Meredith Wilson (Dickinson '13) edited core vocabularies, worked on running lists for Ovid commentary, and made Google Earth maps for Ovid and Sulpicius Severus commentaries

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Christopher Francese


Siyun Yan (2018)

Latin-Chinese Dictionary Project

The students will begin digitization of the Latin-Chinese dictionary of Joaquim-Affonso Gonçalves (Lexicon magnum: latino-sinicum 1841), which will eventually result in a mobile application, and a database that will form an essential part of the infrastructure of the project Dickinson Classics Online (dco.dickinson.edu). Begun in 2015, DCO is intended to provide better access to the Greco-Roman classics to Chinese speakers. One student will edit Gonçalves Chinese definitions to make sure they are properly transcribed and modernized; the other will edit the Latin headwords to make them correspond to those of the base dictionary published by the Laboratoire d'Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes (LASLA). In many cases Goncalves' headwords will have to be split or combined to conform to the LASLA headwords, and in every case the format of the Latin headwords will have to be expanded to meet modern lexicographical standards. This means that the Chinese definitions, too, will often have to be split and combined, and the expertise of two students, one with excellent Chinese, the other with excellent Latin, will be essential.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Christopher Francese


College Farm

Kalyn Laurel Campbell (2010)

Teaching Garden at the College Farm

Teaching Garden at the College Farm

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Jennifer Halpin


Deanna Victoria Findlay ()

Burpee Foundation: Community Garden Research

Burpee Foundation: Community Garden Research

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Jennifer Halpin


Katelyn Hollie Repash (2011)

Seasonal Menu Specialist

Seasonal Menu Specialist

Term Funded:Fall 2010
Professor: Jennifer Halpin


Anna Maeve Thistel ()

Burpee Foundation: Community Garden Research

Burpee Foundation: Community Garden Research

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Jennifer Halpin


Samuel George Wheeler (2010)

Solar Power Vehicle Design: The Solar Wheeler

Solar Power Vehicle Design: The Solar Wheeler

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Matthew Steiman


College Relations

Todd Matthew Derkacz (2004)

Editorial Assistant for Dickinson Magazine

Editorial assistant for Dickinson Magazine. Student will assist magazine editor in production of the quarterly alumni magazine. The intern also will have the opportunity to write campus news stories, features stories and alumni profiles, and do background research for more comprehensive stories. The student will have the chance to polish interviewing skills-by speaking with story sources face to face and over the phone-and improve his or her newswriting and feature-writing skills. The student also may assist with gathering and writing of class notes and obituaries. The intern will have the opportunity to work with the World Wide Web, since the magazine is continuing to upgrade its Web site. For example, the student will learn to scan alumni photos that will then be posted on the Web. In addition, the student will accompany the editor to a press check and observe the printing of the magazine. The student will be taught the importance of accurate and thorough reporting, clear writing, adherence to deadlines and diligent proofreading. He or she also will be taught to use a stylebook and to use proofreading symbols.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Catherine Kimmel


Kathryn Benner Vadell (2005)

Editorial Assistant for Dickinson Magazine

Editorial assistant for Dickinson Magazine. Student will assist magazine editor in production of the quarterly alumni magazine. The intern also will have the opportunity to write campus news stories, features stories and alumni profiles, and do background research for more comprehensive stories. The student will have the chance to polish interviewing skills-by speaking with story sources face to face and over the phone-and improve his or her newswriting and feature-writing skills. The student also may assist with gathering and writing of class notes and obituaries. The intern will have the opportunity to work with the World Wide Web, since the magazine is continuing to upgrade its Web site. For example, the student will learn to scan alumni photos that will then be posted on the Web. In addition, the student will accompany the editor to a press check and observe the printing of the magazine. The student will be taught the importance of accurate and thorough reporting, clear writing, adherence to deadlines and diligent proofreading. He or she also will be taught to use a stylebook and to use proofreading symbols.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Catherine Kimmel


Community Studies Center

Mariel Carmen Fernandez (2015)

La Calle Habla: Exploring Street Art in Lima, Peru

Mariel's research examined the way street art and graffiti function as expressions of youth migrant identity and resistance in Lima, Peru. Despite Lima's long history of rural to urban migration, rural indigenous migrants are often harshly discriminated against and marginalized within the urban space. Street art opens a space for young first and second generation migrants to carve an identity and space for themselves within the city. The four artists featured in this project, Elliot Tupac, Mome RC, Qarla Quispe and Choco Car, illustrate the diversity of Lima's street art movement as well as the ways in which street art functions to express migrant identity, resistance and social consciousness. Her research was the culmination of a total of 8 weeks of fieldwork in Lima during two research trips in May 2014 and January 2015.

Term Funded:Winter 2015
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Virginia Kopacki (2017)

Passing Muster: Negotiating the Racialized and Gendered "Mythology" of Reenactment

Historical reenactment, also called living history, involves the replication of a period in history with varying degrees of accuracy through dress, events, and research. In spite of its enduring popularity, however, women and people of color have been underrepresented within the ranks of living history. Even as mainstream historical interpretation begins exploring more hidden histories of race, gender, and sexuality, reenactors who fall outside the boundaries of normative reenactment continue to feel displaced and underrepresented. With funding from the Community Studies Center of Dickinson College, and based on nine months of field research, participant observation, and twenty-five interviews with Civil War reenactors, this project explores the question of how and why reenactors navigate the tensions they encounter while reenacting. In particular, reenactors claim "authenticity" in order to police the boundaries of the hobby and keep undesirable groups invisible. Authenticity, although a key tenet of reenactment, carries diverse meanings. Reenactors claim authenticity in order to keep women out of military ranks and to rewrite history through a Southern heroism lens, alienating many reenactors. Reenactment is a space where these struggles of inclusion and exclusion come to the fore, allowing for some voices to be heard through the silencing of others. This segregation and lack of representation has stunted the growth of the reenactment and is a major factor in its negative perception. If reenactors wish for living history to continue and flourish, they must take a progressive approach to history by welcoming women and people of color's contributions in the field.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Kjell Enge


Jessica A Lizardo (2017)

No Longer Silenced: Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic's Educational System and Second Generation Haitian Children

After nine years of not stepping foot in the Dominican Republic, I had the opportunity to reconnect with my country in December of 2015. With an aware and conscious mind through my education at Dickinson, I was shocked because I experienced anti-Haitianism in many aspects, and I was able to analyze such issues from a sociological viewpoint. I saw anti-Haitian signs in the streets saying "Fuera los Haitianos"- "Get out Haitians," segregated communities and schools, and other forms of explicit inequalities that Haitians faced. Using a phenomenological approach, I conducted ethnographic research, using participant observation and in-depth interviews with elementary school students to explore the ways in which their personal lives were affected by the blatant and unapologetic forms of discrimination and racism in the Dominican Republic. My findings show that students of Haitian descent are being discriminated against in their school on a daily basis in multiple ways and the emotional and psychological resources that these students need to cope with such discrimination is almost non-existent.

Term Funded:Winter 2017
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Jiyeong Park (2016)

Family Planning and Contraception Among the Cameroonian Women in Polygamous Households in M'muock Leteh, Cameroon

Cameroon is located in Sub-Saharan Africa and has been facing various problems with maternal health; it has one of the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. In 2011, approximately 782 women died due to pregnancy or delivery related causes per 100,000 live births. Furthermore, the infant mortality rate was relatively high, noting 61 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2012. Additionally, a problem in Cameroon exists with large numbers of unwanted pregnancies due to lack of access to quality family planning services. Faith's research on family planning and contraception focused on Cameroonian women in both urban and rural areas. She collected data through surveys and interviews to study the attitudes, knowledge and perceptions on family planning and contraception among these women. Her research aims to raise awareness on family planning and contraception in Cameroon.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Susan Rose


Nalani Noel Saito (2017)

Whole of Happa: An Intergenerational Study of Japanese Hawaiians

I brought my identities as a hapa, or multiracial, Japanese American into critical dialogue. I conducted ethnographic research, consisting of participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Japanese American men and women, ranging in age from 21-90, and all local to Hawai'i. The most pertinent theme to emerge from my interviews was the significance of familial ties across generations for Japanese Americans in Hawai'i. They were well versed in their ancestors' immigration histories, with the initial push for most informants' ancestors to immigrate to Hawaii being to work on the sugarcane plantations established by American expatriates post-emancipation. The relationship between Hawai'i Japanese Americans and Japan-as both the static ancestral homeland of one's ancestors and as a contemporary, foreign nation-state-is continually re-invented and redefined. I contend that this constant redefinition-of Hawai'i Japanese American identity, relationships to plantation history, and ties to Japan-takes shape through continual movement; from initial crossings of the Pacific, to the planting, cutting, and hauling of sugarcane, to the dances performed at the festival Obon in Hawai'i, which mimic journeys and labor

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Ann Hill


Julia Sanguinetti (2014)

Multiple Immigration Narratives from Patagonia: Re-visiting Argentina´s Immigration Paradigm

This project uses oral history narratives to analyze the ways in which migrants from different origins position themselves in the dominant narrative of Argentina as a country made by (European) immigrants. The variety of immigrants to the Patagonia city of Comodoro Rivadavia and its surrounding company towns interviewed by faculty and students during the Patagonia Mosaics-including European, Latin American, and internal migrants-makes it a unique opportunity to challenge dominant views about immigration and nation-building in Argentina. The Dana Research Assistant will work on interview transcriptions.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Gabriela Uassouf (2010)

Living Positive in South Central Pennsylvania

Since the introduction of antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV, those who are HIV-positive are living longer, and with fewer acute medical complications, than ever before. However, with this increased life expectancy comes a new set of economic, social, and political issues that those who contracted HIV prior to 1996 largely did not have to confront. Based primarily on oral history research conducted during the last two years, the proposed student-faculty summer research will be transcribing and coding already existing interviews, conducting new interviews, and working on three documentary films that address these life issues. Research on living long-term with HIV has been done in conjunction with the AIDS Community Alliance of South Central Pennsylvania. One of the films will be designed for use by ACA with new clients. The second will be designed for use by ACA as a fund-raising tool. The final film is will combine my work on HIV with my work on adults living with cystic fibrosis, and will address what it means to live beyond life expectancy.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: J Daniel Schubert


Frank Charles Vitale (2016)

Carlisle Industrial Indian School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This summer's goals: To digitize research material from the National Archives. Make the digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: James Gerencser


Frank Charles Vitale (2016)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This academic year's goals: • Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata. See attached project description.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: James Gerencser


Xueyin Zha (2016)

Carlisle Industrial Indian School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This summer's goals: To digitize research material from the National Archives. Make the digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Susan Rose


Community Studies Center, Environmental Studies

Wendy Lorena Gomez (2015)

Everyday Energy Justice in Bangladesh

The new forms of energy extraction in Bangladesh alter the national energy debates, and provide an emerging landscape to examine confluences and contradictions related to energy procurement, environmental protection, social justice, human rights and climate change (Bedi 2014). While Bangladesh continues to extract, energy deficits remain an enduring challenge for a large portion of the population. This study aims to examine the everyday energy justice in Bangladesh through applying an energy justice framework developed by Sovacool and Dworkin (2014). Through analyzing the mechanics of energy justice in Bangladesh this projects seeks to understand the availability, affordability of energy, sustainability, energy decision-making, and human rights issues in relation to energy systems and extractions. The summer research will analyze the ways these energy extraction and broader political/societal narratives. With this context we will conduct research on how energy impacts the everyday lives of communities and the general public.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Heather Bedi


Community Studies Center/College Archives

Julia Bray (2019)

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center

The Carlisle Indian School is a major site of memory for Indian nations across the country and for those interested in the history of American education. From 1879 to 1918, over 8000 students were taken to Carlisle in an attempt to assimilate them to the dominant Euro-American culture. The first school of its kind, Carlisle served as the blueprint for off-reservation Indian boarding schools throughout the United States and much of Canada. The lasting and often traumatic impact of Carlisle and the Indian boarding school movement is an important part of American history that warrants continued exploration, interrogation, discussion, and dissemination. For this summer (2018), I am requesting a Dana Assistant to help with the transcription and analysis of correspondence sent by Carlisle Indian School (CIS) alumni back to the school. These letters have just been uncovered by the CISDRC research team that has been scanning documents related to the school at the National Archives in Washington, DC. These letters were found in boxes at NARA that had not been filed or looked at for over 100 years, and therefore have not been seen by other researchers. We will write an analytical/methodological introduction that will be uploaded to the CISDRC site with all of the correspondence (both the original documents in alumni's handwriting and the transcriptions) so that they will be available to others.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Rose


George Harlon Fitzpatrick Gilbert (2019)

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center

The goal of this project is to create a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research and discovery, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The school operated from 1879 to 1918, and it became the model for other schools of its type. Today the school is an active area of research by scholars in various disciplines as well as living descendants seeking information about their ancestors. Our work in developing this resource center continues to support those research activities, aids in teaching about the school and its legacy, and serves communities of Native Americans across the U.S. Activities for this coming academic year for the 3 interns would include: researching the nearly 200 CIIS students who are buried in the local cemetery, as well as other students who died while in attendance but whose remains were sent home; researching and describing files of student athletes, in support of the Carlisle Journeys symposium scheduled for October at the Cumberland County Historical Society (partners on the resource center project); analyzing and describing in detail the Central Classified Files (CCF) of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to allow for online posting; analyzing and describing the content of CIIS publications for online posting; analyzing information regarding the CIIS Outing program (a kind of internship/work training program) for possible development of some online visualizations of student movements during their time at the school.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: James Gerencser, Susan Rose


Ida Lilia Moussavi (2017)

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center

The goal of this project is to create a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research and discovery, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The school operated from 1879 to 1918, and it became the model for other schools of its type. Today the school is an active area of research by scholars in various disciplines as well as living descendants seeking information about their ancestors. Our work in developing this resource center continues to support those research activities, aids in teaching about the school and its legacy, and serves communities of Native Americans across the U.S. Activities for this coming academic year for the 3 interns would include: researching the nearly 200 CIIS students who are buried in the local cemetery, as well as other students who died while in attendance but whose remains were sent home; researching and describing files of student athletes, in support of the Carlisle Journeys symposium scheduled for October at the Cumberland County Historical Society (partners on the resource center project); analyzing and describing in detail the Central Classified Files (CCF) of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to allow for online posting; analyzing and describing the content of CIIS publications for online posting; analyzing information regarding the CIIS Outing program (a kind of internship/work training program) for possible development of some online visualizations of student movements during their time at the school.

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: James Gerencser, Susan Rose, Malinda Triller-Doran


Joelle Leiter Paull (2017)

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center

The goal of this project is to create a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by brining together widely dispersed materials to aid research and discovery, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The school operated from 1879 to 1918, and it became the model for other schools of its type. Today the school is an active area of research by scholars in various disciplines as well as living descendants seeking information about their ancestors. Our work in developing this resource center continues to support those research activities, aids in teaching about the school and its legacy, and serves communities of Native Americans across the U.S. Activities for this coming academic year for the 3 interns would include: researching the nearly 200 CIIS students who are buried in the local cemetery, as well as other students who died while in attendance but whose remains were sent home; researching and describing files of student athletes, in support of the Carlisle Journeys symposium scheduled for October at the Cumberland County Historical Society (partners on the resource center project); analyzing and describing in detail the Central Classified Files (CCF) of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to allow for online posting; analyzing and describing the content of CIIS publications for online posting; analyzing information regarding the CIIS Outing program (a kind of internship/work training program) for possible development of some online visualizations of student movements during their time at the school.

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: James Gerencser, Susan Rose, Malinda Triller-Doran


Community Studies Center/College Archives, Sociology

Linda Rosemary Genser (2017)

Carlise Indian School Digital Resource Center

The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. This summer's goals: • To digitize research material from the National Archives • Make the digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. See the attached project description and progress report for more information about the successful progress of this project to date. Through this proposal, we wish to provide funds for the salary and housing for two undergraduate researcher interns to continue work on the project. We already secured funding for travel expenses for these undergraduate interns and the Friends of the Library Intern to spend two weeks at the National Archives in Washington, DC digitizing material for further processing and upload. We estimate that 34 boxes of material (roughly 15,000 individual pages of content plus 3 boxes of quarterly reports) could be scanned during that time. This adds to a corpus of material of more than 150,000 pages of content digitized to date, serving a global user community that includes both scholars and living descendants of Carlisle students.

Term Funded:Year
Professor: James Gerencser, Susan Rose, Malinda Triller-Doran


Community Studies, Middle East Studies

McKinley Knoop (2018)

Regional Exceptionalism and Identity Formation in Northern Morocco

Since the early 1900s, both foreigners and Moroccans have characterized Northern Morocco as distinct from the rest of the country, in part due to its history, geographical location, and indigenous make-up. Sarah Sloan and McKinley Knoop traveled to Tetouan, in northern Morocco, and conducted oral history interviews centered on regional exceptionalism and identity formation. After conducting sixteen interviews with local leaders and identity entrepreneurs, they analyzed individual identity markers and how intersectionality in Tetouan contributes to perceptions of exceptionalism in the region.

Term Funded:Winter 2018
Professor: David Commins, Shalom Staub


Sarah Isabela Sloan (2018)

Regional Exceptionalism and Identity Formation in Northern Morocco

Since the early 1900s, both foreigners and Moroccans have characterized Northern Morocco as distinct from the rest of the country, in part due to its history, geographical location, and indigenous make-up. Sarah Sloan and McKinley Knoop traveled to Tetouan, in northern Morocco, and conducted oral history interviews centered on regional exceptionalism and identity formation. After conducting sixteen interviews with local leaders and identity entrepreneurs, they analyzed individual identity markers and how intersectionality in Tetouan contributes to perceptions of exceptionalism in the region.

Term Funded:Winter Break 2018
Professor: David Commins, Shalom Staub


Computer Science

Ashir Aseesh Borah (2019)

Security in the Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology and is expected to connect billions of objects to the Internet that were never envisioned to be connected before. IoT devices can generate, exchange, and use information with minimum human participation. These devices are generally constrained in their memory, power supply, processing power and communication bandwidth. Given the constraints of IoT devices, protocols used for communication or security in the traditional Internet cannot be directly utilized in an IoT network. New protocols such as the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and the Message Queuing Telemetry protocol (MQTT) have been standardized to support data transmission between constrained devices in the IoT. However, these protocols do not implement security. The goal of this project is to determine potential security issues in IoT networks and propose a solution to achieve end-to-end security. The proposed solutions will be experimentally evaluated in a real IoT testbed.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Farhan Siddiqui


Ashir Aseesh Borah (2019)

Self-Adaptive Chaotic Mutation Operators in Evolutionary Computation

Evolutionary computation (EC) uses models of natural evolutionary processes to find solutions to difficult computational problems. Traditional EC methods use Gaussian distributed pseudo-random numbers to simulate the mutations that occur during reproduction. Research by others has shown that the performance of EC can be improved both by using self-adaptive mutation, which allows evolution to modify the way mutation are performed over time, and by using values generated by chaotic mathematical functions in place of Gaussian distributed pseudo-random values. This project aims to combine those approaches. We will design a variety of novel self-adaptive mutation operators based on chaotic mathematical functions and compare the performance of EC algorithms using them to that of more traditional EC algorithms.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Grant Braught


Boosung Kim ()

Visualization techniques for deep neural networks

We examine methods of visualizing deep neural networks, especially convolutional neural networks. We visualize both of the filters employed in various network layers and image patches from which strong responses for these filters were derived. The goal is to improve public understanding of recent developments in artificial intelligence by explaining certain aspects of deep neural networks to a general audience.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: John MacCormick


James David Midkiff (2017)

Investigating the Effects of Tool Design on Student Unit Testing Behavior

In software development unit testing refers to the practice of iterative software development in which small tests are created for each small piece of code that is written. My CS colleagues and I integrated unit testing into our introductory computer science course (COMP131) as part of an NSF funded project (DUE-0511264). We adopted two excellent and widely used tools that support unit testing: BlueJ and Web-CAT. BlueJ is a programming environment designed for use by beginning students. Web-CAT provides students with on-demand feedback about the quality of their code and tests. While, we have found BlueJ and Web-CAT to be excellent tools, we have also observed elements of their operation that allow or even reward poor or unproductive testing behaviors. This project aims to make and assess the effectiveness of modifications to BlueJ and Web-CAT that better encourage students to use effective unit testing behaviors.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Grant Braught


James David Midkiff (2017)

Investigating the Effects of Tool Design on Student Unit Testing Behavior

"Professsor Braught and I completed two main projects this summer: we analyzed the effects of a modification to BlueJ, a java learning environment, on student coding behavior and created a plugin for Web-CAT, a grading software. Both applications are used in the introductory computer science course (COMP131). We coded and ran tools that collected data on a year of student work submitted through BlueJ. Professor Braught continued to analyze the data using R, a statistical computing language. Our preliminary analysis led us to three significant findings. First, students using the new, modified BlueJ are less likely to use incorrect test assertions on the initial submission of test methods on Lab Exams. Second, students using the new, modified BlueJ write, on average, 10 percent less code than unmodified BlueJ users while reaching the same code correctness and test coverage levels. And lastly, students using the new BlueJ have a higher percentage of correct tests in their first and final submissions. These findings support the use of the modified BlueJ, but we believe another semester of data, using the new grading software, will lead us to more conclusive answers. Also, we collaborated on a grading plug-in for Web-CAT. This plug-in was designed to give students better feedback on their code and better fit their work flow. We compiled information based on their tests, coverage information, and code correctness and created three tables to display the information for each student submitted class. We hope to implement this plugin into the fall 2016 semester. "

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Grant Braught


James David Midkiff (2017)

Investigating the Effects of Tool Design on Student Unit Testing Behavior

This project is a continuing effort to measure the effectiveness of modifications to Web-CAT in encouraging students to use effective software testing behaviors. Web-CAT is an on-line tool that provides introductory CS students with frequent and on-demand feedback about the quality of their code and tests. My CS colleagues and I integrated Web-CAT into our introductory course (COMP131) in 2006 as part of an NSF funded project (DUE-0511264). Supported by a Summer '15 Dana Research Assistant, James Midkiff, we have produced a modified version of Web-CAT that we believe will encourage students to adopt more effective testing behaviors. This Dana Research Assistantship will support deployment of our modified Web-CAT in COMP131. James, as the primary coder of the modified Web-CAT, will troubleshoot, maintain and enhance his implementation. In addition, James and I will plan data collection and analysis (to occur in Summer '16) to assess the effectiveness of the modified Web-CAT in comparison to the original.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Grant Braught


Hoang Viet Vo ()

An analysis of object recognition systems for the automatic detection and localization of basking rattlesnakes

We perform automatic detection of basking rattlesnakes from a set of images taken daily over a year at a site in Colorado, United States. The goal is to explore different object recognition and localization models such as YOLO and Mask-RCNN and determine which one will produce the highest accuracy on the given data set. We also perform a statistical analysis of the snake recognition model as a baseline for predicting the number of basking rattlesnakes and the time of the day that they appear.

Term Funded:Spring, Fall 2021
Professor: John MacCormick


Director of Multicultural Affairs

Gregory Vance Poff (1993)

Program Development Issues on Diversity

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor:


Earth Sciences

Hiba Aoid (2021)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Evan Sebastian Bechtel ()

NSF Collaborative Research: Network Cluster: Bedrock controls on the deep critical zone, landscapes, and ecosystems

NSF Collaborative Research: Network Cluster: Bedrock controls on the deep critical zone, landscapes, and ecosystems

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Jorden Hayes


Kendra Elizabeth Bonsey (2019)

Investigation of Lead Isotopes as Chronostratigraphic Markers for Lake Sediments in Northeastern Pennsylvania

Lake sediments are an important, high-resolution archive of past changes in local, regional, and global atmospheric lead (Pb) deposition. In this study, we propose to reconstruct historical changes in the sources of Pb to Lake Lacawac and Lake Giles in northeastern Pennsylvania using Pb isotopes. We will use Pb isotopes to quantify historical changes in the source(s) of Pb pollution to these lakes including ore smelting, coal combustion, and the use of leaded gasoline. Additionally, we will examine these cores for isotopic evidence of Pb pollution derived from the smelting of lead ores from the Upper Missisippi Valley (UMV), an activity that peaked around 1850. If sediment cores from these lakes contain an isotopic excursion consistent with the signature of UMV ores, this excursion can be used as a chronostratigraphic marker to better estimate the deposition dates for 19th century sediments in these lakes. Thus, if present, the UMV marker may be used to better constrain the history of not only Pb pollution, but also the chronology of other environmental changes recorded in the sediments of Lake Lacawac and Lake Giles.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Barry Tesman


Kendra Elizabeth Bonsey (2019)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Natalie Schaefer Cist ()

NSF Collaborative Research: Network Cluster: Bedrock controls on the deep critical zone, landscapes, and ecosystems

NSF Collaborative Research: Network Cluster: Bedrock controls on the deep critical zone, landscapes, and ecosystems

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Jorden Hayes


Ethan James Collins (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Allison Nicole Curley (2019)

Investigation of Lead Isotopes as Chronostratigraphic Markers for Lake Sediments in Northeastern Pennsylvania

Lake sediments are an important, high-resolution archive of past changes in local, regional, and global atmospheric lead (Pb) deposition. In this study, we propose to reconstruct historical changes in the sources of Pb to Lake Lacawac and Lake Giles in northeastern Pennsylvania using Pb isotopes. We will use Pb isotopes to quantify historical changes in the source(s) of Pb pollution to these lakes including ore smelting, coal combustion, and the use of leaded gasoline. Additionally, we will examine these cores for isotopic evidence of Pb pollution derived from the smelting of lead ores from the Upper Missisippi Valley (UMV), an activity that peaked around 1850. If sediment cores from these lakes contain an isotopic excursion consistent with the signature of UMV ores, this excursion can be used as a chronostratigraphic marker to better estimate the deposition dates for 19th century sediments in these lakes. Thus, if present, the UMV marker may be used to better constrain the history of not only Pb pollution, but also the chronology of other environmental changes recorded in the sediments of Lake Lacawac and Lake Giles.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Barry Tesman


Allison Nicole Curley (2019)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William H Dougherty (2018)

Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Nicola Virginia Durham (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Benjamin Julius Eppinger (2020)

Deep Critical Zone Architecture and Anisotropy of Valleys and Rivers in a Northern Maryland Piedmont Catchment as Imaged by Seismic Methods

The critical zone is the thin layer of Earth's surface where rock, water, soil, and atmosphere interact in a myriad of complex processes which support life. The critical zone is hydrologically important because it provides space for groundwater to be stored and pathways for water to move through the subsurface. Below the surface the critical zone is often characterized as a sequence of progressively altered material that starts with unweathered bedrock at depth overlain with zones of fractured bedrock, saprolite, and soil at the surface. Porosity varies greatly within these materials in the critical zone. We seek to learn what controls critical zone thickness and how this thickness varies throughout the landscape of Pond Branch Maryland. We use radial seismic anisotropy surveys to characterize this landscape and distinguish how inherited bedrock textures and structures impact weathering in the critical zone.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Jorden Hayes


James Andrew Fisher (2018)

Unraveling the central Appalachian fold-thurst belt, Pennsylvania

Collaborating with ERSC junior James Fisher '18 we will develop a kinematic model for the sequential development of the Appalachian fold-thrust belt across a classic transect through the Pennsylvania salient. New map and strain data will be used to create a balanced geologic cross section from the southern edge of the Valley and Ridge Province to the northern Appalachian Plateau. This region of the central Appalachian fold-thrust belt is an ideal location to illustrate incorporating strain data in balanced cross sections, because it cannot be balanced without quantifying grain scale strain.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Peter Sak


James Andrew Fisher (2018)

Documenting modern and ancient climate change in British Columbia, Canada

We will study climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on glaciers, soil and glacial deposits, and Hoodoo Mountain volcano. We will use GPS and photogrammetry to measure the locations of distal portions of Twin Glacier and of the Hoodoo Mountain ice cap. These measurements will be compared to previous ones made via satellite images and aerial photos to continue to document rates of ice recession in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. We will complete field characterizations and collect samples from sediments on the north side of Hoodoo Mountain, to look for Holocene ash layers and evidence for soil formation. Finally we will also examine several deposits previously identified as having forming during eruptions beneath ice, to learn how to recognize and characterize these deposits, and use them to help constrain the elevations of surrounding glaciers over the past 100,000 years.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Lydia Kottcamp Fox (2019)

Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Phoebe Joelle Galione (2021)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Ivy Joan Gilbert (2018)

Porosity generation in the critical zone

The critical zone is the life-sustaining veneer of planet Earth where rocks, water, atmosphere, and biota interact. In the deep critical zone, physical and chemical weathering liberates nutrients for organisms and generates porosity for storage and flow of groundwater. Geochemical measurements provide high-resolution 1D profiles of the subsurface and can be used to disentangle the contributions of chemical and physical processes to the generation of porosity. Geophysical measurements can provide 2D and 3D maps of subsurface porosity, but cannot distinguish between chemical and physical processes. By combining geochemical and geophysical measurements, this work extrapolates 1D geochemical measurements of chemical and physical weathering along landscape scale geophysical surveys. This study also tests hypotheses related to the dominance of physical or chemical processes in the generation of porosity in two critical zones with different climate and vegetation.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Jorden Hayes


Alyssa Teresa Greco (2018)

Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Amanda Jean Haddock (2019)

Documenting modern and ancient climate change in British Columbia, Canada

We will study climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on glaciers, soil and glacial deposits, and Hoodoo Mountain volcano. We will use GPS and photogrammetry to measure the locations of distal portions of Twin Glacier and of the Hoodoo Mountain ice cap. These measurements will be compared to previous ones made via satellite images and aerial photos to continue to document rates of ice recession in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. We will complete field characterizations and collect samples from sediments on the north side of Hoodoo Mountain, to look for Holocene ash layers and evidence for soil formation. Finally we will also examine several deposits previously identified as having forming during eruptions beneath ice, to learn how to recognize and characterize these deposits, and use them to help constrain the elevations of surrounding glaciers over the past 100,000 years.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Paige Marie Garner Hollenbeck (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant: Developing New Proxy for Quantifying Paleoseasonality

Developing New Proxy for Quantifying Paleoseasonality

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Marcus Key


Paige Marie Garner Hollenbeck (2012)

Stable isotope profiling in modern marine bryozoan colonies across the Isthmus of Panama

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Robert Irving (2019)

Documenting modern and ancient climate change in British Columbia, Canada

We will study climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on glaciers, soil and glacial deposits, and Hoodoo Mountain volcano. We will use GPS and photogrammetry to measure the locations of distal portions of Twin Glacier and of the Hoodoo Mountain ice cap. These measurements will be compared to previous ones made via satellite images and aerial photos to continue to document rates of ice recession in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. We will complete field characterizations and collect samples from sediments on the north side of Hoodoo Mountain, to look for Holocene ash layers and evidence for soil formation. Finally we will also examine several deposits previously identified as having forming during eruptions beneath ice, to learn how to recognize and characterize these deposits, and use them to help constrain the elevations of surrounding glaciers over the past 100,000 years.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Robert Irving (2019)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Bianca Kapur (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Hardy Kochtitzky (2016)

Volcano-Ice Interactions in Iceland

This project aims to use field photographs to address questions at two different sites in southern Iceland. Structure from Motion (SfM) software has allowed users to create 3-dimensional models of structures from photographs. In 2010 the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in southern Iceland, causing thelower part of Gigjokull glacier on the north side of the ice cap to be essentially destroyed. Using previously obtained photographs and satellite imagery in addition to 2016 field photographs we propose to quantify the glacial change in this location from loss due to the eruption and ensuing accumulation. The second part of this project will be to quantify pillow lava and tephra volumes, also using SfM to determine impact of an eruption on the ice thickness of an ancient, no longer extant ice sheet. These two related studies will provide new insights into past and present volcano-ice interactions.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Hardy Kochtitzky (2016)

Short-term Climate Cycles, Recent Climate Changes, and Volcano-Ice Hazards: Nevado Coropuna, Peru

Nevado Coropuna is a large volcanic complex in southern Peru (15.56 degrees S, 72.62 degrees N; 6,425 m). The complex is approximately 12 km east-west and 8 km north-south with elevation from approx. 4,500 m at the base to over 6,000 m at the highest points. Previous workers have predicted that the Coropuna ice cap will completely melt by 2050. We present a new analysis of historic satellite imagery to test this hypothesis. In this study, ice and snow are classified based on unique spectral signatures including spectral band thresholds, Normalized Difference Snow Index, and Band 4/5 ratio. Landsat scenes (L2, 4, 5, 7, and 8) from 1975 to present in addition to one SPOT scene (2013) are used. Previous workers used images from June and July, which are peak snow periods in southern Peru, leading to overestimates of ice area. This study uses November and December images when snow is at an annual minimum. Annual equilibrium line altitudes are calculated for each end of year image (November/December). The glaciers of Nevado Coropuna were found to be shrinking at approx. 0.5 km2/yr, which is some 1/3 the rate previously published. While this study suggests that the ice cap of Coropuna will persist until 2100 given current rates, water quantity and security remains a concern for Peruvian agriculture. Coropuna is an active volcano, so it poses great risk to surrounding inhabitants from lahars, flooding, and debris avalanches. Our new data suggest that these will continue to be risks late into this century.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Hardy Kochtitzky (2016)

Using lake sediments to investigate climate change at the Coropuna volcanic complex, Peru

We propose to test the hypothesis that lake sediement from a small lake on the western flank of the ice-capped Coropuna volcanic complex in south-central Peru preserve a record of changing climate conditions over the past several thousand years. When the ice-cap was larger in the recent past, it likely was supplying water and sediment to the lake. As the ice has retreated, the sudiment input from direct ice melting should have decreased, resulting in a diminished amount of sediment directly from the ice. Specifically, we anticipate that the ice would have contributed fresh volcanic ash to the sediment input, as many glaciers on top of volcanoes are places where the largest amounts of ash collect during eruptions. We will collect sediment cores from the lake, as well as samples from the present day drainage basin for the lake and from the glacier for comparison to determine if the source of sediments has changed over the life-span of lake's sediment record.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Hardy Kochtitzky (2016)

NSF 1220403 Collaborative Research/RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions - Field Investigations of Pillow Lava Formations in Northern British Columbia

The major goals of the project are to use a range of basaltic compositions to test hypotheses about the formation of subglacial pillow lavas, including models for lava transport within a growing pillow­dominated volcano and the potential for sudden transitions between explosive versus effusive eruption styles. To this end, we are conducting a high­resolution multifaceted study of two different pillow ridges with exceptional three­dimensional exposures: (1) open­pit rock quarries along a single fissure segment on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland and (2) the crest of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. We are documenting the three­dimensional structure, stratigraphy and geochemistry of these exposures to improve our understanding of the formation of subglacial pillow lavas and the hazards associated with pillow­dominated glaciovolcanic eruptions. We seek to address four specific questions about subglacial pillow lava formation: (1) Is the initiation of pillow lava emplacement preceded by an explosive phase?; (2) How is lava distributed along and across the ridge structure?; (3) What are effusion rates during subglacial pillow­dominated eruptions?; and (4) Are multiple eruptive centers active along a fissure segment during a single eruptive episode?

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Sophia Katerina Larson (2017)

"NSF 1251969 Collaborative research/RUI: Quantifying weathering rind formation rates using U-series isotopes along steep gradients of precipitation, bedrock ages, and topography in GuadeloupeNSF 1251969 Collaborative research/RUI: Quantifying weathering rind formation rates using U-series isotopes along steep gradients of precipitation, bedrock ages, and topography in Guadeloupe"

Quantifying weathering rind formation rates using U-series isotopes along steep gradients of precipitation, bedrock ages, and topography in Guadeloupe

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Peter Sak


Gregory Everett Lasher (2011)

Climate Implications for Legacy Sediment Remobilization

Climate Implications for Legacy Sediment Remobilization

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Muhajir Subuur Lesure (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Spencer Benjamin Lieber (2015)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Determining Igneous or Metamorphic Locality Source Rock from Hornblende Samples

I will be working during the summer in the Gems and Minerals Department under the current director Marc Wilson at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who is the first classically trained mineralogist to work for the museum in many years. They have recently acquired two collections totaling some 7700 specimens from only Pennsylvania. With this collection they have a sample of every mineral in the state. Being that there are only two people working in the department full time now, there is a great deficit in the manpower to help catalogue and inventory the specimens. As part of my responsibilities I will be assisting with this process. This task will increase my knowledge of my states minerals it is not research, the need then remains to structure a research opportunity from the one I have been given. In the collection are about 70 samples of amphiboles with groups of specimens from localities within North America. My hypothesis is that each regional group will have specific characteristics that will be shared by each of the specimens from that region. The characteristics that will be tested will be the Optical and Physical Properties and analysis via SEM-BEI, SEM-EDS, and XRD. These results will also be compared to previous research conducted on the traits of different amphiboles. I wanted to study amphiboles because there are a lot of modern applications for amphiboles along with the chance to gain a better understanding about how mineral compositions can vary amongst the same types of rocks.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Kyle Robert Long (2014)

NASA GCCE Grant: Implications of Increasing Extreme Climate Events on Nutrient Inputs from the Chesapeake Watershed to the Bay

Major and Trace element geochemistry of sediment cores of "legacy" deposits from behind former mill dams in different land use and bedrock type sub-watersheds surrounding Chesapeake Bay provide insight into the origins of elements with multiple natural and anthropogenic sources. In comparing forested with agricultural and urban land-use impacted watersheds, we find similar Al normalized elemental ratios for pre-settlement and early legacy sediments but increasing trends of nutrient elements and select trace metals through time in the urban and agriculturally impacted legacy deposit. Likely sources of 'excess' P, Cu, and Pb over background are fertilizer, pesticides, and other soil amendments. Pb trends show smaller increases over time in the forested land-use sub-watershed mostly due to the input of leaded gasoline emissions to the atmosphere and ubiquitous fallout to all watersheds. The agriculturally impacted sub-watershed cores show significantly more Pb suggesting multiple sources. Statistically significant increases in magnitude and frequency of peak rain events in the Chesapeake Bay watershed possibly due to change of phase in the North Atlantic Oscillation over the past 40 years may have the unintended consequence of increased remobilization of legacy sediments and their included pollutants from thousands of mill ponds into the Bay. This non-point source of nutrients may be unaccounted for in measurements and models of total N and P fluxes to the Bay, a flux that may well increase over time.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Cecilie Olrik Macpherson (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Allison Marie Miller (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Rachael Mae Moore (2018)

Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Mariah Elizabeth Murphy (2015)

NSF 1251969 Collaborative research/RUI: Quantifying weathering rind formation rates usingU-series isotopes along steep gradients of precipitation, bedrock ages, and topography inGuadeloupe

NSF 1251969 Collaborative research/RUI: Quantifying weathering rind formation rates using U-series isotopes along steep gradients of precipitation, bedrock ages, and topography in Guadeloupe,

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Peter Sak


Thomas Joseph O'Donnell (2019)

Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Jack Olsson (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Michelle Chloe Orden (2017)

Physical Characteristics of Glaciovolcanic Pillow Lavas from Undirhlidar, SW Iceland

Professor Edwards and I traveled to the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland to conduct field research on the Undirhlídar ridge through the Keck Geology Consortium. Our research group's goal was to create a geologic map to describe the ~3 km-long glaciovolcanic ridge that lies between the Undirhlidar and Vatnsskard quarries. My individual project focused on the fracture mechanics present in the cross-sections of thousands of pillow lavas found in the Undirhlidar quarry. Pillow lavas are bulbous structures that form when molten lava comes in contact with water or ice. This interdisciplinary project has implications in both the engineering as well as other geoscience fields.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Michelle Chloe Orden (2017)

Collaborative Research/RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

Pillow lavas are one of the most common types of lava morphologies on Earth, yet compared to subaerial lava flows, the emplacement dynamics of pillow-dominated eruptions are less understood simply because of their relative inaccessibility. The main goals of the proposed study are (1) to establish a comprehensive database of subglacial pillow characteristics for comparison to pillow lavas produced in other environments (e.g., marine), and (2) to test and potentially revise existing models for the construction of subglacial volcanoes. Modern field and analytical techniques will be used to document the three-dimensional structure, stratigraphy, and geochemistry of two different subglacial pillow ridges with excellent exposures: (1) aggregate quarries in pillow ridges on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland, and (2) natural exposures of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. A broad-based research team has been established, comprising US, Icelandic and Canadian scientists working in full collaboration. To better understand the eruptive processes that control the development of subglacial pillow mounds, this study will combine field observations with geochemistry and cooling rate modeling. Field work will focus on detailed structural mapping of lithofacies and measurement of pillow lava characteristics to describe local effusion rates and determine how magma is distributed in the pillow mound. Lab work will characterize the compositions of glasses, bulk rocks, and mineral phases for use in correlating units and constraining physical emplacement conditions (e.g., ice thickness). Independent estimates of cooling rates will be obtained from DSC and CSD measurements to distinguish the origin of the tuff-breccia units (e.g., non-explosive collapse of pillow mounds or explosive fragmentation). The resulting dataset will be a comprehensive summary of the physical characteristics of subglacial pillows lavas that will be used to evaluate current models for subglacial pillow-dominated eruptions.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Katherine Marie Overstrum (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Robert Francis Page (2017)

Evaluation of Effects of Tillage on Soil Tithe and the Dickinson Farm

Evaluation of Effects of Tillage on Soil Tithe and the Dickinson Farm

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Aleksander Perpalaj (2014)

NSF 122017 RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

Pillow lavas are one of the most common types of lava morphologies on Earth, yet compared to subaerial lava flows, the emplacement dynamics of pillow-dominated eruptions are less understood simply because of their relative inaccessibility. The main goals of this study are (1) to establish a comprehensive database of subglacial pillow characteristics for comparison to pillow lavas produced in other environments (e.g., marine), and (2) to test and potentially revise existing models for the construction of subglacial volcanoes. Modern field and analytical techniques will be used to document the three-dimensional structure, stratigraphy, and geochemistry of two different subglacial pillow ridges with excellent exposures: (1) aggregate quarries in pillow ridges on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland, and (2) natural exposures of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. A broad-based research team has been established, comprising U.S., Icelandic and Canadian scientists working in full collaboration.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Niomi Juliet Phillips (2018)

Comparing methods of pre-treatment for removal of organic material for C and O isotope analysis of carbonate shells

Carbon (C) and Oxygen (O) stable isotopes are commonly used to quantify past climate change in order to predict future climate change. For example, the ratio of O isotopes in a shell can be used to calculate the temperature of the environment in which the animal that made said shell lived. Carbonate shells from marine animals are the usual source for this type of isotope analysis. Before analyzing the isotopic ratios, the organic matter from the shell must first be removed. We will test which of the commonly used pretreatment methods to remove organic matter (i.e., roasting, bleaching, and hydrogen peroxide) do not affect the isotope values from the shells. We will use shells from 16 marine species. The results will be of broad interest to scientists measuring C and O isotopes in shells. We will make recommendations on the best pretreatment to use and which are to be avoided.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Marcus Key


Elizabeth Ann Plascencia (2016)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - Pillow Lava Formations in Iceland

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Elizabeth Ann Plascencia (2016)

Glaciers, Volcanism, and Climate Change: Nevado Coropuna Research

Lago Pallarcocha (15.57 degrees S/ 72.72 degrees W; 4,740 m a.s.l.) is a small (15 ha) alpine lake located on the western flank of the Nevado Coropuna volcanic complex in southern Peru. The lake is at least some 20 m deep and has a surface conductivity of 34.8 [mu]S. In June 2015 we collected two gravity cores, 21.5 cm and 26.5 cm in length, from the lake; each was sampled at 0.5 cm intervals in the field and selected intervals are being processed to identify diatom communities and to measure grain-size, both of which will be used as paleoclimate proxies for documentation of local climate conditions. Both cores have distinct light grey horizons between 5.5 cm - 6.5 cm and 3.0 cm - 6.0 cm respectively, which are tentatively interpreted as water deposited, air-fall ash. The ash is suspected to be from the February 19th to March 6th 1600 eruption of Volcan Huaynaputina, which is located 230 km to the southeast in Peru. This eruption is the largest known explosive eruption in the Andean region during the Common Era. The Plinian style eruption had an estimated Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 and deposited ash over approximately 300,000 km2 in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile (de Silva and Zielinski, 1998). Preliminary SEM/EDS analysis of the ash interval identified minerals consistent with intermediate composition ash (Na-plagioclase) as well as possible glass shards. Assuming that our preliminary identification of the ash source is correct, the implied rates of sedimentation are very low (0.13 mm per yr and 0.075 mm per yr), at least for the upper section of the cores. Ongoing work will focus on using the cores to investigate recent changes to the area's local climate in order to inform regionally vulnerable populations that are highly susceptible to fluctuation in water resources from the mass ice loss of Nevado Coropuna. Analysis of sediment cores from this unique location (i.e. remote area, proximity to ice cap) will help inform the limited number of climate records in this region.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Elizabeth Ann Plascencia (2016)

NSF 085670: STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Elizabeth Ann Plascencia (2016)

NSF 1220403 Collaborative Research/RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

The major goals of the project are to use a range of basaltic compositions to test hypotheses about the formation of subglacial pillow lavas, including models for lava transport within a growing pillow­dominated volcano and the potential for sudden transitions between explosive versus effusive eruption styles. To this end, we are conducting a high­resolution multifaceted study of two different pillow ridges with exceptional three­dimensional exposures: (1) open­pit rock quarries along a single fissure segment on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland and (2) the crest of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. We are documenting the three­dimensional structure, stratigraphy and geochemistry of these exposures to improve our understanding of the formation of subglacial pillow lavas and the hazards associated with pillow­dominated glaciovolcanic eruptions. We seek to address four specific questions about subglacial pillow lava formation: (1) Is the initiation of pillow lava emplacement preceded by an explosive phase?; (2) How is lava distributed along and across the ridge structure?; (3) What are effusion rates during subglacial pillow­dominated eruptions?; and (4) Are multiple eruptive centers active along a fissure segment during a single eruptive episode?

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Hayat Nazra Rasul (2019)

Documenting modern and ancient climate change in British Columbia, Canada

We will study climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on glaciers, soil and glacial deposits, and Hoodoo Mountain volcano. We will use GPS and photogrammetry to measure the locations of distal portions of Twin Glacier and of the Hoodoo Mountain ice cap. These measurements will be compared to previous ones made via satellite images and aerial photos to continue to document rates of ice recession in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. We will complete field characterizations and collect samples from sediments on the north side of Hoodoo Mountain, to look for Holocene ash layers and evidence for soil formation. Finally we will also examine several deposits previously identified as having forming during eruptions beneath ice, to learn how to recognize and characterize these deposits, and use them to help constrain the elevations of surrounding glaciers over the past 100,000 years.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Madaline Boardman Ritter (2019)

Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Madaline Boardman Ritter (2019)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Rebecca Katherine Rossi (2013)

Testing a new paleoclimate proxy on a temperate bryozoan from New Zealand

The goal of this project is to develop a method to quantify the amount of seasonal temperature variation in the past. This information will be useful to climate modelers who want to know not just what the mean temperature in the future will be due to global warming, but to be able to predict the future seasonal extremes from summer to winter. The method will be tested off the coast of New Zealand where there are maximum seasonal seawater temperature variations. We will use the shape and chemistry of marine bryozoans (they form coral-like colonies) as proxies for temperature. The sizes of the animals in the colonies as well as the ratio of oxygen 16 to 18 atoms in the skeleton's minerals should allow us to independently quantify the seasonal range in temperatures. The student will learn valuable new lab, analytical, international team work, writing, and oral presentation skills.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Marcus Key


Rebecca Katherine Rossi (2013)

NSF 1039461 RAPID-RUI: Constraints on Fragmentation and Lava-Ice Contact From Ongoing 2010 Eyjafjallajokull Eruption, Southcentral Iceland

Constraints on fragmentation and lava-ice contact from ongoing 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption, southcentral Iceland

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Karuna Mira Sah (2019)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Amanda Grace Santilli (2017)

NSF-1220403: Collaborative Research/RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

The major goals of the project are to use a range of basaltic compositions to test hypotheses about the formation of subglacial pillow lavas, including models for lava transport within a growing pillowdominated volcano and the potential for sudden transitions between explosive versus effusive eruption styles. To this end, we are conducting a high resolution multifaceted study of two different pillow ridges with exceptional threedimensional exposures: (1) openpit rock quarries along a single fissure segment on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern Iceland and (2) the crest of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Amanda Grace Santilli (2017)

Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

The main research points that I focused on over the summer were to create stratigraphic images and analyze the mineral compositions found in pillow lava ridges and quarries in Iceland and British Columbia. I completed the images by using panoramic GigaPan images and Adobe Illustrator to trace out stratigraphic layers and individual pillow lavas in the quarries of Vatnsskard and Undirhlidar. I completed a total of three images that are presumably the most detailed images of this pillow lava ridge and these quarries. This is extremely helpful for analyzing sizes of stratigraphic units as well as individual pillow lavas. The second section of my research was examining thin sections of pillow lavas and determining mineral composition. I examined the thin sections under a microscope and color-coded a separate copy of the thin section based on the minerals on the slide. I then selected points of interest that I later visited with a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Unfortunately I only had the opportunity to examine two of the thin sections on the SEM. However, I was able to confirm or question and then confirm the minerals I saw in the initial microscope. I also took the data one step further and analyzed exact mineral compositions using Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS). The data I collected on the EDS will be written into a paper detailing what is in the quarries and what has happened to the quarries in the past relating to their formation.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Marisa Schaefer (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


William Lyle Seward (2012)

NSF 1039461 RAPID-RUI: Constraints on Fragmentation and Lava-Ice Contact From Ongoing 2010 Eyjafjallajokull Eruption, Southcentral Iceland

Constraints on Fragmentation and Lava-Ice Contact From Ongoing 2010 Eyjafjallajokull Eruption, Southcentral Iceland

Term Funded:fall 2011
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Karan Sunder Shakya (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Dante Angelo Suyosa Tarzona (2021)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Ellen Hope Was (2014)

National Geographic Society: Field documentation of water-ice-lava interactions in the 2010 Gigjokull lava flow

The 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption made global news as ash from the eruption disrupted air traffic throughout much of Europe. The eruption had three distinct products: (1) basaltic lava flows erupted to the east of the main summit at Fimmvorduhals; (2) tephra erupted from the main summit vents; and (3) a lava flow that traveled down the edge of Gigjokull glacier. While the first two products have been extensively studied (e.g. Edwards et al, in review; Thordarson et al, in review), the Gigjokull lava flow has not been documented in detail. The PI and two student collaborators made two recognizance visits via helicopter and alpine trekking in 2011. These visits, while brief, discovered evidence for dynamically changing environments while the lava flow traveled along the edge and through the western side of Gigjokull glacier. We propose to spend 5-7 days in late summer/early fall 2012 to test hypotheses for mechanisms by which intermediate composition lava flows can advance through glaciers. Hypotheses to be tested include: (A) that lava flow paths are largely constrained by syn-eruption meltwater drainage channels; (B) that water-filled cavities can persist as lava moves through the ice; and (C) that evidence for initial water emplacement can by 'hidden' by subsequent subaerial lava flows that effectively bury earlier, subaqueous lava flow phases.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Ellen Hope Was (2014)

NSF 122017 RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

Pillow lavas are one of the most common types of lava morphologies on Earth, yet compared to subaerial lava flows, the emplacement dynamics of pillow-dominated eruptions are less understood simply because of their relative inaccessibility. The main goals of this study are (1) to establish a comprehensive database of subglacial pillow characteristics for comparison to pillow lavas produced in other environments (e.g., marine), and (2) to test and potentially revise existing models for the construction of subglacial volcanoes. Modern field and analytical techniques will be used to document the three-dimensional structure, stratigraphy, and geochemistry of two different subglacial pillow ridges with excellent exposures: (1) aggregate quarries in pillow ridges on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland, and (2) natural exposures of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. A broad-based research team has been established, comprising U.S., Icelandic and Canadian scientists working in full collaboration.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Ellen Hope Was (2014)

NSF1220176 RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions

Pillow lavas are one of the most common types of lava morphologies on Earth, yet compared to subaerial lava flows, the emplacement dynamics of pillow-dominated eruptions are less understood simply because of their relative inaccessibility. The main goals of this study are (1) to establish a comprehensive database of subglacial pillow characteristics for comparison to pillow lavas produced in other environments (e.g., marine), and (2) to test and potentially revise existing models for the construction of subglacial volcanoes. Modern field and analytical techniques will be used to document the three-dimensional structure, stratigraphy, and geochemistry of two different subglacial pillow ridges with excellent exposures: (1) aggregate quarries in pillow ridges on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland, and (2) natural exposures of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. A broad-based research team has been established, comprising U.S., Icelandic and Canadian scientists working in full collaboration.

Term Funded:summer 2012
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Alexander Philip Wattles (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Alexandria Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on soils, permafrost, and modern glaciers. We will measure chemical and physical properties of soils to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in the Canadian High Arctic. We will use ground- and aerial-based surveying techniques to record positions of glacier termini and foreland geomorphology, as well as general topographic variations. We will also investigate permafrost deposits to better understand how changing climate maybe impacting frozen ground.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Jessica Lia Wolfman (2017)

Rates and trends of in situ chemical weathering in a tropical soil, Basse Terre Island, Guadeloupe

The weathering of volcanic rocks contributes to the regulation of the global carbon cycle, the release of nutrients to terrestrial ecosystems, and the sculpting of landscapes. Despite the fundamental importance, we still lack effective tools and key observations to quantify the weathering rates of volcanic rocks and to understand how they respond to changes in landscape, climate and tectonic regime. During chemical weathering, rock fragments in soils commonly form weathering rinds. These rinds can provide an ideal long term record of chemical weathering if the controls on their formation are understood. By comparing weathering rinds from a single watershed, we will understand the controls on weathering rind formation at the micro-scale. In addition, the field setting at Basse-Terre Island provides a superb natural laboratory with large environmental variables, allowing us to study rind formation along steep gradients of precipitation, bedrock ages and relief at the watershed scale. Our combined analysis of weathering rinds will provide a method to directly determine chemical weathering rates, which is of broad interest. This approach provides a direct means to understand the controls on chemical weathering across different spatial scales, by combining weathering rates measured in rinds, soil profiles and watersheds. The gained insights will also help to understand how changes in precipitation affect the mineral dissolution and reaction surfaces in rinds and soils, and how these processes control river chemistry over long time scales.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Peter Sak


Anna Elizabeth Zaremba (2020)

Arctic and Alpine Climate Changes Research Experience (AACCRE): Field research methods to document modern and ancient climate change in Iceland

We will learn a variety of field techniques for studying climate change from a variety of temporal scales, focusing on lakes, modern glaciers, and ancient volcanoes. We will measure chemical properties of modern lakes to document possible indications of changes due to ongoing global warming in Iceland. At selected lakes we will also collect sediment cores from the lake bottoms to be studied as longer-term changes in climate (century-scale). We will also investigate deposits used to determine the age of glacial retreat at Gigjokull glacier via tephrochronology and lichenometry, and we will use photogrammetry to estimate the thickness of Gigjokull glacier near its terminus where it was damaged by a lava flow during the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption. We will continue mapping and documentation of ancient climate change at Undirhlidar ridge, which formed in the last 50-100,000 years during eruptions beneath an expanded Icelandic icesheet.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


East Asian Studies

Rachel M Chen (2000)

Chinese Women at the Turn of the Millenium

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Rae Yang


Kimberly Fairfield (2006)

Project that explores the nature of patriotism and rights consciousness in China

I have been engaged in this project since 1998, by attempting to gauge how ordinary citizens and officials in China treat, in terms of job allocation, access to state institutions, entitlements, and accommodations for physical disabilities, those individuals who have been officially designated as "patriotic exemplars" - mainly veterans and family members of 'revolutionary martyrs' and mobilized soldiers. I have attempted to incorporate some of the more theoretical and comparative literature into my Freshman Seminar, "Patriotism in Politics, Culture and History." I am applying for a Dana Research Assistant to help me accomplish the following tasks: 1) develop the Freshman Seminar into a full-fledged course that I will teach on a regular basis; 2) prepare, by February 2004, a grant proposal to the Fulbright Scholarship Board, which awards up to $20,000 to alumni of the Fulbright program to continue their scholarly activities at their home universities; 3) prepare the literature review for my manuscript, currently titled, "Hollow Glory: the Politics of Everyday Patriotism in China."

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: Neil Diamant


Shogo Nishikawa ()

Robotics and Japan's Aging Society

Opted out of public posting.

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: Shawn Bender


Carol Ann Rynar (2017)

German Users of the Hybrid Assisted Limb

German Users of the Hybrid Assisted Limb

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Shawn Bender


Jiacheng Wang (2017)

China at the Revolutionary Crossroads: Observing Politics and Society through the Constitutional Discussions in 1954 and 1982

In 1954, and again in 1982, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mounted country-wide political campaigns to discuss the draft versions of its constitutions. The 1954 "all- people discussion" occurred only five years after the Communists took over power; the 1982 discussion took place four years after Deng Xiaoping gave his imprimatur to China's "reform and opening up policy." Both of these discussions, I argue, provide us with a unique, and heretofore unexplored, window to observe how ordinary people understood the rapid political, economic and social changes at the time. During the constitutional discussions ordinary people were asked about the state's institutional arrangements, official ideology, citizen rights and obligations and even state symbols. I have been collecting materials about these discussions over the last two years, with far more success for the 1954 materials, which are already archived, than the 1982 documents, which are not. I plan to hire a Dana RA to accomplish three tasks. First, I want to digitize all of the materials I have collected thus far, including hand-written materials from the archives. Second, I have several books in Chinese about early 1950s campaigns that may mention constitutional rights, but I have not had enough time to read them all; third, my RA will plumb internet based sources to find more materials, particularly on 1982. Joanna Wong, a Computer Science major and native Chinese speaker, is the perfect RA for these tasks. Joanna participated in my seminar on "The Consequences of China's Economic Reforms" in 2013. I anticipate that this work will occupy 8 hours a week throughout the year.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Neil Diamant


Economics

Timothy Phelan Bender (2004)

Revised Ten Year Plan for the Hope Station Neighborhood of Carlisle; and Economic Impact and Demand for the Carlisle Theater

This summer research project involves the completion of two research projects requested by members of the Carlisle community. The first involves a report which will update the needs and public policy goals for the Hope Station-Memorial Park neighborhood of Carlisle in light of 2000 census data. It was requested by Chris Gullatta, head of the Cumberland County redevelopment authority. The second includes the writing of a final report regarding the demand for and economic impact of the Carlisle Theatre. Both reports will be based on original research conducted with my Economic Analysis of Policy course this spring, and my co-author probably will be an outstanding current member of that class. As with previous projects of this type, including last year's economic impact study of Dickinson College and a previous study of the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg, significant editing, further data collection, and additional analysis will be needed in order to make these reports valuable to the Carlisle constituencies who requested them.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: William Bellinger


Alexander Patton Bloom (2011)

Book Manuscript on Cuban Urban Agriculture

As the R/D committee already knows, after spending a sabbatical semester in Cuba in the Spring of 2007 studying urban agriculture, presenting several papers at conferences and publishing three articles, I decided to write a book on the subject. The subject itself is both fascinating and timely. It is fascinating because it tells the story of an already besieged, small island country, at least in part, successfully responding to a massive economic crisis (including a food production crisis). The massive economic crisis was brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of an economic lifeline [especially petroleum] for Cuba that had for decades been used to compensate for the economic isolation imposed on the island by the United States of America. It was as if Cuba had been pushed of a cliff and had to come up with a parachute on the way down. As the R/D committee already knows, after spending a sabbatical semester in Cuba in the Spring of 2007 studying urban agriculture, presenting several papers at conferences and publishing three articles, I decided to write a book on the subject. The subject itself is both fascinating and timely. It is fascinating because it tells the story of an already besieged, small island country, at least in part, successfully responding to a massive economic crisis (including a food production crisis). The massive economic crisis was brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of an economic lifeline [especially petroleum] for Cuba that had for decades been used to compensate for the economic isolation imposed on the island by the United States of America. It was as if Cuba had been pushed of a cliff and had to come up with a parachute on the way down.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Sinan Koont


Woo Jae Byun (2019)

Natural Disasters, Household Debt, and Inequality: County-Level Evidence from the United States

This project investigates three related questions: 1) what effect do natural disasters have on household debt; 2) are these permanent or temporary shocks to household wealth; and 3) what role, if any, do these effects have on income and wealth inequality in the United States (U.S.)? This is a data-intensive project. In order to address these questions, we will need to collect, organize, process, and combine data on income inequality, the timing, location, and severity of natural disasters, and detailed data on household debt and its composition, among other things.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Emily Marshall


Mengting Chao (2020)

Entrepreneurship, Minority Games, and the Impossibility of Economic Equilibrium

One of the most important open questions in economics is how to think about economic processes. The vast majority of economic theory uses an equilibrium framework which only predicts the end state of affairs. But how does the system move towards this equilibrium? How stable is this assumed equilibrium? One of the main proposals about how to model economic processes is a theory of entrepreneurship proposed by Israel Kirzner in the 1970s and subsequently developed by him and others over the next decades. We further develop this theory by placing it in a game theoretical framework by using a particularly interesting game called a "minority game" - discovered by complexity theorist and economist W. Brian Arthur, but so far ignored in the entrepreneurship literature. This helps (1) clarify some of the more controversial aspects of Kirzner's theory, and (2) give further structure to the empirical applications of Kirzner's theory.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Vlad Tarko


Tessa Sierra Cicak (2013)

Innovation by London's Water Companies: Internalizing public health externalities

In presenting my research on the history of London's water supply, the audience has always wanted a better picture to help them understand the location of the companies and the extent of competition between them. My intern Tessa Cicak developed GIS maps of London districts and sub-districts with water company and cholera data.

Term Funded:fall 2012
Professor: Nicola Tynan


Patrick James Connolly (2005)

Hilaire Belloc's "The Servile State" and the Political Economy of G. K. Chesterton

This is a continuation of my previous Dana projects studying G. K. Chesterton's political economy and the role he played in the eugenics debates in the early 20th century. This project has expanded in a number of directions. In addition to Chesterton, I am now exploring the economic thought of Hilaire Belloc. Belloc provides a unique insight into Chesterton's own political economy since Belloc's "The Servile State" provides the analytical foundation for a number of Chesterton's arguments. Thus far my intern and I have digitized all of The Eyewitness, all of Chesterton's contributions to GK's Weekly, and some of his work in The New Witness. Now I wish to finish with Chesterton's contributions to The New Witness and, if the opportunity arises, to digitize all of the non-Chesterton articles from GK's Weekly and The New Witness. My goals are to continue mining this digital library for my own research, as well as working to bring it to the web. With the assistance of Robert Cavanaugh's shop and Brenda Landis in particular, steps have already been made in the direction.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Edward McPhail


Patrick James Connolly (2005)

Eugenics and Other Evils: G.K. Chesterton's Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Part II

Gilbert Keith Chesterton's reputation as a novelist, essayist, and critic is secure. His Father Brown mysteries are widely recognized as some of the cleverest in the English language and his literary biographies, especially that of Dickens, are still considered essential reading. On the other hand, his voluminous writings on the social and economic ills of his day are treated with indifference by many and even scorn by others. Yet, in Chesterton's own lifetime he was regarded as a social thinker to be reckoned with. He regularly took to the podium against the leading intellectuals of his day. H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and his close friend and frequent sparring partner, George Bernard Shaw, were but a few of his intellectual adversaries. Out of the many controversies in which Chesterton participated, his role in the pre-WWII debates on eugenics ought to be of particular interest to political economists. Not only does Chesterton demonstrate an uncanny prescience regarding the expansion of the "scientific state" and consequent loss of liberty under Nazi Germany, he was well aware of the seductive quality of eugenical arguments that combined a sense of superiority (due to either race, economic status, or lineage) with the theory of evolution backed by the full power of the state. Particularly illuminating is Chesterton's economic sociology, his defenses of the family and economic liberty, his recognition of the roles institutions and traditions play, his novel explanation of tradition as democracy extended through time and his claim that tradition and democracy are mutually reinforcing. All of these arguments provide the groundwork for understanding the contested terrain of the early 20th century eugenics debates.

Term Funded:Year 2003
Professor: Edward McPhail


Patrick James Connolly (2005)

Eugenics and Other Evils: G.K. Chesterton's Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Part II

This is a continuation of my previous Dana projects (please see the attached copy of my summer 2002 and fall 2002 Dana project proposals) studying G.K. Chesterton's political economy and the role he played in the eugenics debates in the early 20th century. The project this year has faced some set backs. In the fall I had to bring a new intern on board. My previous intern was unable to dedicate a sufficient number of hours to the project. This put the project behind schedule since we had already spent a number of hours in training and it meant that training time would have to be devoted to a new intern. Additionally, I had some difficulty getting good quality source material. The degraded material meant poor quality scans and, hence, poor quality text conversion that required more hands on correction. In spite of all the setbacks, my present intern, Patrick Connolly and I have found new supplies of original source material and have developed a very good working relationship. The project has born fruit thus far and I hope to continue the job of digitizing the rest of Chesterton's contributions to the Eyewitness and the New Witness. This summer I will present results of my on going research at David Levy's summer seminar and prepare papers for presentation at conferences next year. Please see goals given in the previous proposals listed below for more detail. For additional information about my G.K. Chesterton project please see the following Dana requests from the summer of 2002 and the fall of 2002.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Edward McPhail


Patrick James Connolly (2005)

Eugenics and Other Evils: G. K. Chesterton's Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Part III

This is a continuation of my previous Dana projects (please see the attached copy of my summer 2002 and fall 2002 Dana project proposals) studying G.K. Chesterton's political economy and the role he played in the eugenics debates in the early 20th century. The project this year has faced some set backs. In the fall I had to bring a new intern on board. My previous intern was unable to dedicate a sufficient number of hours to the project. This put the project behind schedule since we had already spent a number of hours in training and it meant that training time would have to be devoted to a new intern. Additionally, I had some difficulty getting good quality source material. The degraded material meant poor quality scans and, hence, poor quality text conversion that required more hands on correction. In spite of all the setbacks, my present intern, Patrick Connolly and I have found new supplies of original source material and have developed a very good working relationship. The project has born fruit thus far and I hope to continue the job of digitizing the rest of Chesterton's contributions to the Eyewitness and the New Witness. This summer I will present results of my on going research at David Levy's summer seminar and prepare papers for presentation at conferences next year. Please see goals given in the previous proposals listed below for more detail. For additional information about my G.K. Chesterton project please see the following Dana requests from the summer of 2002 and the fall of 2002.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Edward McPhail


Heather Brianne Davis (2004)

The Economic Impact of the U.S. Army War College

The U.S. Army War College is a unique combination of military base, educational institution, think tank, and historical site. As such, the analysis of its economic effects proved very challenging- One unique aspect of the post is its dual identity. In this paper the terms Carlisle Barracks and U.S.. Army War College will be used interchangeably, although the two have been synonymous for just over 50 years, a relatively short time in the long history of the Barracks.. Another unique aspect is its educational function, which significantly affects the post's personnel profile. Compared to most military bases, the Carlisle Barracks' employees include a large percentage of officers among the military and a very high percentage of civilian employees if local contractors are included. At less than 3%.of a square mile, it is also among the smallest military bases in the nation. This paper analyzes the economic impact of the U.S Army War College through a combination of statistics provided by War College Officials, results from a survey of barracks residents, general statistical information, and models of regional and county economies provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The results are impressive, particularly for a smaller facility. For example, the post directly or indircctly provides about 10 percent of the total income and earnings and nearly 8 percent of the total jobs in the Carlisle area.

Term Funded:Spring 2004
Professor: William Bellinger


Trang Ha Do ()

Measuring the Size of the U.S. State Shadow Economy Using a Dynamic General Equilibrium Model with Trends

he objective of this project is to measure the size and properties of the U.S. state-level shadow economy using a dynamic deterministic general equilibrium (DGE) model. This paper will build on the work of Solis-Garcia and Xie (2018) who perform a similar analysis for international economies. The model has two sectors: a formal economy and a shadow economy. Importantly, the model allows for trends in four key economic variables: hours worked, investment-specific productivity, formal productivity, and shadow productivity. This innovation in modeling will provide estimates that more accurately reflect transitions and magnitude differences in the business cycle. Importantly, the size of the shadow economic activity varies based on the phase of the business cycle. After calculating estimates of the state-level shadow economy, this work will discuss the evolution of shadow economy sector output relative to that in the formal sector. In addition, this project will compare this new measure to existing estimates.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Emily Marshall


Chris Aaron Dumbroski (2007)

The Political Economy of Charles Nisbet

As the first president of Dickinson College Charles Nisbet is primarily known for his role as an early educator in America not for his economic thought. Although unknown to the economics profession, Nisbet's unpublished lectures on economics are of interest not only because of their novelty, but also because they serve to demonstrate the fluidity of ideas. They provide yet another piece of evidence helping to map out the complex web of ideas linking Scotland and America. From my research thus far it is clear that Nisbet was sympathetic to the Common Sense tradition of Thomas Reid and shows all the earmarks of a scholar who moved in the intellectual circles of 18th century Edinburgh. His letters and lectures demonstrate that he was well versed in the writings of the leading thinkers of his day. I propose to produce a text searchable version of his lectures and write a paper assessing his political economy.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Edward McPhail


Gerald Anthony Fennemore (1993)

Textbook for Introductory Economics Courses

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Gordon Bergsten


Michael James Franks (2005)

Eugenics and Other Evils: G.K. Chesterton's Argument against the Scientifically Organized State

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Edward McPhail


Jason Allen Gates (2015)

Economic Analysis of Public Policy, 2nd edition.

Routledge Publishing has requested that Prof Bellinger undertake a second edition of my undergraduate textbook, "The Economic Analysis of Public Policy." This project will involve substantial revisions and updates to all chapters and the development of on-line materials for instructors. The student's role will be to aid with literature review and statistical updates in several areas of public policy, review questions and answers for on-line and in-text locations, and check the clarity and quality of all chapters from the student's point of view.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: William Bellinger


Evgeniya Marinova Gencheva (2008)

Carlisle Area Homelessness and Income Density in Small Pennsylvania Towns

This Dana Research Assistant will aid in the completion of a research report on the characteristics and services provided to the homeless and shelter population of the Carlisle area. This project was originally undertaken as a senior seminar class project in the Spring of 2006 at the request of the United Way of Carlisle and Cumberland County. Some new analysis. When the final report on local homelessness is submitted, the Dana assistant can then participate in an ongoing study of income density (income per unit of geography) in small towns, which has a very different pattern than median household income. For example the richest neighborhood in Carlisle measured by income density surrounds Memorial Park. This project will involve mapping contiguous areas of high income density for the 18 Pennsylvania boroughs for which data has been collected and analyzing market areas and retail prospects for these areas. Some travel to selected towns may be required. I am requesting 500 miles and two overnight stays as a type of declining balance.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: William Bellinger


Luke David Hanselman (2018)

Household Energy Use and Emissions in Carlisle: The Impact of Residential Density

In this project we compile expenditure, housing structure, and demographic data with very fine spatial clarity for the Carlisle area in in partnership with the Center for Survey Research (CSR) at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg. Using this data we describe how household energy expenditures and the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in those expenditures vary by residential density. The environmental impact of urbanization and urban density are somewhat mixed in the existing literature, with urbanization often increasing emissions and urban density reducing emissions. This local geo-coded expenditure and energy use data will help to reconcile this disagreement in the literature. Therefore, the objectives of this project are three-fold: to (1) generate detailed expenditure and energy use data for the Carlisle community to aid in development plans consistent with community revitalization and environmental stewardship; (2) provide opportunities for ongoing community engagement for myself and my students; and (3) address a serious limitation in existing empirical research regarding the environmental impacts of urbanization and urban density.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Anthony Underwood


Duyen M Le (2020)

Temporal Effects in Standard Evaluations of Teaching

This study investigates the effects of varying timing throughout the semester of Standard Evaluations of Teaching (SET) in principles of economics classrooms. Employing sample data from the classrooms of six economics instructors at intuitions of differing size, focus, and culture, this paper analyzes whether students rate their professors more favorably at certain times during the semester. Instructor evaluations are administered at three points throughout the semester: at the end of the first day of class, after the first exam is returned, and on the day of the final exam. This research also examines the prevalence of an asymmetric effect of professor gender on the temporal trend in student ratings. In response to many higher-education institutions searching for methods to reduce or address gender bias in SET results, we compare temporal differences in ratings by instructor gender. It is hypothesized that the gender effect will vary in degree throughout the semester. Finally, we examine online versus traditional classes to examine whether a gender bias is still prevalent and the magnitude at which it persists. This study will identify, based on a field experiment and econometric analysis, at what point gender bias in evaluations is most prevalent, and whether it might be minimized by altering the timing of course evaluations.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Emily Marshall


Alexandra Shaw Medeiros (2018)

Temporal Effects in Standard Evaluations of Teaching

This study investigates the effects of varying timing throughout the semester of Standard Evaluations of Teaching (SET) in principles of economics classrooms. Employing sample data from the classrooms of six economics instructors at intuitions of differing size, focus, and culture, this paper analyzes whether students rate their professors more favorably at certain times during the semester. Instructor evaluations are administered at three points throughout the semester: at the end of the first day of class, after the first exam is returned, and on the day of the final exam. This research also examines the prevalence of an asymmetric effect of professor gender on the temporal trend in student ratings. In response to many higher-education institutions searching for methods to reduce or address gender bias in SET results, we compare temporal differences in ratings by instructor gender. It is hypothesized that the gender effect will vary in degree throughout the semester. Finally, we examine online versus traditional classes to examine whether a gender bias is still prevalent and the magnitude at which it persists. This study will identify, based on a field experiment and econometric analysis, at what point gender bias in evaluations is most prevalent, and whether it might be minimized by altering the timing of course evaluations.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Emily Marshall


Amy Anne Moss (2004)

The Economic Impact of the U.S. Army War College

The U.S. Army War College is a unique combination of military base, educational institution, think tank, and historical site. As such, the analysis of its economic effects proved very challenging- One unique aspect of the post is its dual identity. In this paper the terms Carlisle Barracks and U.S.. Army War College will be used interchangeably, although the two have been synonymous for just over 50 years, a relatively short time in the long history of the Barracks.. Another unique aspect is its educational function, which significantly affects the post's personnel profile. Compared to most military bases, the Carlisle Barracks' employees include a large percentage of officers among the military and a very high percentage of civilian employees if local contractors are included. At less than 3%.of a square mile, it is also among the smallest military bases in the nation. This paper analyzes the economic impact of the U.S Army War College through a combination of statistics provided by War College Officials, results from a survey of barracks residents, general statistical information, and models of regional and county economies provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The results are impressive, particularly for a smaller facility. For example, the post directly or indircctly provides about 10 percent of the total income and earnings and nearly 8 percent of the total jobs in the Carlisle area.

Term Funded:Spring 2004
Professor: William Bellinger


Joana Peixoto Nunes (2017)

The Home Mortgage Interest Deduction and Economic Growth

This paper will determine through an empirical analysis whether or not the home mortgage interest deduction (HMID), a particular feature of the tax system in the U.S., has contributed to an over-investment in housing at the expense of under-investment in physical capital stock. The HMID was introduced to incentivize home purchases by distorting the after-tax price of housing, resulting in an overinvestment in real estate. Delong and Summers (1991) show that investing in structures results in lower subsequent economic growth compared to investment in machinery and equipment. Following this logic, the hypothesis is that an over-investment in housing, through incentivizing home purchases with HMID, is detrimental to economic growth. Using primarily a three-stage least squares model and state-level variation, this paper examines the relationship between the HMID and state economic development.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Emily Marshall


Trang M Pham (2018)

Time inconsistent preferences and student performance: An investigation of assignment frequency

This project examines the potential for increased student learning retention through use of the behavioral economics principle, time inconsistent preferences. In the spring of 2016, we piloted a field experiment at two institutions that investigated whether student knowledge retention can be improved by increasing the frequency of assignments, motivating students to have more exposure to the material, and reducing the ability of students to procrastinate. One instructor at each institution was assigned two sections of the same course, where the treatment section was assigned homework every week and the control section was assigned homework every two weeks. Our hypothesis is that students will perform better in the treatment section where the instantaneous cost of procrastination on homework assignments is higher due to more frequent graded assignments. In the fall of 2016, the experiment will be repeated with an additional institution. Data will be pooled and analyzed jointly.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Emily Marshall


Trang M Pham (2018)

Time inconsistent preferences and student performance: An investigation of assignment frequency

This project examines the potential for increased student learning retention through use of the behavioral economics principle, time inconsistent preferences. In the spring of 2016, we piloted a field experiment at two institutions that investigated whether student knowledge retention can be improved by increasing the frequency of assignments, motivating students to have more exposure to the material, and reducing the ability of students to procrastinate. One instructor at each institution was assigned two sections of the same course, where the treatment section was assigned homework every week and the control section was assigned homework every two weeks. Our hypothesis is that students will perform better in the treatment section where the instantaneous cost of procrastination on homework assignments is higher due to more frequent graded assignments. In the fall of 2016, the experiment will be repeated with an additional institution. Data will be pooled and analyzed jointly.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Emily Marshall


Signe Elneff Poulsen (1995)

Case Study of the Tariff Act of 1930

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Michael Fratantuono


Tucker John Quinn (2021)

Bounded Rationality in Elinor Ostrom's work

This project will explore the connections and differences between Elinor Ostrom's work in institutional economics, who won the Nobel prize in economics in 2009, and behavioral economics. First, while the vast majority of the behavioral economics literature focuses on individual failures and problems, Elinor Ostrom's work brings a fresh perspective to behavioral economics by exploring how bounded rationality also enters the picture in collective action problems. Like Vernon Smith and Richard Thaler, she also emphasizes not just the failures themselves, but also the institutions that people create to overcome them. Second, Elinor Ostorm developed a framework of analysis that allowed her to show how communities around the world manage to overcome tragedy of commons problems by creating and enforcing institutions. It is still not widely appreciated that her approach also can be used to understand how people cope with bounded rationality problems.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: C Helen Takacs


Benjamin Christopher Rafetto (2009)

Measurement and Analysis of the Income Density (Income Per Acre) Patterns of Small Towns

This year's request includes several additional steps of an ongoing research project involving the measurement and analysis of the income density (income per acre) patterns of small towns. Relatively poor neighborhoods in terms of median household income also contain dense housing and high populations, and therefore have far more concentrated purchasing power than one would imagine from household income patterns alone. This year's project involves finalizing a paper for presentation in October, comparing geographical patterns of income density and median household income for Pennsylvania towns, and developing and analyzing a larger data set including similarly sized towns from other regions of the nation.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: William Bellinger


Jonathan David Rogers (2006)

Completion of a Textbook Entitled the "Economic Analysis of Policy"

I am requesting a year-long Dana Research assistant to work on two different projects. The first project is the completion of a textbook entitled the "Economic Analysis of Policy." While the body of the text is nearly complete, ancillary materials such as chapter ending problems must be added, and a good student's view of the clarity and substance of the chapters will be invaluable in the final stages of editing. The second project involves adding to a data set on the income density (income per acre) of small town neighborhoods and making contacts with officials in order to discuss specific details of local neighborhoods and possible implications of this analysis for local development plans. Some towns for which data has already been collected are Carlisle, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, Columbia, Johnstown, Lewistown, Lebanon, Pottsville, Pottstown and Williamsport.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: William Bellinger


Jonathan David Rogers (2006)

Compensating Losers: Is it all Politics?

Economists constantly provide examples of policy changes where the benefits to some would outweigh the losses to others. Known as Kaldor-Hicks efficiency improvements, these policy changes are considered beneficial even if winners could only compensate losers in principle. It seems Kaldor-Hicks is accepted in practice: few examples of efficiency-improving policy change involve actual compensation to losers. Some examples are highly contentious payments for making a major institutional change. Others pass with little mention.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Nicola Tynan


John Bradley Saia (2002)

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Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Edward McPhail


Holly Lynn Sasso (2001)

Analysis of the Demand for Performing Arts at the Carlisle Theatre

This study will involve gathering a data base of factors affecting demand for the performing arts at the Carlisle Theater and statistically estimating the impact of various factors on Carlisle Theater attendance. These factors include ticket price, the type of performer, the availability of substitute performances, the day of the week, weather, and any other factors of relevance. An audience survey may be required to identify characteristics of the Carlisle theater audience and its preferences for types of performers. Part of the study will also include collecting attendance data for other Central Pennsylvania arts facilities in order to build a broad data base for arts demand in Central Pennsylvania. For the summer, student-faculty research involving a student from my current Economic Analysis of Policy course would be an ideal basis for completing the demand study. This study will lead to a paper summarizing our findings regarding the demand for the arts at the Carlisle Theater. We will also begin work on another paper summarizing our analysis of the economics of the Arts in Central Pennsylvania.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: William Bellinger


Aidan Gavin Sichel ()

Teaching Reproducibility in Undergraduate Economics Courses

Research, writing, and empirical skills have become increasingly important in undergraduate education. Recent surveys conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) show that "employers want to hire college graduates who can write coherently, think creatively, and analyze quantitative data" (Selingo 2017). Furthermore, there is a broad consensus among economists that enabling students to understand how and when to "think like an economist" is the primary goal of an undergraduate education in economics (Allgood, Walstad, and Siegfried 2015). Additionally, economic research has become increasingly empirical, and according to the standards of the American Statistical Association (ASA), authors of research involving statistical analysis have an ethical responsibility to "promote sharing of data and methods" and "make documentation suitable for replicate analyses" available (Angrist et al. 2017; Hamermesh 2013; ASA 2016). Reproducibility requires documentation that allows an independent researcher to reproduce every step of the data management and analysis process and replicate the results presented in the study (Ball and Medeiros 2012). As instructors, we have the ability to set the standards and incentives that guide the work of our students, emphasizing replicability and documentation in empirical research.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Anthony Underwood


Danielle Vigilante Webb (2003)

The Economic Impact of Dickinson College on Carlisle and Cumberland County

This project will involve completing the analysis for and writing a 40 to 70 page report on the impact of Dickinson College on Carlisle and Cumberland County. This study involves faculty and student spending surveys and several other sources of information. Results will include the College's impact on personal income, business income, government revenue and spending, and the social and cultural atmosphere of the Carlisle area. Members of my Economic Analysis of Policy course during the Spring semester will begin this project, and outstanding members of the course will have first priority for the summer research partnership. The summer partnership is required to complete an analysis of the summer activities at the college and to compile the many components of the study into a cohesive and comprehensive final report.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: William Bellinger


Grant Michael Violanti (2004)

The Economic Impact of the U.S. Army War College

The U.S. Army War College is a unique combination of military base, educational institution, think tank, and historical site. As such, the analysis of its economic effects proved very challenging- One unique aspect of the post is its dual identity. In this paper the terms Carlisle Barracks and U.S.. Army War College will be used interchangeably, although the two have been synonymous for just over 50 years, a relatively short time in the long history of the Barracks.. Another unique aspect is its educational function, which significantly affects the post's personnel profile. Compared to most military bases, the Carlisle Barracks' employees include a large percentage of officers among the military and a very high percentage of civilian employees if local contractors are included. At less than 3%.of a square mile, it is also among the smallest military bases in the nation. This paper analyzes the economic impact of the U.S Army War College through a combination of statistics provided by War College Officials, results from a survey of barracks residents, general statistical information, and models of regional and county economies provided by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The results are impressive, particularly for a smaller facility. For example, the post directly or indircctly provides about 10 percent of the total income and earnings and nearly 8 percent of the total jobs in the Carlisle area.

Term Funded:Spring 2004
Professor: William Bellinger


Jonathan Kerry Waller (1992)

Testing the Regulatory Threat Hypothesis: Oil Markets in 1990-91

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Jue Wang (2012)

The Causes of the Retail Gap in Smaller U.S. Cities, and related papers.

Jue Wang (a junior economics and mathematics major) and I have been pursuing both general research and local case studies regarding the significance and causes of a relative lack of retail stores in inner city neighborhoods. I am applying for a Dana Research Internship related to this project. Our goal during my spring semester sabbatical is to submit three or four related papers on this topic to various economics or urban development journals. The first paper is an empirical paper which finds that inner city neighborhoods have a significantly lower per capita access to retail, but only for neighborhoods with a high African-American population. The second is a theoretical and empirical paper that explores the related topic of the geographic density of stores (stores or store revenue per square mile, for example) in an urban context. The third will explore the urban retail gap in the Northeastern U.S. using a subset of the national data and our original market area model. (new paragraph) We expect these papers to be completed and submitted before spring break, so our additional time will be spent on one or more of a set of related projects. In the summer of 2009 we completed a case study of access to retail in the South Allison Hill neighborhood of Harrisburg. When time permits we will explore the possibility of conducting similar case studies for one or two other PA cities. These projects would require cooperation from someone working for the State of PA, since full access to the needed retail data is only available to State employees. We have contacts at the State Department of Community Development who we have contacted regarding this project. We also have an older paper that explores the concept of "income density" (income per unit of geography) as a device for economic and market area a

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: William Bellinger


Jue Wang (2012)

Retail Shortages in Pennsylvania Inner City Neighborhoods: Evidence and Policy Proposals

Central neighborhoods in Pennsylvania cities and boroughs usually contain more income density (income per unit of geographic area) than peripheral areas with higher median household incomes. High levels of income density exist in inner city neighborhoods because the higher population density in these neighborhoods outweighs the higher average household incomes in suburban areas. There are four goals for this summer research project. The first goal for this research project is to identify statistically the income density patterns for our area's towns and cities. This will be accomplished using data that has already been collected. Secondly, we will identify areas that are underserved by the retail sector and possible retail opportunities in or near inner city neighborhoods. We will then share these results with county and local development officials and area retail executives. Finally, with their guidance, we will design preliminary central city retail development plans for a select number of cities and boroughs. The study will be undertaken by William Bellinger, Associate Professor of Economics at Dickinson College, and Jue Wang, student researcher on the project and an undergraduate economics major at Dickinson College. The duties of the primary and student researchers will be as follows: the primary researcher will guide the analysis of data, interpretation of field visits and interviews, and the final writing of all reports. The student researcher will collect additional data for a few regional cities that are not in the current data sets, compile journals of all interviews and field trips, write specific sections of our case study reports, and act as a co-author of at least some of the final reports on individual cities, and possibly on published articles as well. The merging of economic analysis and development policy specifically for our region's inner city neighborhoods could prove very fruitful for both development opportunities and the quality of life in our central cities.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: William Bellinger


Jue Wang (2012)

Two projects: (1) Causes of the Retail Gap in Smaller Central Cities, with Emhasis on Pennsylvania Cities; (2) The Eonomic impact of Dickinson Summer Programs

(1) Jue Wang and I have worked for about a year on multiple research projects related to urban inner city retail services. It is well known that some of our major cities lack adequate retail services in poorer neighborhoods which are often refered to as retail gaps. However, little work has been done on determining the causes of these gaps, or studying retail gaps in smaller cities. Our work does both, using a data set of over 60 small to mid-sized U.S. cities. We already have a revise and resubmit judgment on one paper from the Journal of Urban Economics (the leading journal in the field), which we are working on now. The summer project will involve two additional issues: (1) the comparison of 2 different measures of retail revenue, one of which we will collect in the next few weeks, and (2) a paper devoted to Pennsylvania cities. ....... The economic impact of Dickinson College summer programs will complete the impact study being undertaken this semester as a community research project by my senior seminar students and myself. It will involve surveying the spending patterns of summer program participants and instructors, and should be a relatively small part of both our summer research and the overall economic impact study of the college.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: William Bellinger


Yuanxiaoyue Yang (2017)

Benchmark Competition: Metropolitan water and mortality before the MWB

The 1852 Metropolis Water Act required all companies supplying Thames water to move their intakes above Teddington Lock and to filter water before distribution. By 1860 all companies had met the requirements of the Act. Nevertheless, the next forty years saw frequent calls for municipalization that ended with the Metropolis Water Act of 1902. Public acquisition of private water companies was a trend occurring across England and Wales driven largely by concerns about water-borne disease and public health. This paper looks at the extent to which public health improved under public acquisition. We use data on water-borne disease mortality in London districts for the last forty years of comparative competition between London's eight private companies and the first sixteen years of monopoly operation under the Metropolitan Water Board.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Nicola Tynan


Qian Zhang (2012)

Innovation by London's Water Companies: Internalizing public health externalities

Public health concerns played a major role in driving the trend away from private ownership of waterworks and towards public ownership. In London this transition took longer than in most British cities with London's eight water companies remaining privately owned until 1902. This paper looks at the investment in research and development and other innovations undertaken by some of London's water companies as a way of improving water quality and, therefore, improving public health. The paper also reinforces some recent literature suggesting that piped water quality is more localized than often assumed in the literature: one person's likelihood of contracting water borne diseases depends mostly on the quality of their own piped water not the quality of that in the city as a whole. The most innovative companies provided customers with higher quality water. The goal of the Dana research work is to expand the analysis to water borne diseases. The data is only available in paper form. The research assistant will help me enter the data, run regressions and assess findings.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Nicola Tynan


Yanqing Zhao (2019)

Regional Economic Impact of the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet

I have been asked by the CPYB's Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Ade and Board of Directors President Steve Riccio to undertake a comprehensive economic impact study of the ballet's school year program, summer program, and performances. The analyses of the educational programs require residential and spending information from the families of students, faculty and staff, along with company expenditure information. The performance impact requires audience surveys from nutcracker and other performances. These surveys can then be used to compile aggregate spending and income estimates that can be combined with a regional economic model of Cumberland and Dauphin Counties that can measure the cumulative impact of CPYB-based spending on incomes and employment in the Cumberland/Dauphin County region. The student intern will participate in designing, administering, and compiling surveys for the school year educational and spring performances, and will also participate in writing up preliminary results for this part of the study. The ideal student should be available to continue her work in the summer, an important time for the youth ballet's programs.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: William Bellinger


Yanqing Zhao (2019)

Natural Disasters, Household Debt, and Inequality: County-Level Evidence from the United States

This project investigates three related questions: 1) what effect do natural disasters have on household debt; 2) are these permanent or temporary shocks to household wealth; and 3) what role, if any, do these effects have on income and wealth inequality in the United States (U.S.)? This is a data-intensive project. In order to address these questions, we will need to collect, organize, process, and combine data on income inequality, the timing, location, and severity of natural disasters, and detailed data on household debt and its composition, among other things.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Anthony Underwood


Yanqing Zhao (2019)

The Regional Economic Impact of the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet

I have been asked to undertake a comprehensive economic impact study of the ballet's school year program, summer program, and performances. The analyses of CPYB's educational programs require residential and spending information from the families of students, faculty and staff, along with company expenditure information and audience surveys from nutcracker and other performances. These surveys are then used to compile aggregate spending and income estimates that can be combined with a regional economic model of Cumberland and Dauphin Counties to measure the impact of CPYB-based spending on incomes and employment in the Cumberland/Dauphin County region. The CPYB summer programs are of particular importance in that they bring hundreds of students from other areas of the nation and the world to the Carlisle area for the 5 week intensive program and shorter August program. It is a major source of the ballet school's overall economic impact. The student intern will participate in designing, administering, and compiling surveys for students and their families, visiting faculty and staff, and will also communicate with Dickinson regarding room and board revenues provided to the college. She will also participate actively in the final impact calculations for the full 2016-7 academic year. We also will engage in two related lines of study. We will undertake a major review of the economic and policy literature related to ballet and dance, with the expectation of constructing academic articles that merge the CPYB study with broader economic issues in the arts. We also expect to conduct a broad survey of CPYB alumni with the purpose of exploring the long run benefits and costs of elite level dance education.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: William Bellinger


Ziwei Zhu (2017)

Dickinson College Water Use Data and Sustainability

Last semester, I downloaded water use data from the facilities management Utility Direct system. After a lot of data manipulation, I was able to work with students to create simple charts on campus water use over time. This summer project will go beyond this to create a more usable data set of campus water use in cubic feet and in dollars. Including square foot and building type information will allow us to chart water use by building size and across campus divisions. Data on student enrollment and students living in each dorm will inform charts on per capita use over time and in each dorm; data on plumbing fixtures will allow us to relate fixtures per student to water use. In addition to the data manipulation, the project will include a final report explaining campus water use changes over time, drivers of these changes, and highlighting areas we might focus on to reduce water use (and volumes of wastewater) in future. If time allows, we will also import this data into ArcGIS to map campus water use. This is something I have already done of the initial data set.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Nicola Tynan


Economics, Sustainability

Samantha Elisa Reiersen (2019)

Water Infrastructure and Public Health in Carlisle: A History

Water Infrastructure and Public Health in Carlisle: A History

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Nicola Tynan


Educational Studies

Lauren Marie Amoros (2012)

Young Writers Program for Adolescent English Language Learners - Summer 2011

In conjunction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, Pennsylvania, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs). Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2011 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. This summer study will be the third year of this continuing research project. Research findings may make significant contributions to the fields of secondary English education and teacher preparation - particularly related to ELL literacy instruction - due to the unique collaboration of teacher educator/pre-service teacher in the approach to designing and implementing this study and the longitudinal nature of this on-going research. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how YWPs may influence adolescent ELLs' (1) varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; (2) literacy skills in their first and/or second language; (3) identity exploration; and (4) contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Lauren Marie Amoros (2012)

Studying Adolescent English Language Learners' Literacy Development through a Summer Writing Program

In conjunction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, Pennsylvania, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs). Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for youth. This study has been conducted over the past three years in the forms of a one and two week YWP during the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" program, serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. Research findings may make significant contributions to the fields of secondary English education and teacher preparation - particularly as they related to ELL literacy instruction - by deepening the understanding of how a YWP may influence adolescent ELLs' (1) varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; (2) literacy skills in their first and/or second language; and (3) contribution to the development of a social and writing community with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Lauren Marie Amoros (2012)

Young Writers Program for Adolescent English Language Learners - Summer 2012

In conjuction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, PA, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for adolescent English language learners (ELLs). Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2012 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. This summer program will be the fourth phase of a longitudinal study. Findings may contribute significantly to the fields of secondary English, literacy education, teacher preparation, and ELL literacy instruction due to (1) the unique collaboration of teacher educator/practitioner in their approach to designing and implementing this study, and (2) the longitudinal nature of the research. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how YWPs may influence adolescent ELLs' varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; literacy skills in their first and/or second languages; identity exploration; and contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Lauren Marie Amoros (2012)

Studying Adolescent English Language Learners' Literacy Development through a Summer Writing Program

In conjunction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, Pennsylvania, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs). Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study was conducted during a two week YWP in the summer of 2009 as a part of the LIUMEP's existing "Summer School of Excellence 2009" which serves an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. Research findings may make significant contributions to the fields of secondary English education and teacher preparation - particularly as they related to ELL literacy instruction - by deepening the understanding of how a YWP may influence adolescent ELLs' (1) varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; (2) literacy skills in their first and/or second language; and (3) contribution to the development of a social and writing community with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Year 2010
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Olivia Grace Calcaterra (2016)

Studying the Literacy Skill Development and Practices of Migrant & English Language Learning Youth through a Summer Writing Program

This project is based on a collective case study of a Young Writers Program (YWP), a summer enrichment program, for migrant and English language learning (ELL) youth in south central Pennsylvania. Implemented over three- or four-week intervals each summer between 2009 and 2015, nearly 300 migrant and ELL youth whose native languages include Spanish, Urdu, Somali, Russian, and Arabic have participated in the YWP. Participants engage in the composing process using journals and multimodal/multimedia texts while working toward creating a final YWP anthology of written work as well as a variety of digital texts (e.g., digital stories, graphic novel-style personal narratives) published on a website I created for the program. On-going data analysis has yielded findings related to ELL literacy practices/development (e.g., mono-/bi-/multilingualism) identity exploration, and recognition of agency through acting for social justice. This study seeks to contribute to the fields of adolescent literacy, ELL literacy/instruction, critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and secondary English language arts instruction by deepening the understanding of how multi-genre/-modal/-media language arts instruction may influence migrant and ELL youths' (1) language arts skills; (2) abilities to respond to a variety of prompts and texts in multiple genres and modes; (3) exploration of identity through, and participation in, a peer community; and (4) sense of empowerment and agency.

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Olivia Grace Calcaterra (2016)

Young Writers Program for Migrant and English Language Learning Youth - Summer 2016

In conjuction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, PA, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for mingrant and English language learning (ELL) youth. Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2016 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. This summer program will be the seventh phase of a longitudinal study. Findings may contribute significantly to the fields of secondary English, literacy education, teacher preparation, and ELL literacy instruction due to (1) the unique collaboration of teacher educator & practitioner in their approach to designing and implementing this study, and (2) the longitudinal nature of the research. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how the instructional approaches used during the YWP may influence adolescent ELLs' varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; literacy skills in their first and/or second languages; identity exploration; ability to recognize agency and to act for social change; and contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Laura Kathyrn Frangipane (2012)

History of the Scotland School for Veterans' Children

This project is part of an ongoing study of the Scotland School for Veterans' Children which was founded in Scotland, PA in 1895 and closed as a result of state budget cuts in 2009. During my pre-tenure sabbatical in fall 2008, I worked on the background period leading up the founding of the school in 1895 and conducted some research on the school itself. My plan for this summer is to continue my research on the school as I work toward a book-length manuscript to submit for publication. Working with a Dana Research Assistant, my goal is to complete my review of the school's annual reports housed in the PA State Archives in Harrisburg, to examine the school's newspapers also housed in the State Archives, and to research press accounts of the school throughout its history. As time permits, I will also continue my interviews (a process begun during my sabbatical) of SSVC alumni and former employees. Finally, Laura and I will continue reading and annotating related literature throughout the summer.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Sarah Bair


Erin Elizabeth Kirchner (2015)

Young Writers Program for Migrant and English Language Learning Youth - Summer 2014

In conjuction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, PA, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for mingrant and English language learning (ELL) youth. Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2014 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. This summer program will be the sixth phase of a longitudinal study. Findings may contribute significantly to the fields of secondary English, literacy education, teacher preparation, and ELL literacy instruction due to (1) the unique collaboration of teacher educator & practitioner in their approach to designing and implementing this study, and (2) the longitudinal nature of the research. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how YWPs may influence adolescent ELLs' varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; literacy skills in their first and/or second languages; identity exploration; and contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Erin Elizabeth Kirchner (2015)

Young Writers Program for Migrant and English Language Learning Youth - Summer 2015

In conjuction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, PA, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for migrant and English language learning (ELL) youth. Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2015 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. This summer program will be the seventh phase of a longitudinal study. Findings may contribute significantly to the fields of secondary English, literacy education, teacher preparation, and ELL literacy instruction due to (1) the unique collaboration of teacher educator and practitioner in their approach to designing and implementing this study, and (2) the longitudinal nature of the research. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how the instructional approaches used during the YWP may influence adolescent ELLs' varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; literacy skills in their first and/or second languages; identity exploration; ability to recognize agency and to act for social change; and contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Erin Elizabeth Kirchner (2015)

Studying English Language Learning & Migrant Youths' Literacy Practices & Development through a Summer Writing Program

This project is based on a collective case study of a Young Writers Program (YWP), a summer enrichment program, for migrant and English language learning (ELL) youth in south central Pennsylvania. Implemented over two week intervals each summer between 2009 and 2014, more than 200 migrant and ELL children whose native languages include Spanish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Somali, and Arabic have participated in the YWPs. Participants engage in writing using journals and multimodal-multimedia texts while working toward creating a final YWP anthology of written work as well as a variety of digital texts (e.g., digital stories, graphic novel-style personal narratives). On-going data analysis has yielded findings related to ELL literacy practices/development (e.g., mono-bi-multilingualism), identity exploration, and recognition of agency through social action. This study seeks to contribute to the fields of adolescent literacy, ELL literacy/instruction, critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and secondary English language arts instruction by deepening the understanding of how multi-genre/-modal/-media language arts instruction may influence migrant and ELL youths' (1) language arts skills; (2) abilities to respond to a variety of prompts and texts in multiple genres and modes; (3) exploration of identity through, and participation in, a peer community; and (4) sense of empowerment and agency.

Term Funded:Spring 2015
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Brendan Wolff Landy ()

Trauma-Informed Pedagogy in Higher Education

This new scholarly project will examine the existing research on Trauma-Informed Pedagogy (TIP) in Postsecondary Education. TIP integrates insights from mental health fields to formulate teaching strategies that enhance learning and wellbeing for all students, but particularly those who have experienced trauma. TIP is a burgeoning area of inquiry in educational scholarship, particularly in the field of urban education. These insights are deeply relevant to US higher education where documented mental health conditions among college students are on the rise. Students have also experienced significant, ongoing trauma as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. TIP also holds the potential to extend insights from the related field of Inclusive Pedagogy.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Raymond Anderson


Jessica A Lizardo (2017)

Studying the Literacy Skill Development and Practices of Migrant & English Language Learning Youth through a Summer Writing Program

This project is based on a collective case study of a Young Writers Program (YWP), a summer enrichment program, for migrant and English language learning (ELL) youth in south central Pennsylvania. Implemented over three- or four-week intervals each summer between 2009 and 2016, over 300 migrant and ELL youth whose native languages include Spanish, Urdu, Somali, Khmer, and Arabic have participated in the YWP. Participants engage in the composing process using journals and multimodal/multimedia texts while working toward creating a final YWP anthology of written work as well as a variety of digital texts (e.g., digital stories, graphic novel-style personal narratives) published on the program's website (www.youngwritersprogram.wordpress.com). On-going data analysis has yielded findings related to ELL literacy practices/development (e.g., mono-/bi-/multilingualism) identity exploration, and recognition of agency through acting for social justice. This study seeks to contribute to the fields of adolescent literacy, ELL literacy/instruction, critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and secondary level language arts instruction by deepening the understanding of how multi-genre/-modal/-media language arts instruction may influence migrant and ELL youths' (1) language arts skills; (2) abilities to respond to a variety of prompts and texts in multiple genres and modes; (3) exploration of identity through, and participation in, a peer community; and (4) sense of empowerment and agency.

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Anna Dempsey Robinette (2017)

Studying the Literacy Skill Development and Practices of Migrant & English Language Learning Youth through a Summer Writing Program

This project is based on a collective case study of a Young Writers Program (YWP), a summer enrichment program, for migrant and English language learning (ELL) youth in south central Pennsylvania. Implemented over three- or four-week intervals each summer between 2009 and 2015, nearly 300 migrant and ELL youth whose native languages include Spanish, Urdu, Somali, Russian, and Arabic have participated in the YWP. Participants engage in the composing process using journals and multimodal/multimedia texts while working toward creating a final YWP anthology of written work as well as a variety of digital texts (e.g., digital stories, graphic novel-style personal narratives) published on a website I created for the program. On-going data analysis has yielded findings related to ELL literacy practices/development (e.g., mono-/bi-/multilingualism) identity exploration, and recognition of agency through acting for social justice. This study seeks to contribute to the fields of adolescent literacy, ELL literacy/instruction, critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and secondary English language arts instruction by deepening the understanding of how multi-genre/-modal/-media language arts instruction may influence migrant and ELL youths' (1) language arts skills; (2) abilities to respond to a variety of prompts and texts in multiple genres and modes; (3) exploration of identity through, and participation in, a peer community; and (4) sense of empowerment and agency.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Anna Dempsey Robinette (2017)

Young Writers Program for Migrant and English Language Learning Youth - Summer 2016

In conjuction with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit Migrant Education Program (LIUMEP) in Adams County, PA, this study relates to a Young Writers Program (YWP) for mingrant and English language learning (ELL) youth. Young Writers Programs (YWPs) are summer enrichment programs for students. This study will be conducted over eight weeks in the summer of 2016 as part of the LIUMEP's annual "Summer School of Excellence" serving an ELL population consisting primarily of students whose first language is Spanish. This summer program will be the seventh phase of a longitudinal study. Findings may contribute significantly to the fields of secondary English, literacy education, teacher preparation, and ELL literacy instruction due to (1) the unique collaboration of teacher educator & practitioner in their approach to designing and implementing this study, and (2) the longitudinal nature of the research. Potential findings include more nuanced understandings of how the instructional approaches used during the YWP may influence adolescent ELLs' varied responses to literature-, multimedia-, and multimodal-based texts; literacy skills in their first and/or second languages; identity exploration; ability to recognize agency and to act for social change; and contributions to developing social and writing communities with their peers and teachers.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Meghan V Steffanci (2006)

Integrating Women's History in an 8th-Grade American History Course

This project has two components. First, a team of educators including a teacher educator from Dickinson, a preservice teacher from Dickinson, and an inservice teacher from Lamberton Middle School, will develop a pilot program for integrating women's history into the Carlisle Area School District's 8th grade Early American History curriculum. Second, the Dickinson teacher educator, acting as a participant observer, will use the project as a case study to examine the collaborative process of these educators as they construct and implement the program and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the program from the perspectives of the teachers involved. The goal is to develop a model for effective integration that can be shared with the broader educational community.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Sarah Bair


Lindsey Hope Stum (2014)

Tracing the Literacy Development and Practices of Migrant & English Language Learning Youth through a Summer Writing Program

This project is based on a collective case study of a Young Writers Program (YWP), a summer enrichment program, for migrant and English language learning (ELL) youth in south central Pennsylvania. Implemented over two week intervals each summer between 2009 and 2013, more than 200 migrant and ELL children whose native languages include Spanish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Somali, and Arabic participated in the YWPs. Participants engage in writing using journals and multimodal/multimedia texts while working toward creating a final YWP anthology of written work as well as a variety of digital texts (e.g., digital stories, graphic novel-style personal narratives). On-going data analysis has yielded findings related to ELL literacy practices/development (e.g., mono-/bi-/multilingualism) identity exploration, and recognition of agency through social action. This study seeks to contribute to the fields of adolescent literacy, ELL literacy/instruction, critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and secondary English language arts instruction by deepening the understanding of how multi-genre/-modal/-media language arts instruction may influence migrant and ELL youths' (1) language arts skills; (2) abilities to respond to a variety of prompts and texts in multiple genres and modes; (3) exploration of identity through, and participation in, a peer community; and (4) sense of empowerment and agency.

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Elizabeth Lewis


Thomas Brendan von Allmen (2012)

History of the Scotland School for Veterans' Children

This project is part of an ongoing study of the Scotland School for Veterans' Children which was founded in Scotland, PA in 1895 and closed as a result of state budget cuts in 2009. During my pre-tenure sabbatical in fall 2008, I worked on the background period leading up the founding of the school in 1895 and conducted some research on the school itself. My plan for this summer is to continue my research on the school as I work toward a book-length manuscript to submit for publication. Working with a Dana Research Assistant, my goal is to complete my review of the school's annual reports housed in the PA State Archives in Harrisburg, to examine the school's newspapers also housed in the State Archives, and to research press accounts of the school throughout its history. As time permits, I will also continue my interviews (a process begun during my sabbatical) of SSVC alumni and former employees. Finally, Laura and I will continue reading and annotating related literature throughout the summer.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Sarah Bair


English

Emily Elizabeth Arndt (2013)

A Romantic Natural History (hypertext resource)

Romantic Natural History is a hypertext resource (web-site) designed to survey relationships between literary works and natural history during the century before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). The website operates like a scholarly text, with links and interlinks that allow readers to move easily from topic to topic, author to author, and from primary and secondary sources to bibliographic citations. Darwin's Origin was the culmination of decades of speculation about connections between human beings and nonhuman "nature." The expanding discourse of science-from 1750-1859-gave poets, writers, painters, illustrators, and the public powerful food for the imagination. These ideas were reflected not only in the work of natural scientists, philosophers, and theologians, but also in the images and ideas of poets, novelists, and visual artists. The site reveals how current "romantic ecology" suggests links between our own historical moment and the scientific culture of the Romantic era.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: B Ashton Nichols


Julia Marie Barone ()

Midcentury Suspension (fall 2019) / The Public Health of Modernism (spring 2020)

Midcentury Suspension is a new, transatlantic literary and cultural history of the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The book will be published by Columbia University Press in early 2020. The Public Health of Modernism offers the first literary history of American modernism and public health, roughly from the influenza epidemic of 1918 through the discovery of the first Polio vaccine in 1955.

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Claire Seiler


Lisa Maria Borsellino (2014)

Mid-century Suspension

"Midcentury Suspension" offers a new literary history of the decade after World War II. Typically described as seing either the end of modernism or the beginning of postmodernism, the midcentury period in fact had its own distinctive literary character. I argue that "suspension," broadly conceived, provides a more substantive, specific, and effective way to think about the literary midcentury--and, in the end, about twentieth-century literature and criticism as a whole.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Claire Seiler


Bronwyn Jones Bosse (1994)

Silencing other Selves, The Wordsworthian Autobiographer

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: B Ashton Nichols


Holly Madine Bowers (2012)

Bibliographic and Archival Research for Book Project "Impossible Year"

This project supports Moffat's proposal tentatively entitled "1917: Impossible Year"-- a social biography of four writers who were impelled to decisive action by the circumstances of World War I.This semester I'm teaching a senior seminar"The Great War Imagined" in preparation for this research; over last summer began to read widely in the field. Now I need to regularize what I've accomplished, and frame out a foundation on which to work next year. In preparation for my 2012-13 sabbatical, I would like to work with a student to 1. build a timeline of historical events from primary sources (principally the Times [London] on microfilm) ; 2. create an Endnote [field-based bibliographical data software] bibliography of the approximatey 200 resources I have read and gathered thus far and 3. Begin preliminary archival work on one of my four biographical subjects for the book--Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, who has significance correspondence in the Morgan Library in NYC, and the Beinecke at Yale. At this stage it seems crucial to work collaboratively with a relative beginner, so that the assumptions and premises on which I build my inquiry can be examined from the ground up. Working with an advanced student will allow her or him to see advanced interdisciplinary research in action; to be exposed to archival study; to develop punctilious record-keeping of the process of research; to have a dialogue about problems and decisions in framing and solving literary critical problems.This will not be dogsbody work for the student.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Wendy Moffat


Georgia Hoard Christman (2017)

Annotated digital edition of the collection Sight and Song (Michael Field, 1892)

You will complete a text annotation project involving Michael Field's poetry, specifically an annotated digital edition of the collection Sight and Song (1892) to be used as a teaching tool for undergraduates. Two students will work under your direction to research for 8 weeks and create annotations.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Sarah Kersh


John Edward Costango (1993)

Student Co-direction of the Writing Component of the FOCUS program

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Judy Gill


Victoria Leigh DeLaney (2017)

The Pulp Magazines Project

Victoria will continue marking up the projects 300 digital issues in both RDF and TEI - XML standards - compliant formats for the enhanced organization of, and access to, existing materials.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Patrick Belk


Benjamin Jacob Doern ()

Hollywood and the American Comic Book Industry

This book project, contracted with the British Film Institute and Bloomsbury, examines the comic book industry's changing function in the 21st-century entertainment industry, specifically in relation to Hollywood. Written in collaboration with Dr. Alisa Perren (UT Austin), the book aims to be a resource for scholars, graduate students, and industry professionals. The Dana Research Assistant will support the project by helping prepare the final manuscript for publication. This will involve formatting/checking citations and preparing the book's index. In doing this work, the Dana Research Assistant will not only be helping us finalize the manuscript; he will also gain substantial experience in manuscript preparation, comics studies, film studies, and entertainment industry research.

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Gregory Steirer


Alaina Jordan Einsig (2019)

Letters and Poems of Michael Field

Professor Sarah Kersh has an ongoing, long-term project centered on the writings of the nineteenth-century poet Michael Field. (Michael Field is a pseudonym for two, nineteenth-century women writers who co-wrote under the name). A continuation of the project began during the summer of 2015, the student researcher is updating and adding additional material and functionality to the existing website: https://michaelfield.dickinson.edu. In addition, the student is working to transcribe journal entries as part of a national project on the diaries of Michael Field.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Sarah Kersh


Thomas Bradley Elrod (2008)

"Heavenly Perspective": Thomas Traherne and Seventeenth-Century Visual Tradition

Unique for a major English writer, Thomas Traherne's (1637-71) complete works have never been in print. Most remarkable, within the past ten years, two of his most important manuscripts have been discovered, one at the Folger Library, and one at the Lambeth Palace Library in London. Two complete editions of Traherne are now coming out, one from Oxford University Press. The first collection of essays on Traherne appears on August 23rd, and my essay on the Lambeth Palace ms. is the most substantial in the collection. In addition to the essay, I have a draft of a book manuscript on the poet and prose writer, arguing that his works celebrating naïve childhood actually entail a sophisticated critique and revision of the visual media crucial to beginning the English Civil War between spectacle-despising Puritans and opulent Royalists. The Puritans, for example, beheaded Charles I on the porch of his theatre. Connecting Traherne politically is a major revisionist reading of his work, which most readers have seen through lenses of mysticism and conformist Christianity. Thus far, I have sent out 4 proposals; both Catholic University Press and Ashgate Press have asked to review the manuscript.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: Carol Johnston


David Edward Emerick (2005)

Writing about Rape: The Economics of Fantasy

I am working on a book manuscript examining the changing representations of heterosexual rape in 20th century literature. My central thesis is that 20th century high-brow images of rape chart the imagined relationship of the masculized Western subject to the evolving forms of power and money in the US and Europe. Thanks in large part to the Mellon granted to Katie Ginn and myself 2 years ago, that manuscript has been (almost) completed and has been tentatively picked up by Ohio State University Press. The Press does want some revisions, most notably further theorization of masculine fantasy, particularly in the context of race. What I propose, then, is a summer of intensive research in contemporary theories of masculine subjectivity and race. I realize that I will need to advertise for the student position if I receive this grant. Nonetheless, I do have a student in mind (perhaps more accurately, I have a type of student in mind). Dave Emerick is currently working on his senior thesis (a year early). To do so, he is already reading deeply in precisely the type of critical theory I will be working with, and so I think that he, or a student like him, will be ready for this level of study.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Sharon Stockton


David Edward Emerick (2005)

A Study of Contemporary Scottish Fiction

The purpose of this grant is to prepare for a book-length study on contemporary Scottish fiction. Scots are writing some of the most interesting and challenging work in English. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that little critical attention has been paid to this body of work. In order for the student and I to evaluate competing possible approaches to the material, we will research in the library and on the web to identify possible primary authors to be included, collect contemporary reviews, compile an annotated bibliography in order to assess what's already been done and identify the critical lacunae, and evaluate applicable critical methods. It will also be important to conceive of possible subsets of contemporary Scottish fiction (detective fiction, for example). We will then assess the viability of competing possible projects and propose appropriate structures and methods. The ultimate goal is to have a project in process for a 2006-07 sabbatical.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Leslie Winston


Edgar Estrada (2017)

The Pulp Magazines Project

I am requesting support for 2 Digital Danas for spring 2016. These students will assist me in the reprocessing of 300 PDFs currently available on The Pulp Magazines Project website.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: Patrick Belk


Amanda Elizabeth Eveler (2001)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Wendy Moffat


George Whitfield Fitting (2010)

Bibliographic Entry for Forster Biography

I request a Dana Student Research Assistant (4 hours per week) to collate and do data entry for the bibliography for my biography of E.M. Forster. ("A Great Unrecorded History": A New Life of E.M. Forster, forthcoming in summer 2008, Farrar Straus & Giroux. Last year, when I received the contract, I purchased and began to use Endnote, a state of the art integrated field-specific software compatible with FSG's indexing system. At present have only 387 entries (from research last year). I need help coordinating my master bibliography of archival sources (28 pages long, with hundreds of entries) and subsequent sub-bibliographies (not compatible with Word or current software) into a single workable bibliography. Because the research uses extensive archival (unpublished) materials, data entry and bibliographic cataloguing takes some wit and methodological know-how. I will teach a student to do this. The practical work would offer a window onto the complexities of cataloguing and categorizing knowledge in the interdisciplinary field of gay social history and literary biography.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Wendy Moffat


Noah Robert Fusco (2018)

Midcentury Suspension

Midcentury Suspension offers a new literary and cultural history of the immediate post-World War II period. Drawing on oringal archival resarch, the project illuminates how the writers Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, Ralph Ellison, Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, and Frank O'Hara variously imagined distinctly mid-twentieth century experiences of suspension-that is, how they wrote of and through a period when the aftereffects of World War II were materially and psychologically present and the narratives of the cold war had not yet crystallized. The project rereads 20th-century transatlantic literature from the vantage of the century's middle, rather than from the perspective of its ends. In addition to this conceptual reframing, the project expands the relevant archive for thinking about midcentury literature and culture, drawing on discourses and public conversations of the late 1940s and early 1950s that extend well beyond the literary, but that have long since fall out of the view of literary scholarship.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Claire Seiler


Noah Robert Fusco (2018)

Eighteenth-Century Poets Connect

Using online databases such as Early English Books Online, Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, the English Short Title Catalogue, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as well as print reference works, the student researcher will complete a database (begun by a previous student researcher) of biographical and bibliographical information about poets and dramatists active in Great Britain and Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century (specifically, poets and playwrights who published work during the 1730s). This completed database will make possible further research, using network modeling and similar digital humanities tools, on the networks and relationships that connect poets, publishers, patrons, dedicatees, religious groups, and educational institutions in eighteenth-century Britain.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Jacob Sider Jost


Katherine Kelly Ginn (2004)

Writing about Rape: The Economics of Fantasy

I am working on a book manuscript examining the changing representations of heterosexual rape in 20th century literature and academic discourse. My central thesis is that 20th century high-brow images of rape chart the imagined relationship of the masculinized Western subject to the evolving forms of power and money in the US and Europe. This imagined relationship is not a static one but rather shifts in parallel with the general movement in 20th century culture toward an information-based global economy. Late 20th century feminist retellings of the rape story, then, articulate not only an undermining of the partriarchal narrative--although certainly they do this--but register the extent to which the meaning of "human" has changed radically by virtue of a new workforce and a new world order. This project is unique in that it treats the representation of rape as a fluid one, historically driven, dependent on a shifting vision of the self in relation to economic and political forms.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Sharon Stockton


Jacquelin Toni Greger ()

Home, Work, and Privacy in "Vibration Cooking"

I am writing a literary-critical essay on Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's Vibration Cooking. In Vibration Cooking, a memoir-with-recipes published in 1970, Smart-Grosvenor uses the assuming form of the cookbook to mount a black-feminist intervention into the nature of domestic work. She reverse the potential exploitation of black women's paid or unpaid labor to claim cooking as a creative and fulfilling exchange fundamentally apart from racist circuits of capital. In so doing, Smart-Grosvenor dismantles a private sphere centered on the home as an imaginative and actual space and creates a privacy, instead, of epistolary exchange. In this project, the Dana student researcher will help with the background research-biographical, historical, philosophical-necessary for my essay.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Siobhan Phillips


Sara Nichole Hoover (2003)

Forster in America

The life and work of the British novelist E. M. Forster (1879-1971) is being reevaluated in the light of the posthumous publication of fiction on gay themes, and an authorized biography which openly treated his gay life. As part of a book-length treatment of the evolution of Forster's gay identity over seven decades I have begun archival work and oral histories of the unexplored chapter of Forster's life when he visited America for the first time, at 70, in the late 1940s. We propose to develop the research already in progress by reading the unmined papers of Forster's American friends in major archives in New York and New Haven, and to write a 30-40 page chapter which argues the seminal importance of America and these friendships in the development of Forster's writing, and the study of gay social history in the 20th century.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Wendy Moffat


Kathleen Margaret Jarman (2016)

Gathering information on new John Milton volumes acquired by the archives

The college archive this summer acquired ten new volumes by or relating to the work of the seventeenth-century poet John Milton. The jewel in the crown is a rare first edition of Paradise Lost. Only 1800 copies were printed in 1668, an amazing acquisition for the college made possible by the Goodyear endowment funds. We also purchased the first illustrated edition of the poem, the first edition of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, and completed our set of the first American edition of Paradise Lost. (The printer gave the first volume to Benjamin Rush). I'll be glad to provide a complete list of the acquisitions, if you would like to peruse it. Each book has special qualities and will offer my Milton students invaluable insight into the publishing and printing trades as well as to the politics of the English Civil War and Restoration. I have for years taken my students to the archive to work with the significant Milton volumes already in the collection, but this new infusion of materials will allow me to devote more time and research to this portion of the course. Before that happens, much needs to be discovered about the books: their provenance, the origins of marginalia (there seem to be two different sets of handwriting in Paradise Lost, for instance), the purposes of the marginalia, as complete a picture as is possible of the printing history--who the printers were, what else they published, and so forth. Printing and even owning Milton in the late seventeenth century was a political statement, since he had been an official in the Puritan government and had written a widely read tract advocating regicide. This became awkward once the monarchy was restored, but he carried on, writing his most famous works during the 1660s. Who printed and owned these books, then, can tell us much about Milton's reception after the Restoration. I am applying for a Dana intern to help solve the mysteries each volume contains so that I will be able to craft appropriate assignments based upon each book for my Milton students. The Dana intern will learn much about book and print culture; the student I have in mind took the Milton course in the spring, so knows Milton and the history of the period. The college archive is a valuable resource for our students in general, and I hope by engaging this particular student, in addition to the exposure provided to my students in the course, we can help the students understand its value. Thank you for considering the proposal.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Carol Johnston


Kathleen Margaret Jarman (2016)

Annotated digital edition of the collection Sight and Song (Michael Field, 1892)

You will complete a text annotation project involving Michael Field's poetry, specifically an annotated digital edition of the collection Sight and Song (1892) to be used as a teaching tool for undergraduates. Two students will work under your direction to research for 8 weeks and create annotations.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Sarah Kersh


Sean Joseph Jarman (2018)

The battlefront letters of Dr. Thomas Salmon

The Dana funds will support student assistance in the collation and transcription of 54 war letters of Dr. Thomas Salmon (1881-1927), the Chief Consultant in Neuropsychiatry in American Expeditionary Force  in France during the First World War.  The first Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia Medical School, and a widely influential public health psychiatrist, Salmon pioneered innovative and effective treatment of PTSD for soldiers, and advocated for veterans' mental health care. He materially helped to create the Veteran's Bureau in 1922-the precursor to the Veteran's Administration.  The letters form a crucial record of Salmon's experience, which will be essential to the two chapters of my biography devoted to his time in France.  As a record of an aspect of the American experience of psychiatric trauma, they are unrivalled and revelatory.    

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: Wendy Moffat


Katherine A Lasswell (2017)

The Pulp Magazines Project

I am requesting support for 2 Digital Danas for spring 2016. These students will assist me in the reprocessing of 300 PDFs currently available on The Pulp Magazines Project website.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: Patrick Belk


Rafaela Silvia Marinello (2019)

Interest in the Long Eighteenth Century

I have spent the past six years working on a book manuscript describing the importance of the word "interest" in eighteenth-century British thought. I describe the period in which the founding of the Bank of England and the growth of a permanent national debt make "interest" a newly central category in English fiscal policy and economic life; in which Adam Smith theorizes self-interest as the basis of the capitalist economy in his epochal Wealth of Nations; and in which the pioneering abolitionist Olaudah Equiano uses an adjective invented only a few decades before as the title of his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative. As I return from sabbatical in fall of 2018, my capable Dana Research Assistant will help me format my notes and compile a bibliography as I prepare to submit my manuscript to my editor.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Jacob Sider Jost


Meredith Leigh Milnes (2011)

False Starts: The Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism

"Failure," Herman Melville famously wrote, "is the true test of greatness," a claim that has been adopted and transformed by the six authors central to my study: Melville and Susan Warner, Edith Wharton and Henry Adams, and William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison. My project regards this rhetoric of failure as a master trope of American literary and aesthetic expression, arguing that these writers responded to the economically-motivated, progress-oriented force of American modernity by consciously cultivating a language and aesthetic program that valorized failure. Conceived as a long history of American modernism, False Starts engages questions about the development of the American Renaissance canon, elite responses to the transformations of the Gilded Age, and the failed promises of African-American citizenship following emancipation and Reconstruction.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: David Ball


Anna Louise Morrison (2019)

The Pulp Magazines Project

I am requesting support for 2 Digital Danas (Katie Lasswell and Anna Morrison) this summer 2016. They will continue assisting me in the reprocessing of 300 PDFs currently available on The Pulp Magazines Project website. In addition, this summer project will involve the further cooperation of three major digital/ archival organizations: 1) ModNets (Modernist Networks) and 2) the Modernist Journals Project, 3) and Blue Mountain Project. The nature and scope of these high-profile collaborations is further explained in the attached project proposal.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Patrick Belk


Jason Paul Murray (1998)

The Modernist Reader: Forster's Implied Reader in Cultural Context

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Wendy Moffat


Jason Paul Murray (1998)

The Modernist Reader: E.M. Forster's Implied Reader in Cultural context

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Wendy Moffat


Mary Katherine Naydan (2015)

Patronage, Magazines, and the Economics of Eighteenth-Century Poetry

"Poet" is more than a job description; it is an honorific title. Not everyone who writes verses is acclaimed as a poet. So who gets to decide? Where does poetic prestige come from? In most premodern European cultures, the answer to this question was found at court, in the person of the king or queen or among courtiers, aristocrats, and clergy. Today, the power to consecrate poets has shifted away from political power centers to a diffuse network of academics, critics, publishers, foundations, prize committees, and members of the book-buying public. My research seeks to reconstruct the early eighteenth-century climacteric of this shift, focusing in particular on the invention of the magazine as a print medium. My student research collaborator and I will work in tandem to will use historical and biographical records to track how poets earned money from their work during the period, and we will use these economic data to understand the changing channels through which writers sought poetic recognition and fame.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Jacob Sider Jost


Shannon Adele Nolan (2019)

Poetry of Michael Field and Victorian Queer Archive

Professor Sarah Kersh has an ongoing, long-term project centered on the writings of the nineteenth-century poet Michael Field. (Michael Field is a pseudonym for two women writers who co-wrote under the name). A continuation of the project began during the summer of 2015, the student researcher is updating and adding additional material and functionality to the existing website: https://michaelfield.dickinson.edu. The student researcher is also beginning work on a new digital project called the Victorian Queer Archive. This site, http://victorianqueerarchive.omeka.net/, is a collaborative project with Dr. Joanna Swafford, SUNY New Palz, and began out of a need for access to nineteenth-century texts that rarely appear in anthologies.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Sarah Kersh


Shannon Adele Nolan (2019)

Poetry of Michael Field and the Victorian Queer Archive

Professor Sarah Kersh has an ongoing, long-term project centered on the writings of the nineteenth-century poet Michael Field. (Michael Field is a pseudonym for two women writers who co-wrote under the name). A continuation of the project began during the summer of 2015, the student researcher is updating and adding additional material and functionality to the existing website: https://michaelfield.dickinson.edu. In addition, the student is continuing work on the Victorian Queer Archive. This site, now hosted by Dickinson at www.vqa.dickinson.edu, is a collaborative project with Dr. Joanna Swafford, SUNY New Palz, and began out of a need for access to nineteenth-century texts that rarely appear in anthologies.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Sarah Kersh


Eliza Rose Park (2011)

False Starts: The Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism, 1850-Present

"Failure," Herman Melville famously wrote, "is the true test of greatness," a claim that has been adopted and transformed by the six authors central to my study: Melville and Susan Warner, Edith Wharton and Henry Adams, and William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison. My project regards this rhetoric of failure as a master trope of American literary and aesthetic expression, arguing that these writers responded to the economically-motivated, progress-oriented force of American modernity by consciously cultivating a language and aesthetic program that valorized failure. Conceived as a long history of American modernism, False Starts engages questions about the development of the American Renaissance canon, elite responses to the transformations of the Gilded Age, and the failed promises of African-American citizenship following emancipation and Reconstruction.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: David Ball


Samuel James Portelance (2018)

The Comic Book Industry and Hollywood

This book project, contracted with the British Film Institute and Palgrave, examines the comic industry's changing function in the 21st-century entertainment industry, specifically in relation to Hollywood. Written in collaboration with Dr. Alisa Perren (UT Austin), the book aims to be a resource for scholars, graduate students, and industry professionals. The Dana Research Assistant will assist the project by collecting industrial data pertaining to comic-related properties (such as, for films: box-office takes, distributors, budgets, etc.) and organizing them into usable forms via spreadsheet software. The data contained in these spreadsheets will serve two functions: (1) they will be drawn on by in order to support arguments made in the chapters; (2) they will be used to construct graphs and charts for the book. In producing the spreadsheets, the Dana Research Assistant will not only be helping us write the book, but will also gain substantial experience in comics studies, film studies, and entertainment industry research.

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: Gregory Steirer


Juliana C Rhinehart ()

Michael Field Diary Transcriptions

Michael Field Diary Transcriptions

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Sarah Kersh


Harris Risell (2016)

The Comic Book Industry and Hollywood

This book project, titled The Comic Book Industry and Hollywood and developed in consultation with the editors of the BFI International Screen Industries book series, examines the comic industry's changing function in the 21st-century entertainment industry, particularly in relation to Hollywood. Written in collaboration with Dr. Alisa Perren (UT-Austin, Radio, TV, & Film Dept.), the book aims to be a useful book for scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates working in film, comic, and media studies. The Dana Research Assistant will do the foundational bibilographic work for the book by producing an annotated scholarly bibiolography and a bibliography of important "trade" (industry) stories, organized by date, with stories also tagged by category. The trade bibliography will require the researcher to work with print periodicals that have never been indexed or organized into a modern database.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Gregory Steirer


Emma Jeanne Rodwin (2014)

Mid-Century Suspension

My first book project, "Midcentury Suspension," offers a new account of Anglo-American literature in the decade after the Second World War. Informed by original archival reasearch, the book both counters received narratives of modernism and contributes to the current interdisciplinary effort to come up with suppler descriptions of the twentieth-century's signature artworks.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Claire Seiler


Jennifer Lindbeck Rose (1998)

Romantic Natural History 1750-1850

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: B Ashton Nichols


Audrey Devon Schlimm (2020)

Heavenly Perspective: Thomas Traherne and Seventeenth-Century Visual Culture

This proposal is to complete my book manuscript entitled "Heavenly Perspective: Thomas Traherne and Seventeenth-Century Visual Culture." Traherne is a poet and Anglican priest from the seventeenth century who attended Oxford, had a small parish near Hereford, and was the chaplain for the Lord Keeper of the Seal, Orlando Bridgeman. He wrote lyric poetry, prose meditations, polemical treatises, theological tracts, and a brief unfinished epic poem, along with Commonplace Books and a book on Christian ethics. His works have never been in print in their entirety. I argue that material vision - the eye and its mechanical and spiritual significance (the idea of seeing things and of seeing in a visionary context) are crucial to understanding his prose and poetry. Traherne took the concept of vision seriously; vision was the central intellectual, artistic, theological, and political subject in in the mid-seventeenth-century. Placing his work in that cultural context has required mastering these subjects: the iconoclastic politics of the English Revolution; the theology of the Protestant Bible and of schismatic sectarianism; classical philosophy and the Aristotelian method centering upon vision and perception taught in Oxford; the history of perspective and perspectival treatises in Italy and England; developments in the theory of vision from Arabic scientists Alhazen and Alkindi to Kepler and Newton; English theories of rhetoric and poetry growing out of Italian treatises; and the history of publishing and authorship in Early Modern England. In addition to placing Traherne within this multifarious rhetoric of vision, I must dislodge Traherne from the discourses of mysticism, Modernism, and Post-modernism that have incorrectly framed - and damaged - his legacy. Traherne is not a mystic, though his early critics and biographers made him so; he is not served by Modernist and New Critical standards of reading poetry, though T.S. Eliot, imprisoned in these paradigms, found Traherne's poetry wanting; Traherne's intellectual work far outstrips the often-playful discourse of Lacan, Barthes, and Derrida, whose work has been used to show his postmodern presentiments. These views have shown surprising tenacity, and require substantial effort to overcome. No Traherne scholar thus far has broken out of this frame.I hope to have this ready for submission at the summer's end.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Carol Johnston


Leah Judith Shafer (2014)

Correspondence among African-American Poets, 1960-1980

Phillips's second book investigates the political use of correspondence for American poets from 1950 to the present. The study argues for letters as a distinct and important genre by showing how they mediate between private and public writing. Correspondence provides a space in which friendly connections can become civic responsibilities, and vice versa. With this capacity, letters can advance an egalitarian agenda. But did this egalitarianism extend to a program of racial equality? Summer research will answer the question by investigating correspondence among African-American poets of the 1960s and 1970s. We will identify letter exchanges that could serve as case studies. We will investigate how African-American writers' epistolary writing advances the political goals of their poetry and other writing. We will research if and how literary critics have treated the letters of African-American poets. This work will prepare for a conference proposal, then a conference presentation, then a book chapter.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Siobhan Phillips


Alexi Leah Struzenski (2020)

Digital Streaming Bibliography

I would like the help of a Dana Research Assistant to create an annotated bibliography of the academic literature on digital streaming. I asked Leah Struzenski, a sophomore English major, if she would work on this project as a Dana Research Assistant during the Spring Semester if we got the funding, and she enthusiastically agreed to accept the position. I will supply Leah with a list of books and articles, create a schedule with weekly meetings, and we will discuss her findings in depth. This bibliography will be used as fundamental research for a peer-reviewed article on digital streaming in libraries, which I plan to write during the summer of 2018. I intend to publish the results of this research in a peer-reviewed article on digital streaming in a media studies journal. The likely contenders are New Media & Society and Cinema Journal. I will know which journal will be a better fit once I am able to conclude primary research in New York City.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Steven Malcic


Melissa Lin Sturges (2017)

Rewriting Hyboria: Robert E. Howard's Conan as Intellectual Property.

This book chapter will examine how the Conan property was expanded from a series of short stories written by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s to a multi-media property including comic books, novels, films, and video games. Using the example of Conan, it will then argue for a new theory of corporate authorship and suggest new methodologies for working in this nascent field. The Dana Research Assistant will help me perform the foundational research for this chapter by assembling an annotated bibliography tracing the publication history of the Conan property.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Gregory Steirer


Colin Myles Tripp (2014)

False Starts: The Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism

Failure, Herman Melville famously wrote, "is the true test of greatness," a claim that has been adopted and transformed by the eight authors central to my study: Melville and Susan Warner, Edith Wharton and Henry Adams, William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison, and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Chris Ware. My project regards this rhetoric of failure as a defining gesture of American literary and aesthetic expression, arguing that these writers responded to the economically motivated, progress-oriented force of American modernity by consciously cultivating a language and aesthetic program that valorized failure. Conceived as a long history of American modernism, False Starts engages questions about the development of the American Renaissance canon, elite responses to the demographic transformations of the Gilded Age, mid-twentieth-century responses to the failed promises of emancipation and Reconstruction, and the reemergence of the rhetoric of failure in the contemporary graphic novel.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: David Ball


Genevieve Elise Veres (2017)

Bioware and the Politics of Video Game Authorship

This book chapter examines how changing ideas around video game authorship have produced new tensions between players, writers, and game developers over the last ten years. It specifically focuses on Bioware, a popular big-budget game developer, who was, after releasing the final installment in a best-selling roleplaying game trilogy, was accused by consumers of marketing fraud and of then made the target of widescale consumer protests. The Dana Research Assistant will help conduct the foundational research for the chapter me by collecting and coding data consisting of consumer communications (on forums, in blogs, via YouTube videos) and developer communications (on forum posts, through advertisements, and PR kits).

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Gregory Steirer


Abigail Jane Watson-Popescu (2003)

Seventeenth-century English poetry

Beginning in the summer of 2002, I shall focus upon writing my book on subjectivity in Early Modern lyric poetry. The beginnings of that book, an essay on English poet Thomas Traherne (1637-66) and subjectivity ("Heavenly Perspectives, Mirrors of Eternity: Thomas Traherne's Yearning Subject") is forthcoming in the journal Criticism. While this essay has been seminal to my thinking on issues of subjectivity and Early Modern Lyric, I shall begin the book as I begin my Early Modern Poetry course, with a discussion of Petrarch, the fourteenth-century Italian poet who wrote the first sonnet sequence in a vernacular language. Early Modern literary scholar Thomas Greene argues that Petrarch established in his sonnets new way of thinking about the individual and subjectivity by making the characters individual and autobiographical, rather than representative of the medieval Christian Everyman and ideal values (Dante and Beatrice of the Divine Comedy, for example). Grounded in Greene's thesis, I shall look at English poets who struggled with Petrarchan assumptions in significant ways: Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, and Thomas Traherne.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Carol Johnston


Emily Ann Wylie (1994)

An Introduction to the Short Fiction of American Writer Eudora Welty

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Carol Johnston


English, Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies

Janel Pineda (2018)

Resistance and Resilience in Salvadoran Storytelling

Janel Pineda's global research, "Resistance and Resilience in Salvadoran Storytelling," focused on understanding the historical, social, and political conditions that led to the Salvadoran Civil War and the war's aftermath and legacies. Through visits to crucial historical sites like El Mozote and museums like San Salvador's Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI) and Suchitoto's Centro de Arte Para La Paz, Janel obtained a deeper understanding of the war's development, impact, and lasting effects. Foundational to her senior thesis in the English department, Janel's research centered on literary landscapes in El Salvador, and included interviews and conversations with Salvadoran writers Manlio Argueta and Alexandra Lytton Regalado, among others

Term Funded:
Professor: Carolina Castellanos, Sarah Kersh


Environmental Studies

Daniela Mar Arnedo Aldrich (2019)

Pipeline Perils in Pennsylvania: Contested Natural Gas Fracking and Transportation

In collaboration with a Dickinson student, I propose to analyze contested natural gas pipelines in Pennsylvania. The research questions how individuals, communities, and movements shape anti-pipeline activism in rural parts of Pennsylvania previously untouched by the state's natural gas boom. Historically, infrastructure projects faced technical or scientific delays or limitations. In contemporary times, McAdam and colleagues (2010: 401) remind us that pipelines face social and/ or political obstacles. This research contextualizes the broader energy landscape in the US, explains the role of the proposed pipeline in this landscape, and describes local narratives of pipeline opposition. The latter helps us to understand how energy extraction and transportation are experienced and questioned at the local level, and to also examine the short-comings of localized pipeline protest.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Heather Bedi


Hiba Aoid (2021)

Environmental Controls on Methane Dynamics in Icelandic Lakes

As the climate warms, it is critical to understand feedback mechanisms that influence ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions. Will increasing temperatures lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions or will biotic uptake of these greenhouse gases keep pace with increased production and thus mediate emission? These questions are particularly important for methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Polar lakes contribute disproportionately to the global methane budget, and yet are understudied as compared to other more accessible sites at mid- or lower-latitudes. The goal of the proposed project is to measure the rates of methane production, consumption, and emission in a set of polar lakes spanning a gradient in water temperature (as proxy for the projected effects of climate warming).

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Kristin Strock


Paige E Baisley (2020)

Location, Location, Location: Developing Tools for Selection and Management of Landscapes to Promote Healthy Bee Populations

Location, Location, Location: Developing Tools for Selection and Management of Landscapes to Promote Healthy Bee Populations

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Margaret Douglas


Brendan Scott Carr (2021)

Indian Energyscapes: Coal Histories, Climate Vulnerabilities, and Solar Futures

Indian Energyscapes: Coal Histories, Climate Vulnerabilities, and Solar Futures

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Heather Bedi


Cailey Vaughn Clark (2013)

Portable PM2.5 Monitor Calibration and Validation for Diesel-Specific Air Pollution

This project will use Dickinson's existing air pollution monitors, along with unique community resources for studying air pollution, to determine the correct calibration and use of handheld monitors for studying air pollution in diesel-polluted environments. We will run handheld and stationary monitors side by side to collect adequate data (currently missing from the literature) on the proper calibration of these commonly used monitors. The short project can be completed in the summer and fall, and will substantially improve the way similar monitors are used by researchers around the world. It will also provide critical background data for the Environmental Studies Department's characterization of Carlisle's serious PM2.5 pollution problem.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Gregory Howard


Jeremy David Coerper (2001)

Earthwatch

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Brian Pedersen


Max Carlos Egener (2016)

Deciphering the effects of climate change on Pennsylvania lake ecosystems

Climate change is expected to have profound effects on lake ecosystems; however, the nature and magnitude of these effects across broad spatial and temporal scales is poorly understood. My current research aims to develop a unified theory that explains the heterogeneous pattern of lake response to climate observed across the landscape. This work is focused on study sites in the midwestern U.S. (Isle Royale National Park, an island in the northwest corner of Lake Superior), the northeastern U.S. (400 lakes in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) long-term monitoring network), and southwest Greenland. The Dana Research Assistant, assisted Prof. Strock in expanding this research to include lakes and reservoirs across Pennsylvania.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Kristin Strock


Max Carlos Egener (2016)

Protecting and Managing Laurel Lake in the Face of Environmental Change

This project aims to better understand the physical and chemical properties of Laurel Lake in Pine Grove Furnace State Park. During the last century, summer water temperatures of over 100 large lakes around the world have increased. This observed temperature change has the potential to complicate lake management as it greatly influences aquatic habitat quality. Currently, little is known about how lakes and reservoirs in Pennsylvania have changed over time and how seasonal variability in lake temperature may affect important recreational components like fish habitat. By deploying a small sensor buoy on Laurel Lake, the lake's managers will be given high resolution temperature and oxygen data outlining the conditions of the lake in various habitat zones (warm, mixed, surface waters and cool, deeper waters). High frequency sensor data will be supplemented by bi-weekly monitoring of lake chemistry (pH, conductivity, and concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus) and the biological communities in the lake (including algae and zooplankton). This approach will better inform lake management through the integration of: 1) an expanded knowledge base that links lake water quality to various environmental factors and seasonal changes in weather, and 2) enhanced communication to the public of the effects of environmental change on this valuable resource.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Kristin Strock


Max Carlos Egener (2016)

Response of Reservoir Ecosystems to Extreme Rain Events: Informing Management through Stakeholder Collaborations

This project is focused on understanding how the physical and chemical properties of Laurel Lake in Pine Grove Furnace State Park change during the open water season and as a result of variable weather. The summer water temperatures of over 100 large lakes around the world have increased over the last century, raising concerns over declining lake habitat quality (Schneider and Hook 2010). We currently have little information on whether or not Pennsylvania lakes and reservoirs have changed and how important characteristics such as water quality metrics and fish habitat vary seasonally. Understanding patterns of water temperature change is a key step towards providing sound recommendations for habitat management.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Kristin Strock


Carolyn Beth Flower (2014)

Inventory and Monitoring of the Salt River in Phoenix

According to Stromberg, Makings, and Bateman (2011), the Salt River in the Phoenix metropolitan area is highly modified as a result of upstream damming, flow diversion, stream channelization and floodplain conversion to urban lands. Different portions of the river have revegetated on their own due to runoff from urban storm drains. Furthermore, some portions of the river remain in degraded condition, and other reaches upstream of the main diversion dam support diverse riparian communities. Since the responses to urban modification have been so varied, the river is a significant opportunity to examine the issues of riparian ecosystems in urbanized settings. Overall, the goal of research is to assess restoration success and identify effective ways to restore ecosystem services.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Lydia Kottcamp Fox (2019)

A comparative study of long-term change and short-term variability in lake ecosystems

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that lake ecosystems in the northeastern U.S. are changing rapidly, with human-induced climate change a likely cause. However, multiple factors may mediate the effects of climate change such that lake response may be highly variable in terms of direction and timing. The goal of this project is to analyze trends in lake water quality in a suite of lakes at opposite ends of the northeastern U.S. Cross-site comparisons will allow us to ask how climate change may be influencing ecosystems broadly across a region and whether lake-specific characteristics can modify the effects of climate change on water quality. It is important to understand the varied response of lakes to climate change in order to reveal the likely drivers and provide a broadly applicable framework for management, mitigation, and public understanding of water quality changes that are already underway.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Kristin Strock


Rachael Elizabeth Franchini (2019)

Assessment of Conflict Sensitivity in Climate Change Adaptation

Assessment of Conflict Sensitivity in Climate Change Adaptation

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Michael Beevers


David Kenneth Golden (2014)

Forest Farming & Agroforestry at Dickinson College Farm

This purpose of this project is to collect baseline data on the site characteristics at the woodlot at the College Farm and use this data to plan a forest farming operation as part of the agroforestry demonstration project at the farm. Agroforestry, as defined by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, is intentionally combining agriculture and forestry to create an integrated and sustainability land use. There are several types of agroforestry, all of which will be demonstrated at the farm. The goal of the agroforestry demonstration project is to show others how agroforestry can be utilized in the Mid-Atlantic region. Forest farming is the cultivation of high-value specialty crops under the protection of a forest canopy that has been modified to provide the correct shade level. These demonstration plots are extremely valuable in the north east due to the fact that small woodlots are extremely common in this area, particularly in rural areas. By teaching people about agroforestry, we can promote the utilization of their woodlots to generate additional income while maintaining the valuable ecosystem services of the woodlot. Other collaborators include Jim Ciarracca, Jen Halpin, Eugene Wingert, Scott Boback, and Carol Loeffler at Dickinson College, as well as Eric Burkhart and James Finley at Penn State University. There are also several partners associated with DCNR and NRCS.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Kristen Brubaker


Robert C Hanifin (2006)

Influence of Deer Herbivory on Light Utilization by Forests

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Brian Pedersen


Mason Robert Hepner (2017)

Wildlife Intern

"Dragonflies (Order: Odonata) are predatory insects that live in and around aquatic habitats such vernal pools, ponds, lakes, and streams. Juvenile stages are aquatic and act as important indicator species for the health of aquatic ecosystems due to their general pollution intolerance (Burkle et. al. 2012). As adults, they are terrestrial fliers that forage on other insects in the surrounding ecosystem. Many of these are pollinator species, some of which may be of conservation concern. At FIG, two well-known and increasingly rare butterfly species, the Monarch (Danaus plexipus) and the Regal Fritillary (Speyeria idalia) regularly inhabit open areas in and around many man-made ponds on post and are likely preyed upon by dragonflies at some point. Both are currently being considered by The United State Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for protected status under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA). Dragonflies inhabiting these ponds are living in an area surrounded by or near grassland butterfly habitat. As predators, these dragonflies have the possibility of preying upon the numerous butterfly species (Tiitsaar et. al. 2013). Knowledge on the dragonfly species inhabiting the ponds and the population of these species can give information on predation effects as the butterfly populations grow and begin dispersing closer to these ponds (Sang et. al. 2011). Dragonflies were caught in flight or while perched using a 15" long-handled mesh butterfly net. Once captured, each dragonfly was removed by hand and unique marks applied to the left front wing using permanent ultrafine point Sharpie markers. Forewing and abdominal length to the nearest 0.50 mm using calipers were taken. Recaptured dragonflies are noted but no further marking or measuring was done. All basic statistics were processed using MS Excel and mark-recapture estimates with program Mark. "

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Jessica L Howard (2001)

Understanding forest responses to environmental stresses: tree growth in response to slow and fast gaps

The death of large forest trees, which can be linked to environmental stresses (e.g. air pollution), is a critical event in forest development. By freeing resources (e.g., light) for use by other trees, the mortality of the large trees that comprise a forest's overstory influences the sizes and species of trees in a forest, and the habitat available for other forest organisms. To date, study of forest responses to the death of overstory trees has focused on tree deaths that occur suddenly and on the response of small, understory trees. Understory trees growing in a well-lit gap in the forest canopy created by the sudden death of an overstory tree often experience sharp growth increases following formation of the canopy gap. But recent research indicates that the death of overstory trees is often a decades-long process involving a gradual decline in tree vigor (and multiple environmental stresses). In this latter case, overstory trees neighboring a dying tree may expand their canopies into the slowly forming gap created by a dying tree, preventing understory trees from enjoying an increase in resources for growth. The difference between a forest's response to canopy gaps that form suddenly and gaps that form gradually may have significant long-term effects on the forest as a whole. This proposed study will characterize the rates of death of large trees (i.e., rates of canopy gap formation) and seek evidence for associated growth responses by overstory and understory trees growing near the dead trees.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Brian Pedersen


Jessica L Howard (2001)

Earthwatch

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Brian Pedersen


Madeleine Ashleigh Jones (2019)

Pipeline Perils in Pennsylvania: Contested Natural Gas Fracking and Transportation

The geographies of extraction extend national energy priorities into local realities for those living close to and/ or working within sites of extraction (Russell 2013). My research focuses on these themes in relation to the burgeoning extraction of natural gas (fracking) in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale and the associated promotion of natural gas pipelines to transport the gas to domestic and international markets. Research explores national US energy trends, while putting them in conversation with local extraction and transportation realities. Ethnographic interviews in two Pennsylvania counties impacted by a proposed pipeline reveal the everyday ways that people understand and experience the national promotion of natural gas as a 'bridge fuel'. The Dana Research Assistant Student's work includes: transcribe interviews; theme and code interviews, research and summarize key pipeline events; create a pipeline timeline; and complete an annotated bibliography.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: Heather Bedi


Rachel Bryce Krewson (2020)

Thermal Controls on Methane Dynamics in Icelandic Lakes: In-Situ

As the climate warms, it is critical to understand feedback mechanisms that will influence ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions. Will increasing air temperatures lead to higher rates of microbial greenhouse gas production and emission or will biotic uptake of these greenhouse gases be able to keep pace with increased production and thus mediate emission? These questions are particularly important for methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its production and consumption are strongly mediated by microbial processes in lakes (methanogenesis and methanotrophy, respectively)." "As the climate warms, it is critical to understand feedback mechanisms that will influence ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions. Will increasing air temperatures lead to higher rates of microbial greenhouse gas production and emission or will biotic uptake of these greenhouse gases be able to keep pace with increased production and thus mediate emission? These questions are particularly important for methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its production and consumption are strongly mediated by microbial processes in lakes (methanogenesis and methanotrophy, respectively)."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Kristin Strock


Rachel Bryce Krewson (2020)

Environmental Controls on Methane Dynamics in Icelandic Lakes

As the climate warms, it is critical to understand feedback mechanisms that influence ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions. Will increasing temperatures lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions or will biotic uptake of these greenhouse gases keep pace with increased production and thus mediate emission? These questions are particularly important for methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Polar lakes contribute disproportionately to the global methane budget, and yet are understudied as compared to other more accessible sites at mid- or lower-latitudes. The goal of the proposed project is to measure the rates of methane production, consumption, and emission in a set of polar lakes spanning a gradient in water temperature (as proxy for the projected effects of climate warming). Specifically, Rachel Krewson (class of 2020) will quantify the potential for methane emissions from glacial melt ponds and relate that to the microbial community composition.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Kristin Strock


Muhajir Subuur Lesure (2020)

Contested Energy: From Pennsylvania to South Asia

During my sabbatical, I propose to collate fieldwork data, analyze the information, and prepare it for journal submission. Drawing from my research in the United States and South Asia, my sabbatical work examines how socio-environmental movements and civil society stakeholders experience and contest energy extraction, processing, and infrastructure. In Pennsylvania, I examine how communities critique pipelines proposed to move hydraulic fractured shale gas to export markets (inFRACKstructure). Building from my work on the cumulative environmental injustices for stakeholders living in coal hubs, my South Asia research examines climate change vulnerability, energy access, and energy justice. The DANA research assistant will help me prepare my fieldwork data from both geographies for journal article submission by completing literature reviews, fact checking, copy-editing the drafts and bibliographies.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Heather Bedi


Kerin Elise Maguire (2017)

Urban Roosting: A Research and Project-Based Web Resource

Kerin Maguire (Class of 2017) with work with Prof. Ashton Nichols for eight (8) weeks creating additions to the WordPress site/s we are each developing to explain to readers how "urbanatural roosting" can be a scholarly concept, useful to the understanding of our current relationship to the natural world, and also a practical idea, linked to the naturalization of cities and the cultural expansion of wilderness. You will edit the student's work carefully for accuracy and style, and she will provide advice and comments to you about the work you produce. The website will be published by the time the project ends, and you will offer an Earth Issues afternoon seminar in the Environmental Studies Department in the fall for a College, and community-wide, audience.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: B Ashton Nichols


Sarah Lynn Pears (2004)

Response of mixed hardwood forests to gypsy herbifoy and drought; a dendroecological analysis moth.

We propose to determine (1) the timing of past outbreaks of gypsy moths and the effect of these outbreaks on the growth rates of forest trees, and (2) the effect of past droughts on the growth rates of forest trees. Gypsy moths are an exotic species known to defoliate trees and reduce tree growth rates. Droughts also reduce tree growth rates and there is concern that droughts may become more frequent in the future with climate change. Effective forest management requires site-specific information on how gypsy moths and droughts have influenced forests in the past. Our study site is the Florence Jones Reineman Sanctuary in Perry County, Pennsylvania. We will apply a combination of standard dendroecological (tree-ring) methods and novel statistical methods. Tree rings provide a long-term record of past tree growth rates. Because gypsy moths defoliate some tree species and not others, we can quantify the effect of gypsy moths by comparing the growth rates of gypsy-moth-host and nonhost trees. An available long-term climate database will allow us to simultaneously quantify past relationships between tree growth rates and drought.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Brian Pedersen


Madaline Boardman Ritter (2019)

Reconstructing the effects of "browning" on algal communities in lakes

Lakes across North America and Europe are experiencing increased loading of dissolved organic material (DOM). DOM imparts a brown or "tea-stained" appearance to waters. Although several studies document this "browning" phenomenon, considerably less is known about the ecological implications of these changes for freshwater resources. Changes in the concentration of DOM can influence algae, the base of the aquatic food web, in two key ways: 1) by reducing light available for photosynthesis; and 2) by introducing organic forms of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) that stimulate algal growth. These two mechanisms suggest both positive and negative effects of increased DOM on algae. It is unclear how these roles will interact to influence lake ecosystems. This project will decipher the effects of DOM-induced browning on algae in two lakes in northeastern Pennsylvania by using fossils contained in lake sediments to reconstruct changes over the last century.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Kristin Strock


Clara Marie Roth (2021)

Environmental Controls on Methane Dynamics in Icelandic Lakes

As the climate warms, it is critical to understand feedback mechanisms that influence ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions. Will increasing temperatures lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions or will biotic uptake of these greenhouse gases keep pace with increased production and thus mediate emission? These questions are particularly important for methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Polar lakes contribute disproportionately to the global methane budget, and yet are understudied as compared to other more accessible sites at mid- or lower-latitudes. The goal of the proposed project is to measure the rates of methane production, consumption, and emission in a set of polar lakes spanning a gradient in water temperature (as proxy for the projected effects of climate warming).

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Kristin Strock


Helen Claire Schlimm (2017)

Exploring Climate-Induced Changes in West Greenland Lakes

Across the Arctic, lake sediment records provide some of the few key archives documenting rates of ecosystem change since the last ice age. In June of 2015, Dr. Strock and Helen Schlimm ('17) traveled to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. This research expedition coupled comparative sampling of twelve lakes with the collection of two lake sediment records. This project will be the focus of Schlimm's senior research project and will answer the following questions: how have zooplankton communities (often the top predator in the food web of fishless, Arctic lakes) changed in lakes of southwest Greenland over the last century, does this differ based on proximity to the ice sheet, and how does modern species distribution vary across lakes with differing physical and chemical characteristics? Ultimately, this study will provide important tools to decipher the extent to which direct and indirect effects of climate are contributing to rapid ecological change in the Arctic.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Kristin Strock


Rachael Anne Sclafani (2016)

EPA-GRO Summer Internship

I'll be in Portland, Maine working with the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership (CBEP). The internship is through EPA Region 1 Ocean and Coastal Protection Unit, which is located in Boston MA. CBEP is one of six National Estuary Programs in New England that are overseen by the EPA Region 1 Ocean and Coastal Protection Unit.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Karan Sunder Shakya (2020)

Location, Location, Location: Developing Tools for Selection and Management of Landscapes to Promote Healthy Bee Populations

Pollinators are in decline due to multiple, interacting stressors. Landscape factors can greatly impact the health of both wild and managed pollinators. In particularly, diverse and abundant flowering plant species are both critical for providing high quality nutrition to pollinators, and can mitigate the negative impacts of other factors, such as pesticide or pathogen exposure. We will (1) Comprehensively assess and develop predictive models of the impacts of multiple generalizable, ecologically-relevant indices of landscape quality (forage quality, nesting resource quality, pesticide use, honey bee colony density, microclimate) and beekeeper management practices (parasite and disease management) on the health of managed honey bees and wild bees in diverse (urban, suburban, agricultural, and natural) landscapes. (2) Use existing and newly generated data on pollinator attraction to a broad array of flowering plant species to develop and validate an optimization model to design and refine regionally-appropriate, cost-effective plant species mixes to meet different stakeholders' needs.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Margaret Douglas


Sara Zhi Soba (2021)

Context Is Key: Tools For Adapting Beekeeping Practices To Diverse Landscapes

"Many recent studies have demonstrated the importance of land use to honey bee colony survival, growth and honey production. However, the results of these studies are often conflicting, and land use patterns are typically defined in terms that are not generalizable or relatable to the key stressors known to impact bees. Thus, it is not currently possible to predict a colony's health and productivity based on its landscape context. Furthermore, beekeeping practices greatly impact colony outcomes, including altering a colony's resilience to these landscape-based stressors. In this proposal, we will develop generalizable, ecologically-relevant indices that comprehensively describe landscape context in terms of the key stressors impacting honey bees (forage quality, pesticide use, climatic severity, and managed bee population density). Using beekeeper-supplied data, we will evaluate how landscape context and beekeeping practices interface to predict colony health, size (which is critical for pollination) and honey production."

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Margaret Douglas


Lily Grace Tarwater (2021)

Indian Energyscapes: Coal Histories, Climate Vulnerabilities, and Solar Futures

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow Heather Bedi recently conducted research on energy inequalities, solar energy access, and climate change vulnerabilities in India. With 60 percent of India's electricity supply derived from carbon-intensive coal, renewable energy sources-such as solar energy-offer the country a form of climate change mitigation. I am drafting a related manuscript entitled, Indian Energyscapes: Climate Change and the Everyday of Energy Access, which answers calls for the use of 'human-centered' research methods to explore critical energy realities and the low-carbon transition. I request a Dana research student to help me edit the three manuscript chapters and associated journal articles I have drafted during my sabbatical. The student will check bibliographic references, copy-edit, proof-read, fact-check, locate illustrations or graphs, and compile a literature review. I anticipate that this Dana experience will create a strong learning environment for the student, while aiding in the process of preparing my manuscript for submission.

Term Funded:Fall 2020
Professor: Heather Bedi


Quynh Nhu Quynh Truong ()

Cover Crops in a Changing Climate: Can Mixtures Reduce Water Stress?

Cover crops are an important tool to improve soil quality in agricultural systems, but their management has not been fully optimized, particularly in light of the changing climate. Cover crops are grown outside of the primary growing season; in our region they are typically planted in fall to protect the soil over the winter. By building soil carbon, cover crops help to mitigate climate change (Kaye & Quemada 2017), but the reciprocal influence of climate change on their growth has been little explored. In the Northeast US, annual rainfall is increasing, and rain is arriving more sporadically, with extreme rain events interspersed with periods of drought (Huang et al. 2017). It remains unclear if and how these changes will influence cover crops and how farmers should adjust their management in response. Emerging research suggests that planting a diverse species mixture can enhance cover crop benefits (Finney & Kaye 2017), but it is unknown whether this approach can also improve climate resilience. Therefore, this project is organized around two, related objectives: Objective 1: Characterize climatic changes during the window of cover crop establishment Objective 2: Test the influence of cover crop composition on resilience to water stress

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Margaret Douglas


Louise Josephine Verter (2019)

Thermal Controls on Methane Dynamics in Icelandic Lakes: In-Situ

As the climate warms, it is critical to understand feedback mechanisms that will influence ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions. Will increasing air temperatures lead to higher rates of microbial greenhouse gas production and emission or will biotic uptake of these greenhouse gases be able to keep pace with increased production and thus mediate emission? These questions are particularly important for methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 34 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its production and consumption are strongly mediated by microbial processes in lakes (methanogenesis and methanotrophy, respectively).

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Kristin Strock


Angela M Wallis (2002)

Extreme Herbivory by Deer at Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary: Are today's forest canopy gaps the future forest?

A challenge for environmental scientists, and a test of their understanding of the environment, is to project nature's long term responses to stresses. The large deer herd at Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary (RWS) imposes a substantial stress on the RWS forest by eating most of the small, young trees. Studies have shown that protecting the small trees from deer yields more and faster growing small trees. But what are the long term effects of deer on the RWS forest? Gaps in the forest canopy, formed by the death of large trees, are normally filled when small trees grow up into the canopy. However, an ongoing study of canopy gaps at RWS suggests this is not happening. The vegetation below the gaps includes few, if any, trees capable of filling th gap. Because the death of other large trees is inevitable, more canopy gaps will form in the future. If these gaps do not fill in, the RWS forest of the future will have fewer trees and be more open, or may even cease to be a forest. The current canopy gaps at RWS provide an opportunity to study the future forest. We propose to characterize the current canopy gap vegetation at RWS and at similar forests with fewer deer. We also propose to explore other factors that may be contributing to the failure of the gap filling process. In future research we plan to link the results of this field research to the results of computer models to project the future forest at RWS.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Brian Pedersen


Thomas James Wisnewski (1989)

Analysis of Patterns and Causes of variation in PH and Alkalinity concentration in Pennsylvania Streams

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Emerita Wilderman


Tabea Klassen Zimmermann (2015)

Understanding Climate-Driven Change in the Boreal Lakes of Isle Royale National Park

A fossil record of algae from Siskiwit Lake in Isle Royale National Park reveals that vertical temperature gradients in the lake have changed over the 20th century, likely due to increasing air temperatures. In lake ecosystems, vertical temperature gradients in the water column have a strong effect on habitat quality. It remains unclear whether these recent changes in thermal habitat: 1) fall within the range of natural variability; and 2) affect food quality at the base of the aquatic food web. To address this, a sediment record that spans 5,000 years was collected from a lake in ISRO in 2013. With the assistance of a student research assistant, Tabea Zimmermann, we will process 500 samples which will be used to reconstruct changes in thermal lake habitat.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Kristin Strock


Tabea Klassen Zimmermann (2015)

EPA-GRO Summer Internship

I was located in Newport, OR for my summer [2014] GRO internship, along the rocky and wild Pacific coast. I worked in the Pacific Coast Ecology Branch (PCEB), one of three branches of the Western Ecology Division (WED), belonging to the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) of the Office of Research and Development (ORD) of EPA. My internship project was "Identifying and preventing nutrient impairments in Pacific Northwest estuaries" and I worked with Drs. Jim Kaldy and Cheryl Brown.

Term Funded:summer 2014
Professor:


Environmental Studies, International Studies

Aisha Maryla Rodriguez ()

Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in Bangladesh

Rodriguez and Zawad aimed to observe how global food security affects vulnerable populations and how factors like race, geographical region and gender can impact the ability to adapt and rebound. First, they had to understand Bangladesh's unique position on the world's stage as a developing country with a growing population and diverse natural resources. Over three-quarters of the workforce lives in rural areas, and two-thirds of the population is engaged in farming or agro-based industrial activity. Meanwhile, 17% of the population (around 160 million citizens) is extremely poor, with over 40 million in the nation malnourished. "We started thinking about how climate change affects food security, particularly among indigenous populations or those in specific regions," said Rodriguez. "How can we use this research for resource sustainability? Data shows that in rural areas, one in nine people go hungry, and our research shows that as extreme weather continues to be churned by climate change, food security will only become a larger issue." To help guide their research, the team referenced the Bangladesh Climate Change Adaptation Survey, which was conducted in 2012 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The survey detailed data on farmer demographic characteristics, farmers' observations of changes in climate and farmers' adaptation to changes in climate.

Term Funded:FallFall 20202020
Professor: Heather Bedi, Heather Bedi, Heather Bedi


Amir Habib Zawad ()

Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in Bangladesh

Rodriguez and Zawad aimed to observe how global food security affects vulnerable populations and how factors like race, geographical region and gender can impact the ability to adapt and rebound. First, they had to understand Bangladesh's unique position on the world's stage as a developing country with a growing population and diverse natural resources. Over three-quarters of the workforce lives in rural areas, and two-thirds of the population is engaged in farming or agro-based industrial activity. Meanwhile, 17% of the population (around 160 million citizens) is extremely poor, with over 40 million in the nation malnourished. "We started thinking about how climate change affects food security, particularly among indigenous populations or those in specific regions," said Rodriguez. "How can we use this research for resource sustainability? Data shows that in rural areas, one in nine people go hungry, and our research shows that as extreme weather continues to be churned by climate change, food security will only become a larger issue." To help guide their research, the team referenced the Bangladesh Climate Change Adaptation Survey, which was conducted in 2012 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The survey detailed data on farmer demographic characteristics, farmers' observations of changes in climate and farmers' adaptation to changes in climate.

Term Funded:Fall 2020
Professor: Shamma Alam, Heather Bedi


Environmental Studies, Italian & Italian Studies

Natalie B McNeill (2017)

Mincio Park in Mantua, Italy

Research on the Mincio Park in Mantua, Italy, which utilizes volunteers to protect the river, lakes, and land that are under the Park's jurisdiction.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Luca Trazzi, Nicoletta Marini Maio


Environmental Studies, Latin American, Latinx & Caribbean Studies

Natalie Cassidy (2018)

The impacts of the soy agricultural industry on society and community in Argentina

With the recent rapid increase of global soy demand, the agricultural landscape is drastically changing in many countries, such as Argentina. While the adverse environmental impacts of soy, specifically the growth of the soy industry in Argentina, have been well studied and documented, what has not been as well documented are the social and community issues in Argentina that arise as a result. The research focuses on the ways in which environmental threats and pressures faced by Latin American countries are exacerbated by international politics, economics, and historical relations.

Term Funded:26 weeks 2017
Professor: Mariana Past


Environmental Studies, Sustainability

Caroline Rachel Kanaskie (2017)

EPA-GRO Summer Internship

Caroline was in Narragansett, RI working on a project with nitrogen and coastal wetlands

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor:


Sara Zhi Soba (2021)

Code for Communication: Visualizing Trends in Insecticide Use and Bee Toxicity

Code for Communication: Visualizing Trends in Insecticide Use and Bee Toxicity

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Margaret Douglas


Food Studies

Audree Khalishah (2021)

Food System Assessment: Carlisle Residents Attitudes Toward Home Gardening and Food Insecurity

Home garden production offers communities a strategic solution for addressing issues of food insecurity. With sparse documentation on the effectiveness of home gardens as tools for improving community food systems in the U.S., especially among underrepresented populations, this project aims to continue to build upon data collected in 2018 to better understand the connection between food (in)security and home gardens within key areas in Carlisle. Information collected over the spring semester will inform future efforts to connect Dickinson College students and faculty with neighboring communities that struggle with food insecurity through household-specific interventions rooted in home gardening. Envisioned as a long-term "town and gown" initiative anchored in the College Farm Program, results from this project will provide baseline data for establishing household-level home garden partnerships and track how gardens address food insecurity issues, in addition to supporting future coursework and new course proposals within the Food Studies Certificate Program.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Jennifer Halpin


French & Francophone Studies

Sofie M Anderson (2015)

The Writing of Disaster in Contemporary Haitian Literature

In his latest book, Writing on the Fault Line: Haitian Literature and the Earthquake of 2010, Martin Munro asks what constitutes a Haitian post-earthquake novel. Inspired by Maurice Blanchot seminal work The Writing of Disaster, my project investigates the stakes involved for Haitian writers "reporting" on national traumas. While several writers such as Dany Laferriere and Rodney Saint-Eloi chose to write about the earthquake from an autobiographical standpoint, writers such as Kettly Mars, Makenzy Orcel, and Marvin Victor opted to adopt a form of writing that reflects a re-imagined and distorted lived reality. Central to my argument is the commodification of the body in times of crisis: I suggest that the body becomes the primary means of exchange and communication, a form of currency and a marker of identity.

Term Funded:Spring 2015
Professor: Linda Brindeau


Emma Catherine Devine (2015)

Une analyse de la maniere d'aborder la sexualite dans les documenataires pour enfants et adolescents

Emma's research focused on her experiences interning at the children's publishing company La Vengeur Masque as well as the ways in which children and young adult literature on sexuality can influence the beliefs and attitudes of children and teens on the topic of sexuality. Specifically, the research analyzed representations of nudity, pleasure, consent, masturbation, homosexuality, and reproduction and the various ways these representations can reassure or bring up worries and insecurities about one's sexuality and how this can have an impact on sexual experiences and well-being. In addition, the research also analyzed the impact of representations of gender and race in these books.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Karen Elizabeth Kirner de Chazelles (2008)

Research Assistant for Toulouse Program

Research Assistant for Toulouse Program

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Lucile Duperron


Mary Kathryn Picazio (2001)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Michael Kline


Geology

Katherine Mary Anderson (2011)

Curation of the Ellis mineral collection with emphasis on related to African resource extraction

The project will provide funding for a student to catalogue, document and identify >1000 new mineral and rock specimens donated to the Department of Geology in 2006 by an alumnus. Special emphasis will be placed on samples from Africa, several of which have already been identified, and a display showing several samples with ancillary maps and printed information will be exhibited in the Kaufman Building, focusing on the theme of mineral resource extraction in the context of African history.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Adrian J Biscontini (2006)

Yale University Helium Dating Workshop

We are embarking on a research project to fill a gap in the literature. In 1975, Gordon Tullock presented a theory to explain why losers would resist policy change. We now seek to explain why they sometimes accept compensation and why governments are willing to pay.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Adrian J Biscontini (2006)

Late Cenozoic Drainage Capture, Evolution of the Arkansas River, Central Colorado, and the Recent Cutting the Royal Gorge

Preliminary investigations have shown that the proposed chemistry will be possible but with the use of 355 nm light to initiate the photochemistry (I was not aware of this when I wrote the grant). I am therefore requesting funds to purchase four optics (two dichroic mirrors and two harmonic separators) to allow for 355 nm photolysis.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Peter Sak


Shaun Tyler Brown (2003)

Volcanism in Atka Island, Aleutians

Volcanism in Atka Island, Aleutians

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Gene Yogodzinski


Jessica Ann Cannon (1998)

Development of a Three Dimensional Model of the Subsurface Stratigraphy of the Dickinson College Water Well Field

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Marcus Key


Jessica Ann Cannon (1998)

NSF 9419240 Regional Variability in Aleutian Primitive Magmas and Implications for Processes in the Mantle Wedge: Proposal for an Ion Probe Study

n/a

Term Funded:Year 1997
Professor: Gene Yogodzinski


Gordon Spencer Clark (2007)

Arsenic Occurrence in Maine Groundwater: Is it there? How did it get there? What are the risks?

Arsenic is a common constituent of many natural groundwaters. Until recently, its presence in domestic well supplies was not frequently checked. The discovery of elevated arsenic in groundwaters around the world and the emergence of serious social, economic and health consequences of ingesting this carcinogen have now become apparent. In the United States, elevated arsenic exists in many aquifers in the western states and the mid-west region causing major health concerns in this part of the country. This project aims to investigate the potential for elevated arsenic to exist in the groundwater of a popular summer town of Castine, in coastal Maine. The geology of this area indicates the potential for arsenic to be present in groundwater. Currently, many residents of Castine draw their domestic water from private wells. Collecting data on the water and rock chemistry of the area will enable recommendations to be made on the water quality, as well as providing information on similar geologic areas which may be at risk of elevated arsenic in their groundwater supplies.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Bethany O'Shea


Julie Alison Collins (1994)

Functional morphology of Trepostome bryozoans

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Marcus Key


Jonathan Wilder Cox (1997)

Spatial and Temporal Paleoclimate Reconstructions of Cyclical Early Mesozoic Age Lake Sediments from the Hartford and Newark Basins, Eastern U.S.: A Geochemical Approach

Spatial and Temporal Paleoclimate Reconstructions of Cyclical Early Mesozoic Age Lake Sediments from the Hartford and Newark Basins, Eastern U.S.: A Geochemical Approach

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Chira Anneli Cratsley (2007)

Edwards NSF Grant: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Chira Anneli Cratsley (2007)

NSF 0439707 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Chira Anneli Cratsley (2007)

Origin of Magmatic Inclusions from Centre Hills Volcano, Montserrat, West Indies

Although the most recent, on-going eruption of Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat has been documented in detail, little work has been done to understand the plumping system by which magma moves about beneath the volcano. During a recent Dickinson College January term program, faculty and students discovered blocks of rock likely from the plumbing system beneath the Centre Hills volcano, which is immediately north of the Soufriere Hills. These blocks possibly represent fragments of volcanic conduits that supplied magma to the Centre Hills in the past and possibly to the current Soufriere Hills volcano. Field documentation of the distribution of conduit blocks coupled with laboratory studies of the chemical compositions of minerals from the blocks will allow us to begin to help reconstruct the magma plumping for the entire volcanic system by constraining magma compositions as well as temperatures and depths at which the magmas crystallized.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Alyssa Michelle Davidson (2010)

Development and Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills in First-Year Students Taking Introductory Geology Courses and Beyond

The Geology Department proposes a summer 2009 Dana Research Assistantship for Alyssa Chaplin, a junior Geology major preparing for a career in Earth Science teaching. Alyssa's understanding of the content within the Geology major and her significant interest in assessment of critical thinking and content knowledge in the Earth Sciences make her an extraordinarily well qualified student for this assistantship. Alyssa will work with the department faculty this summer to help us understand the intellectual context and science/math phobias of entering first year students with respect to engagement in earth science course. Her research will help us to revise and assess the ways we approach what and how we teach with the ultimate outcome of increasing students' scientific critical thinking skills and awareness of how the earth works in order to develop minds that are curious and attentive to the ways in which humans interact with the planet now and in the future.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


John Jacob Davidson (2010)

Dana Assistantship to Support a Petrographic and Geochemical Study of Icelandic Crust

A 'tectonic window' in northern Iceland exposes the internal structure of an ancient abandoned ridge, providing important insights into the processes that construct the ocean crust. In July 2007, I acquired over 200 samples from two well-exposed upper crustal sections. Petrographic and geochemical analyses of this sample suite will complement structural and paleomagnetic investigations in the same study areas, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of oceanic crustal accretion. I propose to perform a preliminary petrographic and geochemical analysis of ~20 samples from this sample suite. A Dana Assistant would aid this study in three key areas: (1) preparation of samples, (2) data plotting, and (3) preparation of a conference presentation. These phases provide an opportunity for the student to apply analytical techniques to authentic research, analyze data in the context of existing data, and present scientific information in a meaningful way.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: Meagen Pollock


Clarence Edward Dingman (2003)

Geochemistry and Mineralogy of Carbonate-enriched Black Shales: Implications for Millenial-scale Cyclicity in early Mesozoic Lake sediments, eastern US

The early Mesozoic rift basins of the eastern United States (Nova Scotia to NC) contain within their sedimentary rocks a detailed record of climate change spanning a time period of approximately 40 million years. Repeating sequences of gray-black-purple-red shales and siltstones represent wet to dry conditions caused by regular changes in the sun-earth distance relationship. Because of the eccentricities of the earth's tilt and wobble on its axis and its solar orbit, the earth is slightly closer or farther from the sun producing an increase or decrease in effective solar radiation a change in climate. These orbital forcing mechanisms have periodicities of between 21,000 and 100,000 years. The glacial-interglacial periods of the last 3 million years of earth history have been well correlated to this phenomenon. At a higher frequency (millennial-scale) there are also known to be significant climate anomalies the causes of which are poorly known. These cycles are evident in rocks of less than 100,000 but have never been seen in older rocks. This project will use well-preserved rock cores and outcrop from these Mesozoic basins to attempt to discern these millennial-scale changes and ascertain their cause. Previous work has shown significant quasi-regular bands of carbonate sediment within the black shale units in the Newark rift basin. Our objective is to determine the nature and origin of these carbonate units using chemical and mineralogical tests and statistically assess the notion that they are of sufficient regularity to be caused by climate. We will attempt to place these lithologies in a more precise time-frame to determine the duration of the carbonate events. Such information is important to our understanding of the causes of rapid climate change (order of decades) as we begin to see more and more evidence of global%

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Gwen Elizabeth Dunnington (2010)

NSF 0910712 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

Northern British Columbia was the site of numerous glaciovolcanic eruptions during the Pleistocene, making it an ideal location to investigate interactions between volcanism and continental ice sheets. We propose to conduct a comprehensive study of 34 basaltic glaciovolcanic and subaerial centers in the Tuya-Kawdy area in northern British Columbia, Canada, to determine if fluctuations in continental ice-sheet volumes affected the eruption frequencies and compositions of Pleistocene volcanism. At each of the centers we will document the elevations of important stratigraphic markers (pillow lava, passage zones, tephra cones) to constrain paleo-ice conditions for the Cordilleran ice sheet (CIS) and collect samples for geochemical characterization and geochronology. Using GIS software, we will estimate minimum eruption volumes and volumes of material eroded in order to examine variations of eruption volumes through time. We will analyze bulk rock, glass and mineral compositions to assess whether or not they vary with ice presence/absence. Eruption ages for selected samples will be determined with high precision 40Ar/39Ar-dating to look for correlations between volcanism and CIS fluctuations as well as for comparison with the global ice volume record.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Richard William Egan (1990)

Chemostratigraphic Study of Deep Marine Shales in the Eastern U. S., and Wales, UK

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Megan Garrett Gerseny (2002)

Volcanism in Atka Island, Aleutians

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Gene Yogodzinski


James Paul Haklar (2011)

NSF 0910712 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

Northern British Columbia was the site of numerous glaciovolcanic eruptions during the Pleistocene, making it an ideal location to investigate interactions between volcanism and continental ice sheets. We propose to conduct a comprehensive study of 34 basaltic glaciovolcanic and subaerial centers in the Tuya-Kawdy area in northern British Columbia, Canada, to determine if fluctuations in continental ice-sheet volumes affected the eruption frequencies and compositions of Pleistocene volcanism. At each of the centers we will document the elevations of important stratigraphic markers (pillow lava, passage zones, tephra cones) to constrain paleo-ice conditions for the Cordilleran ice sheet (CIS) and collect samples for geochemical characterization and geochronology. Using GIS software, we will estimate minimum eruption volumes and volumes of material eroded in order to examine variations of eruption volumes through time. We will analyze bulk rock, glass and mineral compositions to assess whether or not they vary with ice presence/absence. Eruption ages for selected samples will be determined with high precision 40Ar/39Ar-dating to look for correlations between volcanism and CIS fluctuations as well as for comparison with the global ice volume record.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Gretchen N Hancock (1991)

Rare Element Geochemistry of Sediments in the Gulf of California Oxygen Minimum Zone

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Gretchen N Hancock (1991)

Geology and Geochemistry of Metavolic Rock of the Catoctin Formation, South -Central Pennsylvania

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Scott Petersen


Trent Mowbray Harrison (1994)

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction of Middle to Late Ordovician Black Shales, SW Wales, UK: A Chemostratigraphic Approach

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Donald James Hartman (2000)

Ice-core Analysis and Physical Glaciology of Galena Creek Rock Glacier Wyoming

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Noel Potter


Donald James Hartman (2000)

NSF 9616776 Collaborative Research: Ice-Core Analysis & Physical Glaciology of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier, Wyoming

1) Repeated, high-resolution surveys of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier over a five year period, resulting in the best motion survey of a rock glacier ever completed. The surveys allowed us to determine rates of ablation beneath the debris mantle over the whole rock glacier surface. Additionally, reconnaissance surveys and photo resurveys of Sulphur Creek Rock Glacier, a larger and possibly older feature near Galena Creek.

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Noel Potter


Donald James Hartman (2000)

NSF 9616776 Collaborative Research: Ice-Core Analysis & Physical Glaciology of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier, Wyoming

1) Repeated, high-resolution surveys of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier over a five year period, resulting in the best motion survey of a rock glacier ever completed. The surveys allowed us to determine rates of ablation beneath the debris mantle over the whole rock glacier surface. Additionally, reconnaissance surveys and photo resurveys of Sulphur Creek Rock Glacier, a larger and possibly older feature near Galena Creek.

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Noel Potter


Donald James Hartman (2000)

NSF 9616776 Collaborative Research: Ice-Core Analysis & Physical Glaciology of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier, Wyoming

1) Repeated, high-resolution surveys of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier over a five year period, resulting in the best motion survey of a rock glacier ever completed. The surveys allowed us to determine rates of ablation beneath the debris mantle over the whole rock glacier surface. Additionally, reconnaissance surveys and photo resurveys of Sulphur Creek Rock Glacier, a larger and possibly older feature near Galena Creek.

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Noel Potter


Donald James Hartman (2000)

Ice-Core Analysis and Physical Glaciology of Galena Creek Rock Glacier, Wyoming

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Noel Potter


Courtney Elizabeth Haynes (2009)

Nutrient and Trace Element fluxes from Legacy Sediment Release: Implications for the environmental degradation of the Chesapeake Bay

Legacy sediments once trapped behind centuries-old mill dams in southeastern PA are now being released to streams due to dam degradation or removal. Depending on land-use these sediment repositories contained large mass accumulations of nutrients and/or bioavailable trace elements. This study within the Yellow Breeches Creek watershed (YBCW) of Cumberland County, PA attempts to model the natural elemental flux from non-agricultural and non-urbanized areas in contrast to that from agricultural and urbanizing areas of the watershed. The YBCW contains definable area of forested, agricultural and urban land use, each of which includes legacy sediment deposits. We propose a two-part study: 1) to determine the historical mass accumulation of nutrients and bioavailable trace elements in legacy sediment volumes and 2) to determine the flux of nutrients and trace elements by land use from these repositories by analyzing the suspended and dissolved load of stream cutting through the legacy sediments presently.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Courtney Elizabeth Haynes (2009)

NSF 0439707 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Courtney Elizabeth Haynes (2009)

NSF 0439707 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Whitney Noel Hoffman (2009)

Relationship Among Rough Crust Subduction, Interseismic Coupling, and Quaternary Uplift Rates, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

Approximately 40% of the global population is concentrated along tectonic plate boundaries. These boundaries which comprise ~15% of the earth's surface release ~90% of the seismic energy. As such, understanding the relationship between deformation over the long-term (thousands of years) and human timescales is essential understanding seismic hazards associated with plate boundary deformation. This proposed research will attempt to mesh long-term (geologically constrained) rates of plate boundary deformation with existing short-term global positioning system constrained rates of plate boundary deformation. Specifically, the goals of this proposal are: (1) to map the spatial distribution of a <50,000 year old accumulation of marine sediment, across of the southern coast of the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, and (2) to radiocarbon date shells collected from the deposits. Dated exposures of the late Pleistocene marine sediment will be used to constrain the long term rates and magnitudes of vertical motion across the Osa peninsula.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Peter Sak


Arika Brooke Hunt (1997)

Preparation for attendance at American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference on Rock Glaciers, NW Wyoming.

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Noel Potter


Margaret Scott Jackson (2007)

Constraints on Regional-scale Deformation across the Pennsylvania Salient as Deduced from Geologic Cross-Sections.

A field-based investigation across the valley and ridge physiographic province along the Susquehanna river valley. Here, the south-flowing river is oriented essentially perpendicular to the east-west tending Appalachian mountains. Folded and faulted Paleozoic rocks are exposed in the riverbed, roadcuts along both the east and west banks of the river, in quarries, and throughout agricultural and forested lands of the valley. By constructing a detailed geologic swath map along the shores of the river, working with a Dickinson undergraduate geology major, the project will constrain the amount of tectonic shortening between Harrisburg and Williamsport. The results of this mapping effort will be used to construct a balanced geological cross section.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Peter Sak


Robert Allan Jansen (2011)

NSF 0910712 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

Northern British Columbia was the site of numerous glaciovolcanic eruptions during the Pleistocene, making it an ideal location to investigate interactions between volcanism and continental ice sheets. We propose to conduct a comprehensive study of 34 basaltic glaciovolcanic and subaerial centers in the Tuya-Kawdy area in northern British Columbia, Canada, to determine if fluctuations in continental ice-sheet volumes affected the eruption frequencies and compositions of Pleistocene volcanism. At each of the centers we will document the elevations of important stratigraphic markers (pillow lava, passage zones, tephra cones) to constrain paleo-ice conditions for the Cordilleran ice sheet (CIS) and collect samples for geochemical characterization and geochronology. Using GIS software, we will estimate minimum eruption volumes and volumes of material eroded in order to examine variations of eruption volumes through time. We will analyze bulk rock, glass and mineral compositions to assess whether or not they vary with ice presence/absence. Eruption ages for selected samples will be determined with high precision 40Ar/39Ar-dating to look for correlations between volcanism and CIS fluctuations as well as for comparison with the global ice volume record.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


AlexandraSelene Jarvis (2010)

U/Th-He dating of xenoliths from Tsekone Ridge and the Centre Hills

Determining the ages of volcanic eruptions is very important for helping to predict when a future eruption might take place as well as for recording past climatic conditions. For example, if a volcano eruptions while it is surrounded by ice (glaciovolcanic eruption), distinctive types of lava flows are produced. If the ice later melts, the lava flows serve as a record that ice was present at the time of eruption. This proposal seeks funding to send a Dickinson student to attend a special research opportunity (HeDWaAZ) at the University of Arizona for two weeks this summer to learn how to determine the ages of rocks (xenoliths) carried by lava to the surface of the earth. Two years ago I sent a student to attend a similar seminar at Yale University, and the results of the student's work were recently published in a very high profile earth science journal, Geology.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


AlexandraSelene Jarvis (2010)

NSF 0439707 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Andrew Brainard Judd (1993)

Macroevolutionary Patterns in Fossil Bryozoans

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Marcus Key


Christopher Kendall Junium (2000)

NSF 9616776 Collaborative Research: Ice-Core Analysis & Physical Glaciology of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier, Wyoming

1) Repeated, high-resolution surveys of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier over a five year period, resulting in the best motion survey of a rock glacier ever completed. The surveys allowed us to determine rates of ablation beneath the debris mantle over the whole rock glacier surface. Additionally, reconnaissance surveys and photo resurveys of Sulphur Creek Rock Glacier, a larger and possibly older feature near Galena Creek.

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Noel Potter


Gregory Everett Lasher (2011)

NSF 0910712 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

Northern British Columbia was the site of numerous glaciovolcanic eruptions during the Pleistocene, making it an ideal location to investigate interactions between volcanism and continental ice sheets. We propose to conduct a comprehensive study of 34 basaltic glaciovolcanic and subaerial centers in the Tuya-Kawdy area in northern British Columbia, Canada, to determine if fluctuations in continental ice-sheet volumes affected the eruption frequencies and compositions of Pleistocene volcanism. At each of the centers we will document the elevations of important stratigraphic markers (pillow lava, passage zones, tephra cones) to constrain paleo-ice conditions for the Cordilleran ice sheet (CIS) and collect samples for geochemical characterization and geochronology. Using GIS software, we will estimate minimum eruption volumes and volumes of material eroded in order to examine variations of eruption volumes through time. We will analyze bulk rock, glass and mineral compositions to assess whether or not they vary with ice presence/absence. Eruption ages for selected samples will be determined with high precision 40Ar/39Ar-dating to look for correlations between volcanism and CIS fluctuations as well as for comparison with the global ice volume record.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Steven Michael Lev (1992)

Evolution of Individuality in Trepostome Bryozoans through the Paleozoic Era

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Marcus Key


Steven Michael Lev (1992)

Paleoceanographic Reconstruction of Middle Ordovician Shales in Wales

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Alexander Saylor Lloyd (2007)

Edwards NSF Grant: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Alexander Saylor Lloyd (2007)

NSF 0439707 RUI: Using the Products of Volcano Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-Ice Conditions

This project involves an integrated volcanological, sedimentological, geochemical and geochronological study of mafic and intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanic and glacial deposits from the Edziza Volcanic Complex (EVC), in northern British Columbia, Canada to both constrain variations in Pleistocene ice conditions in this region and to develop the methodology of using such a study as a proxy for paleo-ice conditions/paleoclimate elsewhere in the world. Constraining temporal variation in paleo-ice presence and thickness using a multi-disciplinary study of the products of a long-lived glaciovolcanic complex represents a significant new approach to using volcanic rocks as a proxy for paleoclimate. This project would develop a methodology based on integrating datasets from glaciovolcanic and glaciogenic facies analysis, volatile and H-isotope analysis of volcanic glass, and precise 40Ar/39Ar geochronology that could be used to constrain Pleistocene ice conditions in British Columbia, and in many other glaciated volcanic areas, such as the Cascades, the Andes, iceland, west Antarctica and Siberia. North-central British Columbia is a key area for understanding the dynamics of the Cordilleran ice Sheet (C1S), as models suggest that it lay close to the central and thickest part of the C1S during the Last Glacial Maximum and was located along a major ice divide. The processes and products of mafic glaciovolcanism are well documented, but those of intermediate-silicic glaciovolcanism are much less well known. This project would also significantly increase our understanding of this style of volcano-ice interaction. Studies of volcano-ice interaction on Earth help our understanding of deposits generated by magma-ice interaction on Mars, which are recognized as important astrobiological targets.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Matthew Dustin Moore (2004)

Developing a new technique for determining the age of living and fossil bryozoan colonies

This study proposes to develop a technique for determining the ages of living and fossil bryozoan colonies. Bryozoans are a group of coral-like, aquatic, invertebrate animals that often form branching, tree-like colonies. The ages of the colonies will be determined using seasonal water temperature fluctuations recorded in the oxygen isotopic composition of their skeletons (i.e., it will be like counting geochemical tree rings). The significance of this project is that 1) it will determine if large bryozoan colonies can provide a long record of past climate changes; 2) it will enable us to determine the rate of carbonate production of these animals which is required to determine the rate of limestone formation from their skeletons; 3) it will allow us to determine the ages of colonies which can then be correlated with various traits such as colony size, shape, environment, etc.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Marcus Key


Matthew Dustin Moore (2004)

Bryozoan Colony Growth Rates: A Proxy fo Carbonate Production in Cool-Water Limestones

Our goal is to quantify the growth rates of cool-water marine fossil bryozoan colonies in order to estimate the gross carbonate production rate of bryozoan colonies. The key to this project is the preservation of a seasonal water temperature signal in the oxygen isotopes of the fossilized bryozoan skeletons. Low Mg-calcite trepostome bryozoans were chosen due to their diagenetic stability. Mid paleolatitude carbonate paleoenvironments were chosen due to their strongly seasonal water temperatures. The best candidates for this study are the Ordovician trepostome bryozoan faunas of Ireland and Estonia.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Marcus Key


Matthew James Nogier (2006)

Testing hypothesis for the environment of eruption of the Pointer Ridge pyroclastic deposit, Hoodoo Mountain volcano, BC, Canada: volcanic explosions into the air or beneath ice?

We propose to investigate the eruption conditions that produced a 100 meter thick deposit of fragmental volcanic rocks at Pointer Ridge, on the north side of Hoodoo Mountain volcano, in western British Columbia, Canada. The goal of the study is to test two hypotheses about the origins of the pyroclastic rocks: i) that they formed during a dry, subaerial volcanic eruption or ii) that they formed during a wet, glaciovolcanic eruption. The proposed study will be significant for the training of two Dickinson undergraduates as well as for a broad scientific audience. The proposed research will provide intensive, quantitative training for the students and will be significant to a broader scientific audience concerned with volcanic hazards and global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Catherine Marie Powers (1999)

Growth Rates of Branching, Reef-forming Bryozoans

Growth Rates of Branching, Reef-forming Bryozoans

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Marcus Key


Jeffrey Bingham Roth (2001)

Glaciological dynamics of Galena Creek rock glacier Wyoming.*

Galena Creek rock glacier (GCRG), a small, debris-covered glacier in the Absaroka Mountains, NW Wyoming. It has become the focus of a debate over the origin of ice in it since Potter first worked on it in the 1960's. In the past several years we have demonstrated clearly that ice in GCRG originates from compacted snow at its head like a clean glacier. A group of 4 collaborators and Potter are in the fourth year of a project supported by a 4-year NSF grant to study the flow and mass-balance of GCRG, and investigate its potential to yield information about past climate. The climate record is obtained by study of oxygen isotopes and deuterium in the annual layers preserved in the ice. In Summer, 2000 we hope to: 1) drill a long core from the ice, 2)re-survey some 300 marks in 1997 and 1999 to obtain another year of detailed movement for GCRG, and continue to measure and map the thickness of debris over the rock glacier. We also wish to return to nearby Sulphur Creek rock glacier (SCRG) to re-survey marks emplaced in 1997 and repeated in 1999. This proposal requests funds for travel not included in the 4th year of the NSF grant, plus supplementary funds so that Jeff Roth, a Junior geology major can work with me for 5 weeks this Summer in August and accompany me to Wyoming. Roth will be in charge of the project to continue to measure debris thickness begun by another student in 1999, but will participate in all aspects of our work on GCRG and SCRG.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Noel Potter


Jeffrey Bingham Roth (2001)

NSF 9616776 Collaborative Research: Ice-Core Analysis & Physical Glaciology of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier, Wyoming

1) Repeated, high-resolution surveys of the Galena Creek Rock Glacier over a five year period, resulting in the best motion survey of a rock glacier ever completed. The surveys allowed us to determine rates of ablation beneath the debris mantle over the whole rock glacier surface. Additionally, reconnaissance surveys and photo resurveys of Sulphur Creek Rock Glacier, a larger and possibly older feature near Galena Creek.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Noel Potter


Timothy M Samson (2005)

Bryozoan colony growth rates: a proxy for carbonate production in cool-water limestones

As part of my 3 year $50,000 grant from the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund, I need to hire a student to work with me on a research project. The project is explained in detail in the attached copy of the original grant proposal. The grant pays the summer salaries and field expenses for me and my student. From R&D I am simply requesting summer room and board for the student to live on campus after we return from our field work. The student (Timothy Samson) will travel to Tallin, Estonia with me this summer. We will meet up with colleagues from Ireland and Germany to collect 450 million year old fossils. We will then return to Carlisle to prepare the specimens for isotopic analysis in Canada this fall. Tim will continue the project next year for his senior research. In Estonia, Tim will learn paleontological field techniques in an international collaborative team setting. Back in Carlisle, he will learn thin sectioning and image analysis techniques.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Marcus Key


Timothy M Samson (2005)

Bryozoan Colony Growth Rates: A Proxy fo Carbonate Production in Cool-Water Limestones

Our goal is to quantify the growth rates of cool-water marine fossil bryozoan colonies in order to estimate the gross carbonate production rate of bryozoan colonies. The key to this project is the preservation of a seasonal water temperature signal in the oxygen isotopes of the fossilized bryozoan skeletons. Low Mg-calcite trepostome bryozoans were chosen due to their diagenetic stability. Mid paleolatitude carbonate paleoenvironments were chosen due to their strongly seasonal water temperatures. The best candidates for this study are the Ordovician trepostome bryozoan faunas of Ireland and Estonia.

Term Funded:Fall 2004
Professor: Marcus Key


Timothy M Samson (2005)

Bryozoan Colony Growth Rates: A Proxy fo Carbonate Production in Cool-Water Limestones

Our goal is to quantify the growth rates of cool-water marine fossil bryozoan colonies in order to estimate the gross carbonate production rate of bryozoan colonies. The key to this project is the preservation of a seasonal water temperature signal in the oxygen isotopes of the fossilized bryozoan skeletons. Low Mg-calcite trepostome bryozoans were chosen due to their diagenetic stability. Mid paleolatitude carbonate paleoenvironments were chosen due to their strongly seasonal water temperatures. The best candidates for this study are the Ordovician trepostome bryozoan faunas of Ireland and Estonia.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Marcus Key


Kristen Slawter (2006)

Bryozoan Colony Growth Rates: a Proxy for Carbonate Production in Cool-Water Limestones

This summer we completed the preparation of Ordovician age fossil bryozoan samples which we collected last summer in Estonia. These results were presented by last year's student at the Geological Society of America meeting in March in Saratoga Springs, NY (Samson et al., 2005). Kristen also made more thin sections of these fossils. We also complete the preparation of the extant bryozoan samples from Croatia. The next step is to analyze the isotopic composition of the samples at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada the first week of October. Preliminary results were presented on 8 September at the Biology Center of the Upper Austria Landes Museum in Linz, Austria (Key et al., 2005). Kristen and I will also give a talk at the Department of Geological Sciences of the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada on 30 September entitled "Using oxygen isotopes to determine ages of giant bryozoan colonies from the Adriatic Sea, Croatia".

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Marcus Key


Kristen Slawter (2006)

Bryozoan Colony Growth Rates: A Proxy fo Carbonate Production in Cool-Water Limestones

Our goal is to quantify the growth rates of cool-water marine fossil bryozoan colonies in order to estimate the gross carbonate production rate of bryozoan colonies. The key to this project is the preservation of a seasonal water temperature signal in the oxygen isotopes of the fossilized bryozoan skeletons. Low Mg-calcite trepostome bryozoans were chosen due to their diagenetic stability. Mid paleolatitude carbonate paleoenvironments were chosen due to their strongly seasonal water temperatures. The best candidates for this study are the Ordovician trepostome bryozoan faunas of Ireland and Estonia.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Marcus Key


Adam Paul Tagliamonte (1999)

A Comparative Study of Karst Hydrology and Hydrogeology in Cambro-Ordovician carbonates of South-Central Pennsylvania, and Recent Carbonates on San Salvador Island, Bahamas Implications for Future Water Resource Supply and Management

A Comparative Study of Karst Hydrology and Hydrogeology in Cambro-Ordovician carbonates of South-Central Pennsylvania, and Recent Carbonates on San Salvador Island, Bahamas Implications for Future Water Resource Supply and Management

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Norma Luke Tedford (1994)

Petrogenesis of Martinsburg Graywacke, and Bentinite

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Henry Hanson


Michael Edward Tomlin (2001)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Gene Yogodzinski


Jennifer Elaine Van Pelt (1989)

Fluvial Geomorphology and Chronostratigraphy of the Mary Wild Beck, Northern Yorkshire

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Kathryn Allyson Wetherell (2005)

Testing hypothesis for the environment of eruption of the Pointer Ridge pyroclastic deposit, Hoodoo Mountain volcano, BC, Canada: volcanic explosions into the air or beneath ice?

We propose to investigate the eruption conditions that produced a 100 meter thick deposit of fragmental volcanic rocks at Pointer Ridge, on the north side of Hoodoo Mountain volcano, in western British Columbia, Canada. The goal of the study is to test two hypotheses about the origins of the pyroclastic rocks: i) that they formed during a dry, subaerial volcanic eruption or ii) that they formed during a wet, glaciovolcanic eruption. The proposed study will be significant for the training of two Dickinson undergraduates as well as for a broad scientific audience. The proposed research will provide intensive, quantitative training for the students and will be significant to a broader scientific audience concerned with volcanic hazards and global climate change.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Kathryn Allyson Wetherell (2005)

Comparison of field and mineralogical characteristics of trachytic volcanism in the nothern Cordilleran volcanic province, British Columbia, Canada

This application proposes to conduct a comparative study of trachytic rocks from six volcanic areas in the northern Cordilleran volcanic province, northwestern British Columbia, Canada. The goals of the study are to test hypotheses about the origins of the volcanic rocks and the details of their eruptions. The six areas include three that have been studied previously and three that have not. The three least studied areas will be mapped and described in the field, and all six locations will be analyzed for spatial and volumetric information using ArcView 3.2 Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Samples from all locations will also be studied in the Geology Department at Dickinson College using a Scanning Electron Microscope to identify and characterize the minerals in the samples. The study of volvanic rocks from the six locations is significant because: i) their presence implies the possibility of future explosive eruptions with attendant threats to northern latitude air traffic; ii) locally they erupted beneath or against ice and so can be used to constrain long-term climatic history inferred from the distribution and thickness of local and regional glaciers; and iii) they have unique chemical compositions for which previous researchers have proposed multiple hypotheses of origin. The GIS database produced by this project will be the foundation for future research into interactions between volcanoes and plate tectonics, volcanic hazard studies, and long-term climate in northwestern North America.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Benjamin Edwards


Marci Allison Wills (2010)

Constraints on Regional-scale Deformation across the Pennsylvania Salient as Deduced from Geologic Cross-Sections.

Although the sweeping arc of the Pennsylvania salient of the Appalachians is among the most widely cited examples of orogenic curvature, some aspects of its evolution remain enigmatic despite nearly 150 years of research (i.e., Rogers, 1858; Dana, 1866; Gwinn, 1967; Rodgers, 1970; Gray and Stamatakos, 1997; Marshak, 2004; Wise, 2004; Wise and Werner, 2004). Herein we propose a field-based investigation across the Valley and Ridge physiographic province along the Susquehanna River Valley. Here the southward flowing Susquehanna River is oriented at a high angle to the northeast trending Appalachians Mountains. Folded and faulted Paleozoic rocks are exposed in the riverbed, road cuts along both the east and west banks of the river, in quarries, and throughout the agricultural and forested lands of the greater Susquehanna River Valley. By constructing a detailed geologic swath map along the shores of the river we hope to constrain the amount of tectonic shortening between Harrisburg and Williamsport, PA. This long-term study involves detailed geologic mapping of a roughly 3 to 5 km wide swath centered about the Susquehanna River, extending from Harrisburg to Williamsport. Ultimately results of this mapping effort will be used to construct a balanced geologic cross-section. The cross-section will be palinspastically restored, placing constraints on the total amount of shortening across the ~ 100 km wide swath of the Valley and Ridge physiographic province. This study will also provide insight into the subsurface structure and the sequence of faulting across the Pennsylvania salient. This knowledge can help to delineate the boundaries of possible target areas for carbon sequestration in central Pennsylvania.Mapping during the summer of 2006 by Sak and Dickinson College undergraduate Margaret Jackson revealed a northeast trending zone of high strain. This localized region of high strain extends northeastward from the west shore of the Susquehanna River in the vicinity of Duncannon, PA, across the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers, and north of Halifax, PA. The position of this zone of high strain is interpreted to reflect the position of a thrust fault within the underlying duplex thrust system (i.e., Herman, 1984). We are in the process of analyzing the distribution of distorted crinoid columnals from six exposures of the Devonian Trimmers Rock Formation using the Fry method (Fry, 1979) to quantify strain across a first-order anticline just north of the localized zone of high strain. The summer 2006 field season yielded in excess of 170 new structural data points. Current mapping is proceeding through the Reward and Millersburg quadrangles. In the summer of 2007 we added in excess of 80 new structural data points to the map and seven strain ellipses for finite strain measured in Perry, Northumberland, and Juniata Counties.Scope of Work The study area for this proposal is a roughly 3 to 5 km wide swath centered on the Susquehanna River from the Juniata-Snyder county line northward to Williamsport. Lithologic and structural data will be collected using standard outcrop techniques. Data will be entered into an Access database provided by the Pennsylvania Geological Survey. Oriented rock samples will be collected from selected outcrops. Thin sections prepared from these samples will be analyzed to quantify strain in local regions throughout the study area. Results of the proposed investigation will be combined with data from the previous two years of study to construct a preliminary cross-section extending roughly between Harrisburg and Williamsport.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Peter Sak


Maria Ejzak Zarod (1999)

Origin and Implications of Mantle Xenoliths at Sheveluch Volcano, Kamchatka

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Gene Yogodzinski


John Gregory Zbell (1998)

NSF 9419240 Regional Variability in Aleutian Primitive Magmas and Implications for Processes in the Mantle Wedge: Proposal for an Ion Probe Study

n/a

Term Funded:Year 1997
Professor: Gene Yogodzinski


Jack Aaron Zimmerman (1997)

Variations in Lake Water Chemistry of a Triassic (early Mesozoic) Rift Lake; Warford member Lockatong formation, Newark Supergroup of eastern North America

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


Daniel Paul dePeyer (2002)

Geology Research Intern

Geology Research Intern

Term Funded:Fall 1999
Professor: Jeffrey Niemitz


German

Jennifer Susan Pavelko (2000)

Towards a Post-Holocaust German-Jewish Identity

Towards a Post-Holocaust German-Jewish Identity

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Wolfgang Muller


Courtney Celeste Rogers (2017)

Edited book that contains my professor's essays, working title "Unconditional Surrender: The Legacy of Friedrich Kittler"

My professor has been one of the co-editors of a collection of essays honoring German media theorist Friedrich Kittler (1943-2011). The volume - under contract with Fordham University Press (the final manuscript was just submitted) - collects essays by eminent scholars from the US and Germany who are not only paying tribute to an influential cross-disciplinary and radical thinker but are also exploring directions for future applications of his path-breaking ideas. Some of the contributors have interacted with Kittler as students or colleagues, others have been inspired by his innovative work. The work of the Dana Research Assistant will be mainly to compile an index for this book and possibly to help with some copy editing if there is time left.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Antje Pfannkuchen


Carol Ann Rynar (2017)

Edited book for Prof. Pfannkuchen, working title "Unconditional Surrender: The Legacy of Friedrich Kittler"

Prof. Pfannkuchen is one of the co-editors of a collection of essays honoring German media theorist Friedrich Kittler (1943-2011). The volume - under contract with Fordham University Press (the final manuscript was just submitted) - collects essays by eminent scholars from the US and Germany who are not only paying tribute to an influential cross-disciplinary and radical thinker but are also exploring directions for future applications of his path-breaking ideas. Some of the contributors have interacted with Kittler as students or colleagues, others have been inspired by his innovative work. The work of the Dana Research Assistant will be mainly to compile an index for this book and possibly to help with some copy editing if there is time left.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Antje Pfannkuchen


Rachel Lynne Schilling (2016)

Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales' Influence on German Society

As a double major in both English and German, Rachel often experienced and investigated her work through literature. Therefore, it is only fitting that she would explore Germany through its most famous literature. The Grimm brothers' fairy tales were one of the original ways in which she experienced and explored German language and German historical culture. Her senior thesis builds on her research of Germany and their language. Much of her research was conducted in Kassel and Bad Oeynhausen, Germany while she was a participant on the Dickinson in Bremen, Germany program.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor:


Health Studies, International Business & Managment

Jiyeong Park (2016)

Exploring Health Care Alliances in Rural Pennsylvania

This project Exploring Health Care Alliances in Rural Pennsylvania is funded by The Center for Rural Pennsylvania. The grantee is Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Dickinson College serves in the role of a subcontractor.The initial phases of the project are underway as of June, 2015. Broadly stated the purpose of the research is to examine the formation of health care alliances in rural Pennsylvania; their effect on rural community heatlh care capaicity; and, the potential of these alliances to better meet the needs of rural communities, while remaining aware and respectful of traditional methods for health care provision valued by the residents of these communities.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: David Sarcone


History

Sarah Isabel Aillon (2019)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project.

Term Funded:year 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Meghan Eleanor Allen (2008)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004. We are hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. In this endeavor, we aim to create a digital archive of various primary sources, including newspaper articles, letters, diaries, recollections and images. We were interested in this period because Dickinson College was at the center of the story. It was quite literally a "house divided" between northern and southern students and its alumni were some of the most important figures in the sectional crisis. (also please see attached memo)

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Russell Joseph Allen (2014)

Civil War & Reconstruction MOOC

This student faculty team will be developing a massive online open course (MOOC) on "Civil War & Reconstruction" for summer 2013. This course is already in development in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and after a pilot experience that we offered in summer 2012 (http://blogs.dickinson.edu/hist-gilder). The student will assist in the refining and testing the course materials and assessment tools. He or she would also help manage the course during its launch in July 2013. And the student collaborator will provide significant research and assistance toward the creation of a pedagogical article or articles that would ask whether open online education has a place in a liberal arts environment such as Dickinson College, and if so, how should it be constructed.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Anabella Giselle Atach (2008)

Patagonia Mosaic Virtual Museum and Resource Center

Since 2001, faculty-student research teams have participated in the three editions of the Patagonia Mosaic project. In collaboration with faculty from the National University of Patagonia and the community of Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, this interdisciplinary project focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of immigration, labor, community life, and memory through fieldwork and historical research. Results of the Patagonia Mosaic initiative are available in the mosaic's Virtual Museum and Resource Center which has also been created in collaboration between faculty and students. The Museum contains multimedia exhibits around central themes in the history of the community of Comodoro Rivadavia and its company towns: migratory experiences, gender and work, community life, family life, and public memory. In addition, the Resource Center contains a searchable collection of historical photographs and documents. The Dana Research assistants will work on editing and updating the museum exhibits and the collection of historical photographs and documents. Since 2001, faculty-student research teams have participated in the three editions of the Patagonia Mosaic project. In collaboration with faculty from the National University of Patagonia and the community of Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, this interdisciplinary project focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of immigration, labor, community life, and memory through fieldwork and historical research. Results of the Patagonia Mosaic initiative are available in the mosaic's Virtual Museum and Resource Center which has also been created in collaboration between faculty and students. The Museum contains multimedia exhibits around central themes in the history of the community of Comodoro Rivadavia and its company towns: migratory experiences, gender and work, community life, family life, and public memory. In addition

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Mofeyisayo Ayomidun Ayodele (2009)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We are in the process of launching the House Divided website at various teacher training workshops beginning in March and July 2007. The website aspires to offer teachers, students and the general public greater understanding of the coming of the Civil War by using the documents and stories of Dickinson College as a window into the turbulent era. We have been using four student interns each summer and academic year and need to continue at this level for the foreseeable future. However, we can reimburse R&D for one of these students using funds from our NEH grants and general project budget. Still, we prefer to use the Dana umbrella to recruit and designate all of the interns in order to keep everything as simple as possible. All the interns do similar work -editing, transcribing and digitizing historical documents and assisting with the preparations for the teacher workshops (which serve as our primary means of advertising the website).

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: James Gerencser


Michael William Blake (2009)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We are in the process of launching the House Divided website at various teacher training workshops beginning in March and July 2007. The website aspires to offer teachers, students and the general public greater understanding of the coming of the Civil War by using the documents and stories of Dickinson College as a window into the turbulent era. We have been using four student interns each summer and academic year and need to continue at this level for the foreseeable future. However, we can reimburse R&D for one of these students using funds from our NEH grants and general project budget. Still, we prefer to use the Dana umbrella to recruit and designate all of the interns in order to keep everything as simple as possible. All the interns do similar work -editing, transcribing and digitizing historical documents and assisting with the preparations for the teacher workshops (which serve as our primary means of advertising the website).

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: John Osborne


Alexander Patton Bloom (2011)

L'optimisme y el terremoto de Lisboa: La reaccion esperada contra una filosofía fatalista (The Ideological Reaction to the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 in the Greater Context of the Enlightenment)

L'optimisme y el terremoto de Lisboa: La reaccion esperada contra una filosofía fatalista (The Ideological Reaction to the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 in the Greater Context of the Enlightenment)

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Krislin Marie Bolling (1995)

Editing: Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History.

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: George Rhyne


Christine Bombaro (1993)

Editing: Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History.

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: George Rhyne


Kelly Heuser Bonafe (2011)

Russo-American Relations Through the Context of Russian Strategic Documents on Foreign Policy from 2000-present

Russo-American Relations Through the Context of Russian Strategic Documents on Foreign Policy from 2000-present

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor:


Trey Terrell Boone (2011)

House Divided Project

We would like to continue to receive three (3) Dana interns for the House Divided Project for 2008-09. We have launched a draft or beta version of the main website at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu and have developed and launched several related sites, including a blog at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu; a digital classroom on the Underground Railroad at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr; an innovative virtual field trip site that uses historical map overlays on Google Earth at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/fieldtrips as well as many more, both online and currently in development. Over the last three years, our Dana interns have been essential to the development of the project and will continue to be so in 2008-09. Our interns conduct research, help transcribe and annotate historical documents and assist with data entry and a wide variety of technical tasks. We are in urgent need of additional help as we prepare for the completion of our project on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in spring 2011.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Brendan M Boston (2011)

House Divided Project

For the last few years, the House Divided Project has been engaged in building an innovative web-based archive on the coming of the Civil War and in sponsoring various K-12 teacher training workshops on Civil War Era topics. This summer promises to be one of our most important to date. We will unveil our developing website to Dickinson College alumni on June 13, 2007 and we will host our 3d NEH Landmarks of the Underground Railroad workshop for nearly 100 K-12 teachers from across the country. We have been using four student interns each summer and need to continue at this level for the foreseeable future. All the interns do similar work -editing, transcribing and digitizing historical documents and assisting with the preparations for the teacher workshops (which serve as our primary means of advertising the website). As we have done in the past, we will be able to reimburse R&D for one or perhaps two of these interns.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: John Osborne


Madeline Cushing Chandler (2016)

Raising Spain's Children in the Soviet Union, 1937-51

In 1937-38, nearly 3000 children fled Spain's civil war. For the next 14 years, the USSR created Spanish-only boarding schools for these children in the hopes of some day returning them to Spain to defeat Franco. Nearly all of them remained in the USSR until after Franco's death in 1974! This summer's project will focus primarily on the period of transition from adolescence to adulthood in order to test the effectiveness of childhood education in forging the children into Soviet citizens. Four chapters of the book are well drafted. This SFR proposal will lead to substantial drafting of 2 of the remaining six chapters, a conference and colloquium paper, and foundational research for an independent study and/or senior thesis. My work will focus primarily on the Russian and English language sources; the student researcher will have responsibility for work in the Spanish language sources. This will be fully collaborative.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Karl Qualls


James Raphael Chapnick (2010)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004 and since summer 2005 we have received significant support from the R&D Committee. We have been hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. We currently have more than 1,500 historic documents and 1,000 images ready for web-based presentation. In 2007, we launched a web-based resource center on the Underground Railroad and sometime this year we hope to launch the full website covering the period 1846-1863. We have also been deeply engaged in various K-12 teacher-training initiatives. In summer 2006 and summer 2007 we hosted a total of 200 teachers from over 40 different states in workshops on the Underground Railroad sponsored by the NEH. We also hosted more than 65 educators in spring 2007 on the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott Case -an event co-sponsored by the National Constitution Center.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: James Gerencser


Lingwei Cheng (2014)

The Chinese Community in Genoa, Italy

The Chinese Community in Genoa, Italy

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: David Commins


Trevor Adam Diamond (2017)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project is seeking two summer Dana interns to work on developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities at our new studio/gallery space which will open soon at 61 N. West Street. They will participate in the production of videos, podcasts, interactive maps and other multi-media resources that will be trigged by 2D images and 3D objects displayed in the new gallery. Interns will also learn how to use and demonstrate AR capabilities both inside the gallery and in a mobile setting with a walking tour of Civil War Carlisle. They will be featured in demonstration videos designed to help other educators experiment successfully with AR technology. Dana interns will also assist in developing video tutorials for our summer online graduate course, "Understanding Lincoln." This has been an especially effective use of intern work in the past. Previous video tutorials by Dana interns at the House Divided Project have generated over 500,000 views on YouTube.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


John Blake Dickinson (2008)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004 and since summer 2005 we have received significant support from the R&D Committee. We have been hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. We currently have more than 1,500 historic documents and 1,000 images ready for web-based presentation. In 2007, we launched a web-based resource center on the Underground Railroad and sometime this year we hope to launch the full website covering the period 1846-1863. We have also been deeply engaged in various K-12 teacher-training initiatives. In summer 2006 and summer 2007 we hosted a total of 200 teachers from over 40 different states in workshops on the Underground Railroad sponsored by the NEH. We also hosted more than 65 educators in spring 2007 on the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott Case -an event co-sponsored by the National Constitution Center.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Andrea Dominguez (2010)

Exiled Spanish Youth in the USSR, 1937-51

This proposal is for support of a new book project investigating the life and education of children exiled from Spain to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War. I am requesting two students, fluent in Spanish and Russian, to broaden and annotate a Spanish-language bibliography and to create a database of Spanish children and teachers from Russian-language archival material I collected during my last trip to Moscow. The only Russian scholar to research this topic has failed to ask anything about the children's education and upbringing. Spanish scholars have conducted some oral histories on the topic, but none have used the archive of the Spanish orphanages in Moscow. Because so many of these children went on to prominent careers, including about 200 who aided Castro in his revolution, scholars need to know more about how their formative years in the Soviet system.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Karl Qualls


Amanda Donoghue (2019)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project.

Term Funded:year 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Amanda Donoghue (2019)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Matthew J Dudek (2006)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

In summer 2004, we began working with experts at LIS to develop a web-based research project that aspired to become a premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. We plan to call the website "House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862." Using the college community as a starting point and the period from 1846-1862 as a dramatic frame, the website will detail in day-by-day format how the crisis evolved and why fellow citizens from that era came to see each other as mortal enemies. The House Divided website will feature some of the college's unique archival resources - student diaries, letters, and recollections as well as a broad selection of the nation's daily newspapers and other relevant primary sources.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: John Osborne


Laura Christine Edgar (2002)

Comparative Urban Biographies: The Naval Cities of Sevastopol and Annapolis

It is my contention that many, if not all, major cities have their own biography which has organically developed over time, but also has been created by urban planners, historians, politicians, and local residents. This story is often told through erecting monuments and memorials to people or events that were important in the city's history, but more subtle forms also appear in the names of streets and parks and the style and placement of buildings. The most overt form of "writing" urban biographies occurs in guidebooks and travel literature. Whether subtle or overt, the intent is the same: to transmit a particular history or image to visitors and residents alike. Why and how this process occurs varies and this is why I propose with my student collaborators, and investigation of Annapolis's urban biography and compare it to my city of research--Sevastopol, Ukraine.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Karl Qualls


Kara Lynn Elder (2011)

Monogoroda: Hope through the Haze?

Monogoroda: Hope through the Haze?

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor:


Andrew B Ferguson (2006)

To experient with the idea that professors and students at the Consortium schools like Dickinson might be able to offer nonpartisan, often historically minded, policy research to requests from the Pennsylvania Governor's office

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides nonpartisan, often historically minded, policy research at the request of Members of Congress. CRS reports have earned a reputation for being thorough, objective, and quite helpful to policy makers. I propose to use a Dana Research Assistantship to experiment with the idea that professors and students at the Consortium schools like Dickinson might be able to offer something similar to policy makers in Harrisburg. Donna Cooper, the Policy Director in the Governor's Office, has expressed an interest in participating in such a joint project with professors and students. To help launch this effort, I propose working with a Dana Research Assistant to respond to various requests from the Governor's office during the course of several weeks in the fall and spring semester. Given my area of expertise (American political history), the nature of the assignments will primarily concern policy histor and the product will be a series of detailed 15-20 page memos.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Leah Adair Foran (2007)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004. We are hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. In this endeavor, we aim to create a digital archive of various primary sources, including newspaper articles, letters, diaries, recollections and images. We were interested in this period because Dickinson College was at the center of the story. It was quite literally a "house divided" between northern and southern students and its alumni were some of the most important figures in the sectional crisis. (also please see attached memo)

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Alexander S Ghaemmaghami ()

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


David William Gillespie (2011)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project is an innovative and wide-ranging effort designed to create various resources for classroom teachers and students who are studying the Civil War era. Our special focus involves building digital resources that use Dickinson College as a window for understanding the period. The R&D Committee has provided extensive support for this project since our inception in summer 2005. We have now launched several websites (gateway site: http://housedivided.dickinson.edu) and have trained over 1,000 K-12 teachers from more than 45 states. Our website has been featured by C-SPAN and our various projects have been supported by the NEH and Motorola. However, we continue to need extra resources in the preparation for a full-fledged national public launch and content completion which is targeted for April 2011, the date that marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Our most critical need is for student labor and assistance and the Dana program has been indispensable for our growth. So, we are once again requesting three (3) Dana assistants for summer 2009.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Shannon Sharee Givens (2011)

XIX Century Discourses on the Nature of Ethiopians.

This project represents an expansion of my dissertation, in which I look at the encounter between Ethiopians and Europeans from their first interaction in the early-modern era to the late 18th century: my dissertation's main argument is that until the early 17th century Ethiopians were perceived and lived in Europe as peers by virtue of their religious identity and that their European interlocutors regarded skin color as inconsequential. Starting in the 17th century color prejudice started to affect the European understanding of Ethiopians, a process that culminated in the 19th century when European scientists and proto-ethnographers started to refer to Ethiopians as "Hamitic" as opposed to "Negroes", and eventually as "Black Caucasians". With the help of a research assistant I would be able to find, retrieve and index 19th century works concerned with the nature of Ethiopians and propose a genealogy of the different ideas that emerged about them.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Matteo Salvadore


Sarah Michal Goldberg (2018)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project is seeking two summer Dana interns to work on developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities at our new studio/gallery space which will open soon at 61 N. West Street. They will participate in the production of videos, podcasts, interactive maps and other multi-media resources that will be trigged by 2D images and 3D objects displayed in the new gallery. Interns will also learn how to use and demonstrate AR capabilities both inside the gallery and in a mobile setting with a walking tour of Civil War Carlisle. They will be featured in demonstration videos designed to help other educators experiment successfully with AR technology. Dana interns will also assist in developing video tutorials for our summer online graduate course, "Understanding Lincoln." This has been an especially effective use of intern work in the past. Previous video tutorials by Dana interns at the House Divided Project have generated over 500,000 views on YouTube.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Charlotte Leigh Goodman ()

NPS Underground Railroad Interpretive Handbook, NPS Missouri Slave Revolt, Dickinson House Divided, Teagle Knowledge for Freedom Project

NPS Underground Railroad Interpretive Handbook, NPS Missouri Slave Revolt, Dickinson House Divided, Teagle Knowledge for Freedom Project

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Elitsa Plamenova Gosheva (2010)

Patagonia Mosaic Virtual Museum and Resource Center

Since 2001, faculty-student research teams have participated in the three editions of the Patagonia Mosaic project. In collaboration with faculty from the National University of Patagonia and the community of Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, this interdisciplinary project focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of immigration, labor, community life, and memory through fieldwork and historical research. Results of the Patagonia Mosaic initiative are available in the mosaic's Virtual Museum and Resource Center which has also been created in collaboration between faculty and students. The Museum contains multimedia exhibits around central themes in the history of the community of Comodoro Rivadavia and its company towns: migratory experiences, gender and work, community life, family life, and public memory. In addition, the Resource Center contains a searchable collection of historical photographs and documents. The Dana Research assistants will work on editing and updating the museum exhibits and the collection of historical photographs and documents. Since 2001, faculty-student research teams have participated in the three editions of the Patagonia Mosaic project. In collaboration with faculty from the National University of Patagonia and the community of Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, this interdisciplinary project focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of immigration, labor, community life, and memory through fieldwork and historical research. Results of the Patagonia Mosaic initiative are available in the mosaic's Virtual Museum and Resource Center which has also been created in collaboration between faculty and students. The Museum contains multimedia exhibits around central themes in the history of the community of Comodoro Rivadavia and its company towns: migratory experiences, gender and work, community life, family life, and public memory. In addition

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Meghan Ann Hakanson (2006)

NEH Landmarks National Teacher Education Project at Plimoth Plantation

The Landmark Teacher Training Program at Plimoth Plantation will bring 150 primary and secondary teachers from across America together with the leading college and university scholars in Colonial/Atlantic world history. In three week-long seminars (50 teachers per week) our students, the teachers, academics, and plantation staff will conduct an intensive investigation into the new scholarship of the colonial period of settlement in New England and America. Among the themes around which the conference is being organized are: The Worlds of the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims; Encounters and Adjustments; Conversion or Conquest - the Choices Posed and Choices Made; the Aftermath of a Troubled Century. Teachers, Scholars, and Museum professionals will interact and enrich each other's perspectives on the past throughout the conference. As production coordinators, our students will be integral to every aspect of this conference series, and will have extensive contact with today's leading scholars of colonial American and Atlantic world history.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Shane Mitchell Harding (2012)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project aspires to become one of the nation's premier resources for teaching and learning during the Civil War anniversary (2011-2015). The project has launched a digital research engine for the American Civil War era at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu that uses Dickinson College as a window and an array of innovative software applications to create a unique and engaging learning environment for the broad period, 1840 to 1880. We have also created digital classrooms on popular topics such as the Underground Railroad (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr) and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu) that provide special resources for K-12 educators. As part of this outreach, we have also maintained a blog (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/blog) that focuses on introducing teachers to the latest resources on the period. This outreach has also been enhanced during the last five years with a series of well-attended teacher training workshop. We have hosted nearly 500 educators from more than 45 states here at the Dickinson College campus over the last five years.

Term Funded:Year 2010
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Shane Mitchell Harding (2012)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project aspires to become one of the nation's premier resources for teaching and learning during the Civil War anniversary (2011-2015). The project has launched a digital research engine for the American Civil War era at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu that uses Dickinson College as a window and an array of innovative software applications to create a unique and engaging learning environment for the broad period, 1840 to 1880. We have also created digital classrooms on popular topics such as the Underground Railroad (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr) and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu) that provide special resources for K-12 educators. As part of this outreach, we have also maintained a blog (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/blog) that focuses on introducing teachers to the latest resources on the period. This outreach has also been enhanced during the last five years with a series of well-attended teacher training workshop. We have hosted nearly 500 educators from more than 45 states here at the Dickinson College campus over the last five years.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Cassandra Lorraine Harter (2007)

NEH Landmarks National Teacher Education Project at Plimoth Plantation

The Landmark Teacher Training Program at Plimoth Plantation will bring 150 primary and secondary teachers from across America together with the leading college and university scholars in Colonial/Atlantic world history. In three week-long seminars (50 teachers per week) our students, the teachers, academics, and plantation staff will conduct an intensive investigation into the new scholarship of the colonial period of settlement in New England and America. Among the themes around which the conference is being organized are: The Worlds of the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims; Encounters and Adjustments; Conversion or Conquest - the Choices Posed and Choices Made; the Aftermath of a Troubled Century. Teachers, Scholars, and Museum professionals will interact and enrich each other's perspectives on the past throughout the conference. As production coordinators, our students will be integral to every aspect of this conference series, and will have extensive contact with today's leading scholars of colonial American and Atlantic world history.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Walter Woodward


Sarah Joy House (2020)

Detroit as a Hub of White Racial Justice Activism in the Black Power Era

In the mid- and late-1960s, black power activists de-emphasized the importance of integration, which entailed reconceptualizing the work that white supporters should carry out. They asked such allies to direct their attention to white communities and challenge racism there. One important epicenter of this "white on white" activity, I argue, was Detroit. This project offers the first detailed examination of white-on-white activity. It will provide an in-depth history of the many individuals and groups who led these efforts - including Frank Joyce's People Against Racism, Sheila Murphy's Ad Hoc Committee Against Police Brutality, Hourglass, the Motor City Labor League, Bob Terry and Douglass Fitch's Detroit Industrial Mission, and Joann Terry's People Acting for Change Together.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Sarah Burgin


Sarah Joy House (2020)

Detroit as a Hub of White Racial Justice Activism in the Black Power Era

In the mid- and late-1960s, black power activists de-emphasized the importance of integration, which entailed reconceptualizing the work that white supporters should carry out. They asked such allies to direct their attention to white communities and challenge racism there. One important epicenter of this "white on white" activity, I argue, was Detroit. This project offers the first detailed examination of white-on-white activity. It will provide an in-depth history of the many individuals and groups who led these efforts - including Frank Joyce's People Against Racism, Sheila Murphy's Ad Hoc Committee Against Police Brutality, Hourglass, the Motor City Labor League, Bob Terry and Douglass Fitch's Detroit Industrial Mission, and Joann Terry's People Acting for Change Together.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Sarah Burgin


Regan Winn Kaiden (2002)

Comparative Urban Biographies: The Naval Cities of Sevastopol and Annapolis

It is my contention that many, if not all, major cities have their own biography which has organically developed over time, but also has been created by urban planners, historians, politicians, and local residents. This story is often told through erecting monuments and memorials to people or events that were important in the city's history, but more subtle forms also appear in the names of streets and parks and the style and placement of buildings. The most overt form of "writing" urban biographies occurs in guidebooks and travel literature. Whether subtle or overt, the intent is the same: to transmit a particular history or image to visitors and residents alike. Why and how this process occurs varies and this is why I propose with my student collaborators, and investigation of Annapolis's urban biography and compare it to my city of research--Sevastopol, Ukraine.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Karl Qualls


Patrick David Kennaly (2017)

Creating Abstracts for Minker Letters Archive

I propose to work with Patrick Kennaly to create abstracts for a collection of roughly 700 letters written by Ralph Minker to members of his family while serving as a pilot during the Second World War. A set of the letters is housed in the Dickinson Archive. Currently the Delaware Historical Society, where the original letters are housed, is digitalizing the entire collection. Each letter requires a brief abstract to help researchers navigate the collection. Sandra O'Connell, Ralph Minker's widow, approached Dickinson for help with this project. Ralph Minker studied at Dickinson between 1941-3 before joining the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Jeremy Ball


Caitlin Elizabeth Kingsley (2009)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004 and since summer 2005 we have received significant support from the R&D Committee. As you know, we are hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. In this endeavor, we aim to create a digital archive of various primary sources, including newspaper articles, letters, diaries, recollections and images. We were interested in this period because Dickinson College was at the center of the story. It was quite literally a "house divided" between northern and southern students and its alumni were some of the most important figures in the sectional crisis. Now, we are heading into the final run-up to our public launch, curretly set for March 2007 (on the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision). We hope to use three Dana interns during the academic year to prepare for this public presentation.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Francis Christopher Kline (2019)

House Divided Project

I am requesting two summer reseach assistants for the House Divided Project. We have had two Danas each of the last two summers working out of our new studio, and the results have been excellent. Our students helped develop an augmented reality-based Civil War Era exhibit space at 61 N. West Street as well as build a variety of online tools for other students and teachers, including a Google Arts online exhibit and several video tutorials. In 2018, we are planning a special series of exhibits on Dickinson and Slavery and a new website companion to my forthcoming book, Boss Lincoln.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Timothy Kuppler (2007)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides nonpartisan, often historically minded, policy research at the request of Members of Congress. CRS reports have earned a reputation for being thorough, objective, and quite helpful to policy makers. I propose to use a Dana Research Assistantship to experiment with the idea that professors and students at the Consortium schools like Dickinson might be able to offer something similar to policy makers in Harrisburg. Donna Cooper, the Policy Director in the Governor's Office, has expressed an interest in participating in such a joint project with professors and students. To help launch this effort, I propose working with a Dana Research Assistant to respond to various requests from the Governor's office during the course of several weeks in the fall and spring semester. Given my area of expertise (American political history), the nature of the assignments will primarily concern policy history and the product will be a series of detailed 15-20 page memos.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Anna Lovett (2010)

House Divided Project

For the last few years, the House Divided Project has been engaged in building an innovative web-based archive on the coming of the Civil War and in sponsoring various K-12 teacher training workshops on Civil War Era topics. This summer promises to be one of our most important to date. We will unveil our developing website to Dickinson College alumni on June 13, 2007 and we will host our 3d NEH Landmarks of the Underground Railroad workshop for nearly 100 K-12 teachers from across the country. We have been using four student interns each summer and need to continue at this level for the foreseeable future. All the interns do similar work -editing, transcribing and digitizing historical documents and assisting with the preparations for the teacher workshops (which serve as our primary means of advertising the website). As we have done in the past, we will be able to reimburse R&D for one or perhaps two of these interns.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Benjamin Jacob Lyman (2011)

House Divided Project

We would like to continue to receive three (3) Dana interns for the House Divided Project for 2008-09. We have launched a draft or beta version of the main website at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu and have developed and launched several related sites, including a blog at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu; a digital classroom on the Underground Railroad at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr; an innovative virtual field trip site that uses historical map overlays on Google Earth at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/fieldtrips as well as many more, both online and currently in development. Over the last three years, our Dana interns have been essential to the development of the project and will continue to be so in 2008-09. Our interns conduct research, help transcribe and annotate historical documents and assist with data entry and a wide variety of technical tasks. We are in urgent need of additional help as we prepare for the completion of our project on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in spring 2011.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Daniel Joseph Makosky (2006)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

In summer 2004, we began working with experts at LIS to develop a web-based research project that aspired to become a premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. We plan to call the website "House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862." Using the college community as a starting point and the period from 1846-1862 as a dramatic frame, the website will detail in day-by-day format how the crisis evolved and why fellow citizens from that era came to see each other as mortal enemies. The House Divided website will feature some of the college's unique archival resources - student diaries, letters, and recollections as well as a broad selection of the nation's daily newspapers and other relevant primary sources.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Dana Marecheau (2020)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Dana Marecheau (2020)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Elizabeth Marin (2018)

Patagonia Mosaic Digital Collection

The Patagonia Mosaic was the first international initiative of its kind conducted at Dickinson. In three different years (2001, 2003, and 2005), a multidisciplinary team of faculty and students from Dickinson and from our community partners in Argentina conducted research with focus on migration, company town life, family histories, and the construction of diverse ethnic, regional, and national identities. It was a multifaceted project that integrated teaching, fieldwork, archival research in public and private archives, and digitization of thousands of documentary and photographic items. A Dana student assistant will collaborate in the migration of the photographic and documentary collection (over 2000 items) to a Word Press-based platform to ensure the continuity of this resource and make accessible to the different local communities who collaborated with the Mosaic, and to students and scholars worldwide. The collection will be annotated in English and Spanish.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Marcelo Borges


John Wesley McCoy (2007)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004. We are hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. In this endeavor, we aim to create a digital archive of various primary sources, including newspaper articles, letters, diaries, recollections and images. We were interested in this period because Dickinson College was at the center of the story. It was quite literally a "house divided" between northern and southern students and its alumni were some of the most important figures in the sectional crisis. (also please see attached memo)

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Brenna Mary McKelvey (2012)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project has benefited from over two dozen interns (Dana and otherwise) over the last several years. They have proven indispensable to our progress which can now be measured in dozens of websites, thousands of K-12 teacher users, and tens of thousands of records, images, documents and other digital resources. During the previous year alone, we produced partnership websites with the Journal of American History, National Civil War Museum and Pennsyvlania Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission that feature the by-lined work of Dana research interns. In 2010, we are preparing for the public launch of our main database or research engine on the Civil War era in time of the 150th anniversary of the conflict, which begins in April 2011. We need our Dana help more than ever and this summer, in particular, we would like to apply for three interns --two for our usual work of digital history and one specialist in GIS to work with our project and Jim Ciarrocca on developing more GIS-enhanced maps for the era.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: John Osborne


Azul Sofia Mertnoff (2010)

Las Casas de los Ninos

This proposal is for support of a new book project investigating the life and education of children exiled from Spain to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War. I am requesting a student, fluent in Spanish to provide translation assistance of oral histories and some memoirs. The only Russian scholar to research this topic has failed to ask anything about the children's education and upbringing. Spanish scholars have conducted some oral histories on the topic, but none have used the archive of the Spanish orphanages in Moscow. Because so many of these children went on to prominent careers, including about 200 who aided Castro in his revolution, scholars need to know more about how their formative years in the Soviet system. My study will open a window not only on the important childhood years of these children, but also help us to understand the lengths to which the USSR went in order to spread revolution beyond its borders. By juxtaposing the official Russian-language narrative with the memories in the Spanish-language sources, I hope to be able to make some conclusions about questions of both memory and propaganda.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Karl Qualls


Leah Rae Miller (2014)

Civil War & Reconstruction MOOC

This student faculty team will be developing a massive online open course (MOOC) on "Civil War & Reconstruction" for summer 2013. This course is already in development in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and after a pilot experience that we offered in summer 2012 (http://blogs.dickinson.edu/hist-gilder). The student will assist in the refining and testing the course materials and assessment tools. He or she would also help manage the course during its launch in July 2013. And the student collaborator will provide significant research and assistance toward the creation of a pedagogical article or articles that would ask whether open online education has a place in a liberal arts environment such as Dickinson College, and if so, how should it be constructed.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Morgan Rhea Mintz (2010)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project aspires to become one of the nation's premier resources for teaching and learning during the Civil War anniversary (2011-2015). The project has launched a digital research engine for the American Civil War era at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu that uses Dickinson College as a window and an array of innovative software applications to create a unique and engaging learning environment for the broad period, 1840 to 1880. We have also created digital classrooms on popular topics such as the Underground Railroad (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr) and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu) that provide special resources for K-12 educators. As part of this outreach, we have also maintained a blog (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/blog) that focuses on introducing teachers to the latest resources on the period. This outreach has also been enhanced during the last five years with a series of well-attended teacher training workshop. We have hosted nearly 500 educators from more than 45 states here at the Dickinson College campus over the last five years.

Term Funded:Year 2010
Professor: John Osborne


Morgan Rhea Mintz (2010)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project aspires to become one of the nation's premier resources for teaching and learning during the Civil War anniversary (2011-2015). The project has launched a digital research engine for the American Civil War era at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu that uses Dickinson College as a window and an array of innovative software applications to create a unique and engaging learning environment for the broad period, 1840 to 1880. We have also created digital classrooms on popular topics such as the Underground Railroad (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr) and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu) that provide special resources for K-12 educators. As part of this outreach, we have also maintained a blog (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/blog) that focuses on introducing teachers to the latest resources on the period. This outreach has also been enhanced during the last five years with a series of well-attended teacher training workshop. We have hosted nearly 500 educators from more than 45 states here at the Dickinson College campus over the last five years.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: John Osborne


Rachel Mary Morgan (2018)

House Divided

I am requesting two summer Dana assistants for the House Divided Project. We had two Danas last summer working out of our new studio at 2017 and the results were excellent. Our students helped develop an augmented reality-based Civil War Era exhibit space as well as build a variety of tools for other students and teachers, including a Google Arts online exhibit and several video tutorials. In 2017, we are expanded the exhibit space to include a new room for temporary student-based projects and for outdoor murals. Our summer interns will help develop these new spaces and will work on their own Civil War era video projects to serve as enhancements for the new exhibits.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Caitlin Elizabeth Moriarty (2013)

Gagarin: The Life History of a Russian Émigré

Historians know relatively little about the Russian émigré experience in the United States. Why did they come? How did they transition and adapt to foreign country, language, and culture? How did the community maintain itself and perpetuate its native culture? These are just some of the questions we would like to answer through the interview of Mr. Gregory Gagarin, a prominent member of the Russian immigrant community in Washington, D.C.. As a board member of the Russian Cultural Center and the Firebird Arts Foundation, both in Washington, D.C., Mr. Gagarin has many useful contacts within the Russian-American community. His connections within the community will, we anticipate, allow us to expand the scope of the study in the coming years from one person's life story to a complex history of and virtual web archive about the Russian émigré experience in the United States. This would allow for more student-faculty research and publication opportunities and potentially a mosaic program in a location like Brighton Beach, NY, one of the largest and most concentrated Russian communities in the US.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Karl Qualls


Jordyn Hope Ney ()

NPS Underground Railroad Interpretive Handbook, NPS Missouri Slave Revolt, Dickinson House Divided, Teagle Knowledge for Freedom Project

NPS Underground Railroad Interpretive Handbook, NPS Missouri Slave Revolt, Dickinson House Divided, Teagle Knowledge for Freedom Project

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Leigh Ann Oczkowski (2012)

House Divided Project

With the impending 150th anniversary of the Civil War fast approaching (2011-15), the Cumberland Valley needs to explore new ways to highlight for visitors its extraordinary significance in that defining conflict. The House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Cumberland County Historical Society plan to work together to build a dynamic website featuring dramatic stories from the era that will enhance a series of walking and driving tours developed around Civil War era themes. These combined resources will together enable a wide variety of visitors (teachers & students, families, heritage tour groups, etc.) to consider extending their stay in the Cumberland Valley and to better appreciate the role of the region in both the coming of the war and during the conflict itself.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Jonathan Gallegos Ontiberos (2011)

Soviet Influences on the Culture and Everyday Life of Cuba

Soviet Influences on the Culture and Everyday Life of Cuba

Term Funded:Spring 201
Professor:


David William Park (2010)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project is an innovative and wide-ranging effort designed to create various resources for classroom teachers and students who are studying the Civil War era. Our special focus involves building digital resources that use Dickinson College as a window for understanding the period. The R&D Committee has provided extensive support for this project since our inception in summer 2005. We have now launched several websites (gateway site: http://housedivided.dickinson.edu) and have trained over 1,000 K-12 teachers from more than 45 states. Our website has been featured by C-SPAN and our various projects have been supported by the NEH and Motorola. However, we continue to need extra resources in the preparation for a full-fledged national public launch and content completion which is targeted for April 2011, the date that marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Our most critical need is for student labor and assistance and the Dana program has been indispensable for our growth. So, we are once again requesting three (3) Dana assistants for summer 2009.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Anthony George Pastore (2004)

Portuguese Immigrant Letters

This proposal is linked to a summer scholarly project in the District Archive of Faro, southern Portugal. I am asking for a Dana Research Assistantship for Anthony Pastore, who is currently a student in the Malaga Program. This is a way of enhancing the experience of the students in our abroad programs by extending opportunities that are usually only available on campus. Anthony's work will consist of assisting me with research in the District Archive of Faro. We will work with passport request dossiers. He will review these dossiers looking for the existence of "call letters," write contextual information following my directions, and get the documents ready to be xeroxed or copied by hand. He will work weekdays for a period of three weeks. We will begin working in Faro right after he finishes with classes in Malaga.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Joanne Leigh Phillips (2009)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004 and since summer 2005 we have received significant support from the R&D Committee. We have been hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. We currently have more than 1,500 historic documents and 1,000 images ready for web-based presentation. In 2007, we launched a web-based resource center on the Underground Railroad and sometime this year we hope to launch the full website covering the period 1846-1863. We have also been deeply engaged in various K-12 teacher-training initiatives. In summer 2006 and summer 2007 we hosted a total of 200 teachers from over 40 different states in workshops on the Underground Railroad sponsored by the NEH. We also hosted more than 65 educators in spring 2007 on the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott Case -an event co-sponsored by the National Constitution Center.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: John Osborne


Chase MacKenzie Philpot (2014)

Gagarin: The Life History of a Russian Émigré

This proposal is a request for a research assistant to aid the further processing of materials collected last summer during interviews with Prince Gregory Gagarin. Final editing and annotating of the video interview transcript and the processing of hundreds of photographs will lay the foundation necessary to populate a website on Mr. Gagarin's life history and prepare the way for outside grant applications necessary to expand the project on Russian-American émigrés.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Karl Qualls


Jacob Andrew Rainwater (2011)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project has benefited from over two dozen interns (Dana and otherwise) over the last several years. They have proven indispensable to our progress which can now be measured in dozens of websites, thousands of K-12 teacher users, and tens of thousands of records, images, documents and other digital resources. During the previous year alone, we produced partnership websites with the Journal of American History, National Civil War Museum and Pennsyvlania Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission that feature the by-lined work of Dana research interns. In 2010, we are preparing for the public launch of our main database or research engine on the Civil War era in time of the 150th anniversary of the conflict, which begins in April 2011. We need our Dana help more than ever and this summer, in particular, we would like to apply for three interns --two for our usual work of digital history and one specialist in GIS to work with our project and Jim Ciarrocca on developing more GIS-enhanced maps for the era.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Jocelyn Reyes Rojas (2021)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project.

Term Funded:fall 2018
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Marcus Wesley Robinson (2018)

Black Power and the Myth of White Ejection

Since the late 1960s, the idea that Black Power activists orchestrated the ejection of whites from civil rights struggles has shaped histories of the larger black freedom movement. Key groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party are seen to have adopted black separatism because of mounting frustrations with white activists. Even amidst a flowering of revisionist scholarship on Black Power, a hackneyed understanding of "white ejection" remains, demonizing the movement and distorting its tactical vision. This project will argue that ideas of white ejection are rooted more in mythology than historical reality. SNCC and other groups used their on-the-ground experiences to envision a new strategy in which whites would work in white communities to fight racism. Given the frustrating and often fatal consequences of interracial efforts, many believed such "white-on-white" organizing would be less dangerous and allow for greater black autonomy.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Sarah Burgin


Richard Thomas Robinson (2008)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004 and since summer 2005 we have received significant support from the R&D Committee. As you know, we are hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. In this endeavor, we aim to create a digital archive of various primary sources, including newspaper articles, letters, diaries, recollections and images. We were interested in this period because Dickinson College was at the center of the story. It was quite literally a "house divided" between northern and southern students and its alumni were some of the most important figures in the sectional crisis. Now, we are heading into the final run-up to our public launch, curretly set for March 2007 (on the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision). We hope to use three Dana interns during the academic year to prepare for this public presentation.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: John Osborne


Zachary Irving Rosenberg (2009)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We are in the process of launching the House Divided website at various teacher training workshops beginning in March and July 2007. The website aspires to offer teachers, students and the general public greater understanding of the coming of the Civil War by using the documents and stories of Dickinson College as a window into the turbulent era. We have been using four student interns each summer and academic year and need to continue at this level for the foreseeable future. However, we can reimburse R&D for one of these students using funds from our NEH grants and general project budget. Still, we prefer to use the Dana umbrella to recruit and designate all of the interns in order to keep everything as simple as possible. All the interns do similar work -editing, transcribing and digitizing historical documents and assisting with the preparations for the teacher workshops (which serve as our primary means of advertising the website).

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Zachary Irving Rosenberg (2009)

NEH Summer Inst Pinsker

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Brandon Matthew Rothenberg (2011)

House Divided Project

With the impending 150th anniversary of the Civil War fast approaching (2011-15), the Cumberland Valley needs to explore new ways to highlight for visitors its extraordinary significance in that defining conflict. The House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Cumberland County Historical Society plan to work together to build a dynamic website featuring dramatic stories from the era that will enhance a series of walking and driving tours developed around Civil War era themes. These combined resources will together enable a wide variety of visitors (teachers & students, families, heritage tour groups, etc.) to consider extending their stay in the Cumberland Valley and to better appreciate the role of the region in both the coming of the war and during the conflict itself.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Ryan Christian Sarno (2009)

Digitizing Sources for African History

As the first Africanist in the History Department and as a new teacher, I would like to digitalize a wide range of images for use in my two-semester African history core. I currently use overhead transparencies and books with post-its to provide examples of significant artifacts, maps, and historical images of architecture and people. My plan is to digitalize these myriad sources and then present them in power-point slide shows. The digitalization will improve the effectiveness of my lectures and enhance the learning experience for my students.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Jeremy Ball


David B Schwerin (2007)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

We began the House Divided project on our own in summer 2004 and since summer 2005 we have received significant support from the R&D Committee. As you know, we are hoping to build the premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. In this endeavor, we aim to create a digital archive of various primary sources, including newspaper articles, letters, diaries, recollections and images. We were interested in this period because Dickinson College was at the center of the story. It was quite literally a "house divided" between northern and southern students and its alumni were some of the most important figures in the sectional crisis. Now, we are heading into the final run-up to our public launch, curretly set for March 2007 (on the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision). We hope to use three Dana interns during the academic year to prepare for this public presentation.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: James Gerencser


Sophia Marie Scorcia (2020)

Fascist Women: Neo-traditional or New Model of Gender Roles?

We seek to understand the ways in which Italian fascism acted upon women and how/why women consented and resisted. This will allow us to test the notion of "totalitarianism," the importance of ideology, and the persistence of traditional cultural norms. Italy was already a "macho" culture and misogyny was the norm in the church, state, and social relations. How then did fascism amplify, co-opt, or modify existing practice? Past scholars have not thoughtfully considered to what degree Mussolini was forging a new world out of well-defined antecedents and to what degree women's movements at the beginning of the century hampered fascism's totalizing intent. How, for example, could a state counter the films, posters, magazines, and books from Hollywood and London that charted new directions for modern women and that argued against the regime's preference for married women at home raising children? Comparison highlights the truly unique features of a history.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Karl Qualls


Timothy Andrew Smith (2011)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project has been in the works for five years but is just now preparing for our public launch in April 2011. The project is a wide-ranging web-based and workshop initiative designed to improve K-12 and undergraduate teaching of the Civil War era during the conflict's 150th anniversary. We have already built more than a dozen websites and helped train over 1,500 educators over the last few years with the help of nearly 40 student interns and generous R&D Committee support. You can view a project index at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites and also see there various reviews of our efforts from sources such as Civil War Times magazine ("one of the most compelling online sesquicentennial projects"). Dana interns have helped build both our project as well as several partnership sites with organizations such as the Journal of American History and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Most recently, our summer Danas each wrote essays that we published online in a new journal that features clickable footnotes and other multi-media enhancements (see http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/journal). Our next round of interns will help build virtual maps, post at our widely read blog, contribute to the online journal and assist in the public events surrounding our April 2011 launch.

Term Funded:Year 2011
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Rebecca Burton Solnit (2012)

House Divided Project

The House Divided Project has benefited from over two dozen interns (Dana and otherwise) over the last several years. They have proven indispensable to our progress which can now be measured in dozens of websites, thousands of K-12 teacher users, and tens of thousands of records, images, documents and other digital resources. During the previous year alone, we produced partnership websites with the Journal of American History, National Civil War Museum and Pennsyvlania Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission that feature the by-lined work of Dana research interns. In 2010, we are preparing for the public launch of our main database or research engine on the Civil War era in time of the 150th anniversary of the conflict, which begins in April 2011. We need our Dana help more than ever and this summer, in particular, we would like to apply for three interns --two for our usual work of digital history and one specialist in GIS to work with our project and Jim Ciarrocca on developing more GIS-enhanced maps for the era.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Evan Turnesa Sparling (2008)

Exiled Spanish Youth in the USSR, 1937-52

This proposal is for support of a new book project investigating the life and education of children exiled from Spain to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War. I am requesting two students, fluent in Spanish and Russian, to broaden and annotate a Spanish-language bibliography and to create a database of Spanish children and teachers from Russian-language archival material I collected during my last trip to Moscow. The only Russian scholar to research this topic has failed to ask anything about the children's education and upbringing. Spanish scholars have conducted some oral histories on the topic, but none have used the archive of the Spanish orphanages in Moscow. Because so many of these children went on to prominent careers, including about 200 who aided Castro in his revolution, scholars need to know more about how their formative years in the Soviet system.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Karl Qualls


Elizabeth D Stokely (2008)

Patagonia Mosaic Virtual Museum and Resource Center

Since 2001, faculty-student research teams have participated in the three editions of the Patagonia Mosaic project. In collaboration with faculty from the National University of Patagonia and the community of Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, this interdisciplinary project focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of immigration, labor, community life, and memory through fieldwork and historical research. Results of the Patagonia Mosaic initiative are available in the mosaic's Virtual Museum and Resource Center which has also been created in collaboration between faculty and students. The Museum contains multimedia exhibits around central themes in the history of the community of Comodoro Rivadavia and its company towns: migratory experiences, gender and work, community life, family life, and public memory. In addition, the Resource Center contains a searchable collection of historical photographs and documents. The Dana Research assistants will work on editing and updating the museum exhibits and the collection of historical photographs and documents. Since 2001, faculty-student research teams have participated in the three editions of the Patagonia Mosaic project. In collaboration with faculty from the National University of Patagonia and the community of Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, this interdisciplinary project focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of immigration, labor, community life, and memory through fieldwork and historical research. Results of the Patagonia Mosaic initiative are available in the mosaic's Virtual Museum and Resource Center which has also been created in collaboration between faculty and students. The Museum contains multimedia exhibits around central themes in the history of the community of Comodoro Rivadavia and its company towns: migratory experiences, gender and work, community life, family life, and public memory. In addition

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Kathryn Charlotte Stonesmyth ()

Segregation in Carlisle: A Public History Storymap Project

Carlisle, Pennsylvania has a long history of racial segregation. Well into the 20th century, Carlisle had whites-only restaurants, theaters, public schools, pools, gyms, libraries, neighborhoods, fraternal organizations, factories, and cemeteries. (Dickinson was segregated until the 1890s.) This history, well known to Black residents, has been documented by local historians and Dickinson classes. However, many white residents are unaware of the extent of historical segregation. At the moment there is no easily accessible way for them to educate themselves about it. We propose to address this problem by researching, building, and publishing a public website documenting the history of racial segregation in Carlisle. We will use GIS to map segregated spaces in Carlisle over time, and write narratives presenting the maps as "story maps."

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Emily Pawley


Rebecca Joy Stout (2020)

House Divided Project

I am requesting two summer reseach assistants for the House Divided Project. We have had two Danas each of the last two summers working out of our new studio, and the results have been excellent. Our students helped develop an augmented reality-based Civil War Era exhibit space at 61 N. West Street as well as build a variety of online tools for other students and teachers, including a Google Arts online exhibit and several video tutorials. In 2018, we are planning a special series of exhibits on Dickinson and Slavery and a new website companion to my forthcoming book, Boss Lincoln.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Aleksandra Syniec (2018)

Flipping the History Classroom

This proposal is designed to assist me in"flipping" the classroom through the design of online, audio-visual "lectures" that will allow for more time in class to discuss sources and methodology. I have yet to find a good textbook for any of my courses; yet, history is by its nature a highly content heavy discipline to teach. One needs to know the period and subject under examination if s/he has any hope of understanding the primary sources or scholarly interpretations of them. I would like to lecture much less, but then students would have neither then content nor the context to improve their critical thinking and research. By moving to more online "lectures," I would be able to devote a greater percentage of class time to working through sources with students, helping them to sharpen their close reading and critical thinking. The end result, I hope and anticipate, is stronger skill development and a greater depth of knowledge. The ideal student assistant would be a history and/or education major (although neither is required) with knowledge of iMovie and good internet searching skills. Any excellent student who is well motivated and has some technical ability would suffice, but my hope is that this project could aid students who have a future in education, either in the classroom or in some other public space.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Karl Qualls


Naji Nazima Thompson (2019)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands.

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in resesearch for the project.

Term Funded:Year 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Russell Charles Toris (2011)

House Divided Project

We would like to continue to receive three (3) Dana interns for the House Divided Project for 2008-09. We have launched a draft or beta version of the main website at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu and have developed and launched several related sites, including a blog at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu; a digital classroom on the Underground Railroad at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/ugrr; an innovative virtual field trip site that uses historical map overlays on Google Earth at http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/fieldtrips as well as many more, both online and currently in development. Over the last three years, our Dana interns have been essential to the development of the project and will continue to be so in 2008-09. Our interns conduct research, help transcribe and annotate historical documents and assist with data entry and a wide variety of technical tasks. We are in urgent need of additional help as we prepare for the completion of our project on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in spring 2011.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: John Osborne


Samuel Albert Weisman (2018)

House Divided

I am requesting two summer Dana assistants for the House Divided Project. We had two Danas last summer working out of our new studio at 2017 and the results were excellent. Our students helped develop an augmented reality-based Civil War Era exhibit space as well as build a variety of tools for other students and teachers, including a Google Arts online exhibit and several video tutorials. In 2017, we are expanded the exhibit space to include a new room for temporary student-based projects and for outdoor murals. Our summer interns will help develop these new spaces and will work on their own Civil War era video projects to serve as enhancements for the new exhibits.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Cooper H Wingert (2020)

House Divided Project

I am requesting two summer Dana assistants for the House Divided Project. We have had two Danas each of the last two summers working out of our new studio, and the results have been excellent. Our students helped develop an augmented reality-based Civil War Era exhibit space at 61 N. West Street as well as build a variety of online tools for other students and teachers, including a Google Arts online exhibit and several video tutorials. In 2018, we are planning a special series of exhibits on Dickinson and Slavery and a new website companion to my forthcoming book, Boss Lincoln.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Cooper H Wingert (2020)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands

The House Divided Project is currently engaged in a multi-year cooperative agreement with the National Park Service for an online project called, "Slave Stampedes on the Missouri Borderland." This effort analyzes mass escapes from slavery in the era of the Underground Railroad (often called "slave stampedes") and demonstrates their significance within the larger story of the coming of the Civil War and the demise of American slavery. Cooper Wingert ('20) has been working on this project with other interns for the past year and I would like to continue him as a Dana intern on the project in 2019-20. In this upcoming year, Cooper will focus on drafting narrative sidebars for the online report and in learning GIS capabilities to assist with the production of the online map. Cooper will also assist with the continuing evolution of the Dickinson & Slavery project and will help in the building of new planned educational websites for the House Divided project.

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Cooper H Wingert (2020)

House Divided Project

We will be working on expanding the new Dickinson & Slavery initiative and performing digital research support for my forthcoming book on Abraham Lincoln.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Cooper H Wingert (2020)

History of Slave Stampedes on the Underground Railroad in the Missouri Borderlands

This is a special history project that will explore the construction and evolution of the term "slave stampedes" in the Missouri borderlands. It will asses the impact of "stampedes" on the coming of the Civil War. Matt Pinsker would serve as director, lead researcher and lead author for this project. It involves many student interns who are assisting in research for the project.

Term Funded:Year 2019
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Alissa J Zawoyski (2007)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides nonpartisan, often historically minded, policy research at the request of Members of Congress. CRS reports have earned a reputation for being thorough, objective, and quite helpful to policy makers. I propose to use a Dana Research Assistantship to experiment with the idea that professors and students at the Consortium schools like Dickinson might be able to offer something similar to policy makers in Harrisburg. Donna Cooper, the Policy Director in the Governor's Office, has expressed an interest in participating in such a joint project with professors and students. To help launch this effort, I propose working with a Dana Research Assistant to respond to various requests from the Governor's office during the course of several weeks in the fall and spring semester. Given my area of expertise (American political history), the nature of the assignments will primarily concern policy history and the product will be a series of detailed 15-20 page memos.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Matthew Pinsker


Xueyin Zha (2016)

Prince Gagarin, the website

This is a continuation of the digital humanites project on Russian-American emigres. The summer SFR seeks support to help us populate and make live a web site featuring our interview materials with Prince Gregory Gagarin. This life-story website will hopefully be the seed for larger, outside funding in the future for a website that chronicles the Russian-American experience in cities such as Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Francisco, and of course Brighton Beach. Because of the large amount of material and work involved there must be close cooperation between the student and me in all aspects of processing, design, etc. I am hopeful that one of the students who studeied in in the digital bootcamp could assist me. Barrett Ziegler already worked with some of the materials for his digital bootcamp project.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Karl Qualls


International Business & Management

Madison Ali Alley (2016)

Living Well in Later Life

Germany is one of the many countries that is being, as will continue to be, affected by the global phenomenon of population aging. This is a result of various contributing factors, including population decline due to low fertility rates and a death rate higher than the country's birth rate, as well as constantly advancing medical technology that catalyzes greater longevity. Through traditional research methods, survey and interviews, Madison investigated Germany's shifting demographics, focusing both on the reasons behind the shift and on the potential effects it could have on Germany's people and its economy, as well as continental Europe.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Jacob Ryan Band (2017)

Leadership in 4 Directions: The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Globally Integrated in Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor Leadership Seminar was the flagship program for students to understand and engage in leadership skills and organizational management. The setting of Pearl Harbor provided the opportunity to understand the events which proceeded, followed, and occurred at the time of the attack, and how the decisions of individuals coupled with military, political, and societal culture had an effect on the outcome.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Jeffrey McCausland


Timothy Eric Dressel (2014)

Cross Sector Collaboration to Promote Sustainable Development

We have been awarded a grant from the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the US Army War College to co-direct, in conjunction with the SSI, a Workshop entitled "The US-India Strategic Relationship in the 21st Century: Challenges for Strategic Leaders, Opportunities for Cross Sector Collaboration to Promote Sustainable Development." The Workshop will be attended by a group of invited scholars and practitioners with expertise in the fields of business, sustainability, and security from the US, India, and other countries. It will take place here in Carlisle, on March 12-14 2013, during Dickinson's spring break. With the SSI funds we have been awarded, we will hire four Dickinson students to help us with administrative and logistical matters during that week. We will also ask those students to participate in all Workshop activities.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Michael Fratantuono


Wei Du (2013)

Executive Compensation and Misery Index

Excessive executive compensation is cited as one of the causes of the economic crisis of 2008. This study focuses on the relation between executive compensation and so-called "misery index." Misery index is addition of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, assuming that high unemployment and inflation create economic and social costs. Two hypotheses may be tested in this study. High level of misery index means that both unemployment rate and inflation rate are high, which is called "stagflation." Stagflation is definitely the evidence of economic recession, the executive compensation may decrease. Therefore, the relation between executive compensation and misery index will be negative if this hypothesis holds. However, as public criticizes, the relative income level of executives may increase even in the recession period. If this hypothesis holds, the relation between executive compensation and misery index will be positive.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Won Yong Kim


Michael Edward Geosits (2009)

Conversion of course materials to Excel 2007

Managerial economics, INBM 220, teaches managerial decision-making using Excel as a platform for economic analysis. The materials for this course must be revised to accommodate the new version of Excel and new materials must be created for the newly created fundamentals of accounting class, INBM 110. The user interface for Excel 2007 is reorganized along functional lines in a fashion that must be incorporated into existing course materials. Alterations in those materials must also be made due to reorganization of this and other courses within the INBM curriculum.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Madison Glass (2018)

Leadership in 4 Directions: The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Globally Integrated in Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor Leadership Seminar was the flagship program for students to understand and engage in leadership skills and organizational management. The setting of Pearl Harbor provided the opportunity to understand the events which proceeded, followed, and occurred at the time of the attack, and how the decisions of individuals coupled with military, political, and societal culture had an effect on the outcome.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Jeffrey McCausland


Benjamin Jeremy Greene (2014)

Prepublication editing of "Managerial Economics, 7th Ed," by Keat, Young, and Erfle, Prentice Hall 2013

Prepublication editing of "Managerial Economics, 7th Ed," by Keat, Young, and Erfle, Prentice Hall 2013

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Pauline Hovy (2010)

The Relationship Between Corporate Social and Financial Performance: What's the Role of Strategy?

The link between a firm's corporate social performance and its financial performance has been fiercely debated and widely studied. The results of these studies are often contradictory and, therefore, inconclusive. A recently proposed theory of strategic corporate social responsibility, developed by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, posits that the connection between a company's social and financial performance is moderated by how the company chooses to implement social responsibility. Specifically, this theory hypothesizes that there is a positive relationship between social and financial performance when, and only when, companies choose to systematically align their investments in social responsibility with their business strategy and activities. The purpose of this research project is to empirically test this theory through the analysis of business activities and socially responsive activities as reported on corporate websites and in annual reports. Another goal of this research is to develop a measure of strategic corporate social responsibility.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: C Helen Takacs


Holly Anne Kirkpatrick (2005)

Research for book which involves interactive learning materials that help students learn economics

The book I am working on is the first intermediate microeconomics text to incorporate interactive graphics for all graphic material in the text. Microeconomics heavily utilizes graphs to explain the behavior of individuals and firms, and many students find the graphs difficult to understand and interpret. This text provides the visual learner with alternatives that they have not previously had in learning since they can actively move the graphs with sliders and click boxes as part of the learning experience. I currently have a draft of approximately half of the text (10 of 20 chapters) and I hope to come close to completing a draft of the other 10 chapters by the time I resume teaching in Spring 2005. This would not complete the project since a workbook and instructor's manual must also be written, but these can be attacked once I begin teaching again next Spring.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Susan C Kuonqui (2006)

Help prepare textbook manuscript for publication

The book I am working on is the first intermediate microeconomics text to incorporate interactive graphics for all graphic material in the text. Microeconomics heavily utilizes graphs to explain the behavior of individuals and firms, and many students find the graphs difficult to understand and interpret. This text provides the visual learner with alternatives that they have not previously had in learning since they can actively move the graphs with sliders and click boxes as part of the learning experience.

Term Funded:Fall 2005
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Susan C Kuonqui (2006)

Create interactive graphical materials used to learn microeconomic theory

As I completed work on the two projects for intermediate microeconomics texts by other authors during this summer and into the fall, I came to the conclusion that I needed to move from being a content provider to author of the actual text in order to maximize the benefits of the dynamic diagrams that I have been working on for the last couple of years. As a result, I have begun working in earnest on an entire text that utilizes dynamic graphics. Since this is, in large part a continuation of the proposal I submitted for the academic year, I will not rehash the entire rationale for this approach. I attach a copy of the outline of the text that I currently am working on, instead.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Stephen Erfle


KyungJun Lee ()

Dynamic Co-Movement Between Twitter Based Economic Uncertainty and Real Estate Returns

Currently, there is massive uncertainty about economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis and policy responses, including the speed of economic recovery as the pandemic recedes; whether temporary government interventions will become permanent; whether pandemic-induced consumer spending patterns, working from home and business travel will persist; and the impact on business relocation. Understanding how housing and commercial real estate market returns correlate with economic uncertainty is important for homebuyers, investors in commercial real estate or related securities such MBS, and lenders such as banks. In this light, we will examine dynamic correlations between real estate returns and a forward-looking measure of uncertainty, that is, Twitter-based economic uncertainty (TEU). To construct this measure, researchers scraped all English-language tweets worldwide that contain both "economic" and "uncertainty" and variants of each term from January 2010 to December 2020.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Qing Bai


Suin Lee (2014)

The Effect of Environmental Performance on Managerial Incentive Structure

Environmental issues in corporate governance research recently get more attention. Especially, since environmental issues are related to managerial decision, environmental performance should be considered in determining the managerial incentives. Previous studies show that environment performance is positively correlated with firm value and performance. However, although environmental performance is heavily determined by managerial risk-taking behavior, we can hardly find the studies that investigate the relation between environmental performance and managerial incentive structure. Therefore, what we are willing to find is how managerial incentive is dynamically affected by the environmental performance. Furthermore, we are investigating whether the effect may be more critical and obvious in the polluting industries. Our hypotheses for the project are 1) Long-term based managerial incentives may lead positive effect on environmental performance 2) The possibility of environmental litigation is increased by the short-term based managerial incentives 3) The relation between environmental performance and managerial incentive structure is stronger in the polluting industries.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Won Yong Kim


Suin Lee (2014)

The Effect of Environmental Performance on Managerial Incentive Structure

Environmental issues in corporate governance research recently get more attention. Especially, since environmental issues are related to managerial decision, environmental performance should be considered in determining the managerial incentives. Previous studies show that environment performance is positively correlated with firm value and performance. However, although environmental performance is heavily determined by managerial risk-taking behavior, we can hardly find the studies that investigate the relation between environmental performance and managerial incentive structure. Therefore, what we are willing to find is how managerial incentive is dynamically affected by the environmental performance. Furthermore, we are investigating whether the effect may be more critical and obvious in the polluting industries. Our hypotheses for the project are 1) Long-term based managerial incentives may lead positive effect on environmental performance 2) The possibility of environmental litigation is increased by the short-term based managerial incentives 3) The relation between environmental performance and managerial incentive structure is stronger in the polluting industries.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Won Yong Kim


Xiyu Li (2012)

Analysis of Active Schools Data from 2009-2011 school years

Xiyu would be allowed to develop her own research project with the data I am working with from the Pennsylvania Department of Health's Active Schools Program together with the data I am currently gathering under the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. This data allows a direct comparison of change in physical activity performance levels as well as BMI across the course of a school year for students who involved in daily physical activity in their school with others who are in schools who do not have daily physical activity built into the school day. As I have noted in my proposal, there are many other things that could be done with the data. Determining exactly where she will decide to focus is not something I want to force on her. I would prefer that she explore possible options before deciding on a specific project.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Stephen Erfle


John Wheaton Mayers (2016)

"A Student Guide to Intermediate Microeconomics: An Interactive Approach"

"A Student Guide to Intermediate Microeconomics: An Interactive Approach"

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Kirsten Michelle Midura (2008)

Role of state governments in attracting and regulating foreign direct investment

I have been invited to deliver the Springer Lecture in international business at Lebanon Valley College for 2008. The lecture will take place on April 10, 2008 at Lebanon Valley College. My lecture will be on the role state governments have played in the recent past in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to their particular states. I expect to build on the research and develop a paper worthy of publication in the Fall 2008. My thesis for my LLM degree in international law was on legal aspects of FDI in the US. Published as an article in the International Lawyer, a publication of the American Bar Association, the research delved into the federal government's role in attracting and regulating FDI in the United States. At the time, the states played little if any role in regulating or attracting FDI. In response to a loss of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing and to the globalization of markets, over the last 27 years the role of state governments, and to a lesser degree local governments, has changed dramatically. Beginning February 1, 2008, I will investigate how the role has changed and report on the effects the changes have had on the quantity and quality of foreign direct investments. Although changes have occurred in most states, a few states either because of necessity or competitive advantages have built organizations and changed policies, rules, and regulations to attract FDI into their states. Some states compete fiercely and outdo neighboring states to bring a particular type of FDI; others, have been accused of meddling into foreign policy to the detriment of our national interests. This research will examine these issues.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Adis Vila


Jeffrey Barton Miller (2001)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Michael Fratantuono


Arielle Lauren Misrok (2017)

Leadership in 4 Directions: The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Globally Integrated in Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor Leadership Seminar was the flagship program for students to understand and engage in leadership skills and organizational management. The setting of Pearl Harbor provided the opportunity to understand the events which proceeded, followed, and occurred at the time of the attack, and how the decisions of individuals coupled with military, political, and societal culture had an effect on the outcome.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Jeffrey McCausland


Lindsay Ann Morton (2017)

Leadership in 4 Directions: The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Globally Integrated in Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor Leadership Seminar was the flagship program for students to understand and engage in leadership skills and organizational management. The setting of Pearl Harbor provided the opportunity to understand the events which proceeded, followed, and occurred at the time of the attack, and how the decisions of individuals coupled with military, political, and societal culture had an effect on the outcome.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Jeffrey McCausland


Olivia Isabelle Neubert (2017)

Leadership in 4 Directions: The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Globally Integrated in Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor Leadership Seminar was the flagship program for students to understand and engage in leadership skills and organizational management. The setting of Pearl Harbor provided the opportunity to understand the events which proceeded, followed, and occurred at the time of the attack, and how the decisions of individuals coupled with military, political, and societal culture had an effect on the outcome.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Jeffrey McCausland


Trung Quang Nguyen (2019)

The Tale of Two Crises: Technology Spillovers as Sources of Risk Spillovers among U.S. Innovative Firms

A technology spillover is a positive externality from R&D activity that occurs when research conducted at one firm positively affects the productivity of other firms operating in similar technology sectors. A discovery at one firm is more likely to trigger new avenues of research or lead to new applications at other firms in closely related research fields. In this project, we will explore a negative externality from technological development: greater risk spillovers (contagion effect) among innovative firms during crisis times. The results will provide new empirical evidence on the transmission of risk from underlying economic (R&D and patenting) activities to the securitized level of a company and therefore have important implications for the investment and risk management decisions of stock market investors, corporate inventors and policy makers.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Qing Bai


Ikram Rabbani (2017)

Leadership in 4 Directions: The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Globally Integrated in Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor Leadership Seminar was the flagship program for students to understand and engage in leadership skills and organizational management. The setting of Pearl Harbor provided the opportunity to understand the events which proceeded, followed, and occurred at the time of the attack, and how the decisions of individuals coupled with military, political, and societal culture had an effect on the outcome.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Jeffrey McCausland


Jacob Rubin Saltzberg (2020)

Sadler Health Center and Dickinson College Collaborative Assessment of Patient Activation Measure

In 2018, I along with a fellow Dickinson colleague, Margaret Winchester, were awarded a grant from the Partnership for Better Health. The project scheduled to begin during the fall, 2018 and reach completion spring/summer 2019 is titled Sadler Health Center (SHC) and Dickinson College Collaborative Assessment of Patient Activation Measure (PAM). In short, the PAM process assesses an individual's knowledge, skill, and confidence for managing one's health and healthcare. Individuals who measure high on this assessment typically understand the importance of taking a proactive role in managing their health and have the skills and confidence to do so. The chronic care model, a widely recommended model for optimal ambulatory care delivery, relies on patients having the skills, knowledge, and motivation to participate as effective members of the care team. Patients are more likely to make good decisions and promote their own health if they are engaged, informed, and feel confident in their ability to care for themselves. For providers to effectively communicate and collaborate with their patients, it is necessary to individualize health messages based on patient readiness to be engaged in their care. The research project employing a mixed method design seeks to better understand the relationship between the PAM score and the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of patients diagnosed with Type II diabetes. This knowledge may then be used to better target the scope and content of diabetic health education based on patient readiness to be engaged in their care.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: David Sarcone, Margaret Winchester


Jacob Rubin Saltzberg (2020)

Multiple Community Health Projects

Currently there are four distinct projects underway. Common among the projects is a focus on either community health or health services research. A second common feature is research design. In each instance a mixed method approach is employed. The four projects to include community partner and project title are provided. a.) Sadler Health Center: The relationship between patient activation measures and patient self-management of Diabetes II condition; The relationship between patient activation measures and patient appointment compliance. b.) UPMC Pinnacle:Patient perception of community paramedicine program services. c.) Lancaster EMS and Ameri Health Caritas: Factors influencing compliance, refusal or delay of immunization. d..) Tri-County Community Action Agency: Social determinants of health in Harrisburg , PA affecting health outcomes and risk factors at the 207 and 213 census tract levels.

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: David Sarcone


Jacob Rubin Saltzberg (2020)

Sadler Health Center and Dickinson College Collaborative Assessment of Patient Activation Measure

The purpose of the research is to determine if a relationship exists between a Type II diabetic patient's level of engagement as measured by the Patient Activation Measurement Instrument and the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of patient's diagnosed with type II diabetes. A strong correlation will influence the type and intensity of patient education offered at the time of a patient's visit to the health center.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: David Sarcone, Margaret Winchester


Yuhui Tang (2018)

The location of commercial green buildings and the financial performance of the property companies

In this paper, we try to investigate the effects of location of the green buildings on the financial performance of property companies. We will obtain data on all properties owned by US public real estate companies from the SNL Real Estate database, match the dataset to LEED certified buildings using geocoding technique. We will then allocate the buildings in each metro area to its prime and non-prime locations. We will also allocate the buildings according to the local air quality, with data obtained from the EPA website. We will try to answer 1) which factor drives superior financial performance, the greenness of properties, or the primeness of locations? 2) Is the financial reward for greenness higher for buildings located in the areas with lower air quality? By answering these questions, the research project will provide insight onto the differential benefit of green buildings across geographic areas.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Qing Bai


Amanda Blaire West (2010)

Role of state governments in attracting and regulating foreign direct investment

I am building on the Springer Lecture in International Business at Lebanon Valley College for 2008 that I delivered on April 10, 2008. My lecture was on the role state governments have played in the recent past in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). I built on the lecture to develop a paper that I will present at the annual meeting of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) on August 15, 2008. I am requesting this Dana Grant to: delve deeper into the research I have done on four states, FL, IN, SC, and PA including evaluating one perceived successful investment in each state; examine any regulation of FDI the four states have introduced; and, evaluate the responses these successful states have had to the growing criticism of FDI. For example, FL's Gov. Crist came under attack for a mission he took to the UK, France, Russia and Spain in July 2008. Although Gov. Crist argues that the Mission will pay dividends for Florida, not everyone is enthusiastic about expenses incurred by the Governor to develop FDI (see article). My thesis for my LLM degree in international law was on legal aspects of FDI in the US. Published as an article in the International Lawyer, a publication of the American Bar Association, the research delved into the federal government's role in attracting and regulating FDI in the United States. Then states played little if any role in attracting or regulating FDI. In response to a loss of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing and to the globalization of markets, today state governments, and to a lesser degree local governments, play a key role. Beginning August 25, 2008, fresh from delivering the paper at the ALSB annual meeting , and meeting with my ALSB newly assigned mentor, Clyde Stoltenberg from Wichita State

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Adis Vila


International Business & Managment

James David Marks ()

An Interactive Math and Art Book Project

I am applying for a to completed a book tentaively entitled Playing with Polygons and it is being created as a recreational mathematics and art book targeted at students in the K-12 age range. I have many of the parts of the book already assembled (the files which create the images) and I have written a couple of academic articles based on these files but I have not turned most of this material into files that are more "self-contained and user-friendly." The book will have multiple audiences, one of which is K-12 teachers. Although the files have been created for independent exploration, they could readily be used in the classroom to spur understanding of various mathematical and artistic concepts. For teachers to utilize these materials in the classroom, I will need to create ancillary materials which will make the files classroom ready. These materials include lesson plans and short videos targeted at various age ranges based on Common Core State Standards.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Stephen Erfle


International Studies

John Clayton Butler (2004)

The European Union: Manufacturing an Identity

The European Union's rhetoric is seldom reflected in reality. Despite public statements claiming that the EU has a "rendez-vous with history," the elites seem more convinced than the populace. Both functionalist and neo-functionalist theories argue that the way to peace is through integration. By converting the government elites and epistemic communities to the cause of European unity, peace will follow. Both theories are very elitist. As a result, as observed by John Peet in the Economist, the people being left behind. Over the past 10 years, some more integrationist-minded member states, especially Germany and the Benelux have argued for a democratizing of the integration process. Without a European identity, the people will not come on board, and without democratic support for such a project, European integration will wither. The goal is to bring EU decison-making closer to the average person and to foster a European identity. One of my students, John Butler, wrote a term-paper on the role of sports in the EU. Why is there no EU Olympic team? Why is there no pan-European soccer league? Competing at international sports events as representatives of the EU would serve as a constant reminder, both at home and abroad, of the existence of the EU as a distinct entity. John uncovered a fascinating question: could sports be an ideal way to help create a European identity for both EU citizens and for the world? While much of Butler's preliminary research was good, the project needs more research and to be placed in theoretical perspective. Butler is willing to collaborate with me on this project where he will be given full credit as co-author. We want to grow this paper into a full-fledged, publishable piece. I will submit the paper for presentation at the European Union Studies Associa

Term Funded:Fall 2002
Professor: Stephanie Anderson


Qianyin Cao (2021)

The Influence of the Great Recession on Retirement Savings Behavior in the U.S.

The Great Recession, which occurred from 2007 to 2009, was the biggest recession in the post-World War II era. In this project, we will examine the impact of this recession on decisions related to retirement savings for the average American household. Individuals who are worried about a potential job loss during the recession may change their usual behavior related to retirement savings. More specifically, we will be examining the following questions: (i) Did the recession influence the amount of money a person voluntarily contributes to his/her retirement plan? (ii) Did the recession cause individuals to postpone their planned retirement date? (iii) Did the recession affect an individual's risk-taking behavior in terms of portfolio of their retirement plan? (iv) Do male contributions to retirement differ from female contributions? This project has important policy implications for policymakers regarding how we can support these individuals in the future and it will affect the debate around the funding of social security in the future.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Shamma Alam


Aimee Boisvert Eremita (2003)

The European Union: Manufacturing an Identity

The European Union's rhetoric is seldom reflected in reality. Despite public statements claiming that the EU has a "rendez-vous with history," the elites seem more convinced than the populace. Both functionalist and neo-functionalist theories argue that the way to peace is through integration. By converting the government elites and epistemic communities to the cause of European unity, peace will follow. Both theories are very elitist. As a result, as observed by John Peet in the Economist, the people being left behind. Over the past 10 years, some more integrationist-minded member states, especially Germany and the Benelux have argued for a democratizing of the integration process. Without a European identity, the people will not come on board, and without democratic support for such a project, European integration will wither. The goal is to bring EU decison-making closer to the average person and to foster a European identity.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Stephanie Anderson


Elizabeth Green Grabowski (2017)

Impact of Community Health Workers on Health Awareness and Use of Health Products in Rural Uganda

Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly used to improve the health awareness and the use of health products (medicine, contraceptives, first-aid equipment, etc.) among the rural poor in developing countries. Although many development organizations and international policymakers are promoting the use of CHWs, it is not yet clear from prior research whether the CHWs are effective in improving people's health awareness and health outcomes. Using a randomized controlled trial (experiment), conducted in Uganda, I particularly want to examine whether the introduction of CHWs in an area leads to greater health awareness or increased use of health products among the people in the area. To have a comprehensive understanding of the prior literature on CHWs, I want to hire a research assistant who can help me with a thorough literature review and also help with data analysis. Through the participation, the student can learn immensely about social science research and also about CHWs and health issues in developing countries.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Shamma Alam


Elizabeth Green Grabowski (2017)

Do community health workers provide greater access to healthcare to women whose partners otherwise hinder their access? Evidence from Uganda

Certain cultural norms in several countries across Sub-Saharan Africa make it difficult for women to access healthcare. For example, in some households, wives are required to receive permission from their husbands before visiting a health facility or buying a contraceptive. Many wives are also scared to request their husbands to use contraceptives during sexual intercourse and, even when requested, husbands refuse to use contraceptives. One of the most important Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations is to increase women's access to reproductive health, which includes increased access to contraceptives and health facilities. Therefore, it is very important to find ways to improve women's access to health care and contraceptives so that they can lead a healthy life. In this research project we will try to understand whether community health workers can make a difference in the lives of women by increasing their access to contraceptives and health care needs.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Shamma Alam


Candice Ionescu (2019)

Terminology and Nomenclature Standards of Nanotechnologies

The program will support the student for 11 weeks during summer 2018 in the Standards Coordination Office (SCO) in Gaithersburg, MD.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor:


Anna H Leistikow (2015)

The US National Guard (NG) State Partnership Program (SPP)

Under the SPP program, the National Guard of a particular state is paired with the national military of another country. There is often spillover to non-military sectors. Pennsylvania was among the first three states in the program, with Lithuania designated as its partner. There are now 62 such partnerships which span the globe; nonetheless, the PA-Lithuania SPP is among the most sophisticated and successful of all.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Michael Fratantuono


Stephanie Marie Mazur (2017)

Do Community Health Workers Lead to Improved Health Awareness and Increased Use of Health Technology among Individuals? Evidence Using Experimental Data from Uganda

Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly used to improve the health awareness and the use of health products (medicine, contraceptives, first-aid equipment, etc.) among the rural poor in developing countries. Although many development organizations and international policymakers are promoting the use of CHWs, it is not yet clear from prior research whether the CHWs are effective in improving people's health awareness and health outcomes. Using survey data from an experiment in Uganda, I particularly want to examine whether the introduction of CHWs in an area leads to greater health awareness or increased use of health products among the people in the area.

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: Shamma Alam


Huong Mai Nguyen (2017)

Do Community Health Workers Lead to Improved Health Awareness and Increased Use of Health Technology among Individuals? Evidence Using Experimental Data from Uganda

Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly used to improve the health awareness and the use of health products (medicine, contraceptives, first-aid equipment, etc.) among the rural poor in developing countries. Although many development organizations and international policymakers are promoting the use of CHWs, it is not yet clear from prior research whether the CHWs are effective in improving people's health awareness and health outcomes. Using survey data from an experiment in Uganda, I particularly want to examine whether the introduction of CHWs in an area leads to greater health awareness or increased use of health products among the people in the area.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Shamma Alam


Jiyeong Park (2016)

Immigrant Experience of the Great Recession and of Job Displacement

Immigrants to the United States constitute a sizable and growing fraction of the workforce, but their experiences with job displacement have not been extensively explored. And even less is known about the effects of job displacement on immigrants during the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009. In our study, our focus will be the effect of job displacement on immigrants, with the duration of unemployment and the re-employment wages as the outcomes of interest. We also want to explore the roles reasons for displacement and tenure on the pre-displacement job play in this context. Additional outcomes of interest will be pre- and post-displacement full-time/part-time work status as well as ever-employed post displacement. Additionally, we also want to investigate whether ethnic enclave and immigrant networking influence the outcomes of job displacement for immigrants.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Shamma Alam


Zayed Bin Shahjahan (2020)

The Impacts of the Great Recession on people's health and fertility outcomes.

The Great Recession occurred from 2007 to 2009 and it is the biggest recession in the post-World War II era. This recession had enormous impacts on the U.S. economy and many people lost their jobs. In this project, we examine whether this recession also affected the educational outcomes of teenagers, especially educational outcomes of youths from minority families compared to those in white families. While there was already a gap in education between white and minority communities, we will be examining whether the gap increased following the recession. More specifically, we are going to examine the effect of job losses of parents during the recession on school drop-out rates, SAT/ACT scores, educational aspirations, and educational expectations of children.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Shamma Alam


Claire Elizabeth Simpson ()

Economics and Domestic Violence in Developing Countries

Domestic violence against women is unfortunately prevalent in many developing countries. While there has been substantial research in sociology and anthropology on domestic violence in developing countries, studies in economics have been relatively few. Therefore, there have been very few studies in prior literature on the relationship between household economic wellbeing, women's bargaining power and domestic violence. The goal of this student-faculty research is to explore how economic wellbeing of households in developing countries affect domestic violence against women. By using a secondary longitudinal data from 2012 and 2015 from Bangladesh, which includes detailed data on household income, assets, and also reported data on domestic violence against women, we plan to explore whether there is any significant correlation between household income and wealth and domestic violence against women.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Shamma Alam


Kathleen Nancy Sullivan (2018)

Do Community Health Workers Lead to Improved Health Awareness and Increased Use of Health Technology among Individuals? Evidence Using Experimental Data from Uganda

Trained community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly used by development organizations to provide health services to households who have limited or no access to health services in Sub-Saharan Africa. CHWs go door-to-door in their village to provide households with important health information, to encourage birth spacing, and to sell health products, such as medicine and contraceptives. In this study, we use a randomized controlled trial in Uganda to examine whether introduction of CHWs in an area has an impact on contraceptive use and likelihood of childbirth. Additionally, we will examine whether CHWs have an influence on health knowledge and hygiene practices of individuals living in the area.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Shamma Alam


Michelle Zhang ()

Sri Aurobindo Society and Collaborative Enterprise

My research in Pondicherry, India focused on the role of education and the empowerment of women, and how these two factors contribute to sustainable development in rural areas. With a previous connection I built during my study abroad semester, I conducted my research on the Sri Aurobindo Rural and Village Action and Movement program (SARVAM), a major development initiative that involves education, women's empowerment, health, infrastructure building, and economic development in the rural areas. Another part of my research is related to Professor Michael Fratantuono's Collaborative Enterprise Model, developed to understand and analyze what kinds collaboration are successful and the essential factors that make such collaborations successful. Since SARVAM is a very interdisciplinary and collaborative project, part of the research examined how this framework affirms or refutes Professor Fratantuono's Collaborative Enterprise Model.

Term Funded:Winter 2018
Professor: Michael Fratantuono


International Studies, Sustainability

Keziah Donnocker Groth-Tuft (2017)

EPA-GRO summer Internship

Seattle with the project with salmon fisheries/hatcheries

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor:


Italian & Italian Studies

Julia Gabrielle Barnes (2014)

A Specter Is Haunting Italy: Representations of the Aldo Moro Affair in Cinema, Television, and Theater

I am working on a manuscript on the representations of the abduction and murder of Italian political leader Aldo Moro in 1978. Emphasizing the centrality and the persistence of the "specter" of Aldo Moro haunting Italian collective memory in several fictional venues, my book illustrates how, over the years, the representation of the Moro Affair has diverged into a variety of fictional modes that reveal the problematic definition of political violence and the clash of political and cultural forces in Italian society. My articles and presentations on this topic have received extremely positive feedback, and my "theory of the specter" is widely cited in articles and books. With this project, I am part of the 2013-2014 Penn Humanities Forum on Violence (University of Pennsylvania). I am applying for the Dana Research Assistantship because I would like to work with one of our Italian majors on copyediting, proofreading, and bibliography compiling and checking.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Thera Dal Pra Iversen (2017)

Analysis of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet: The "body" of Naples, Italy.

Analyzed various "bodies" in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet: The "body" of Naples, in which the protagonists of the Quartet live, and the physical bodies of the protagonists.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Delphine Dall'Agata (2017)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (4, 2017)

I am applying for a Dana Research Assistantship Spring 2017 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from UCSD, University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, and Wesleyan. "gender/sexuality/italy" publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries. The first issue was published in May 2014. I am now seeking funding to hire two (2) advanced students in Spring 2017 to support my work in the preparation of the fourth annual issue of g/s/i (2017). The Assistant Editors will work with me on all the stages of the publication process. They will collect and store the received articles in Google Drive and Dropbox, assist me with source checking, engage in email exchanges with the contributors and the reviewers, copyedit, proofread, and check the format of a selection from the received submissions, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. They will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will instruct the Assistant Editors in the preliminary steps of the copyediting and mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The candidates I identified, Thera Iversen and Delphine Dall'Agata, have sophisticated writing skills both in English and Italian, extended knowledge of contemporary Italian culture and literature, interest in the writing process, and motivation for both the field of research and the job. They will have the chance to read, listen to, or watch the submissions and their revisions, follow the peer-editing process in the academic environment, and collaborate with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking. Their collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will perfect their technological skills and give them a broader sense of the cultural impact and great potential of the digital humanities in the scholarly community..

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Delphine Dall'Agata (2017)

Four urban garden initiatives in Bologna, Italy

Research in Bologna focused on four urban garden initiatives: a city-owned community garden, a preschool in the greenhouses of the Giardini Margherita, an urban farm in the marginalized Pilastro neighborhood, and an African garden in a refugee welcome center in Crespellano

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Luca Trazzi, Nicoletta Marini Maio


Domenico G Di Bacco (1995)

Development of an Italian Video Program

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Tullio Pagano


Sarah Helweg DiMuccio (2015)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (2, 2015)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (2, 2015)

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Ashton Elizabeth Fiucci (2015)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (2, 2015)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (3, 2015)

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Ashton Elizabeth Fiucci (2015)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (1, 2014)

Term Funded:fall 2013
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Madigan Behrens Kay (2018)

Agrotourism in Italy

This semester, I'm researching the agrotourism industry-working farms with a hospitality aspect, such as restaurants, lodging or activities. Agrotourism is a popular form of tourism in Italy, both for Italian and foreign tourists, so I'm looking into how it has become so successful and whether it could gain similar popularity in the US. I'm planning to visit a few different places in different regions and to interview the owners about why they entered agrotourism, as well as the challenges they face. This research is supported by a grant through the William G. and Elke F. Durden International Fund. I picked this topic because I have grown up with and worked in both the agriculture and hospitality industries, and I really enjoy them both. Since agrotourism is a convergence of the two, and since it is so popular in Italy, I figured now would be the best time to learn more about it.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Tullio Pagano


Madigan Behrens Kay (2018)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (5, 2018)

I am applying for Dana Research Assistantship Summer 2018 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and FIT SUNY. I received half of the grant (4 hours each for 14 weeks) I requested to support the work of two student Assistant Editors, Madigan Kay and Amber Sands, for Spring 2018. A Dana Research grant in Summer 2018 would support Maddie's and AMber's work on the advanced stages of the publication process, which will include copyediting, proofreading, and formatting articles and multimedia materials, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. Maddie and Amber will also assist me with source checking, continue to correspond via email with the authors and peer-reviewers, and will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will continue to mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The fifth issue will be finalized by August 31, 2018. Maddie and Amber should assist me for fourteen (14) weeks in Summer 2018, working again for an average of 4 hours each per week, under my constant supervision. Continuing to work on gender/sexuality/italy over the summer will be an invaluable learning opportunity for them, who would have the chance not only to read and (in case of multimedia files) listen to or watch the submissions and their revisions, but also to follow the peer-editing process up to its final steps, collaborating closely with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking, and concluding the publication process. Finally, their continued collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will help them perfect their technological skills, encourage them to explore the digital humanities, and allow them to contribute to the growth of the Italian scholarly community at Dickinson.

Term Funded:Summer
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Madigan Behrens Kay (2018)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (5, 2018)

I am applying for Dana Research Assistantship Spring 2018 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and FIT SUNY. "gender/sexuality/italy" publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries. The first issue was published in May 2014. I am now seeking funding to hire two (2) advanced students in Spring 2018 to support my work in the preparation of the fifth annual issue of g/s/i (2018). The Assistant Editors will work with me on all the stages of the publication process. They will collect and store the received articles in Google Drive and Dropbox, assist me with source checking, engage in email exchanges with the contributors and the reviewers, copyedit, proofread, and check the format of a selection from the received submissions, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. They will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will instruct the Assistant Editors in the preliminary steps of the copyediting and mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The candidates I identified, Madigan Kay and Amber Sanders, have sophisticated writing skills both in English and Italian, extended knowledge of contemporary Italian culture and literature, interest in the writing process, and motivation for both the field of research and the job. They will have the chance to read, listen to, or watch the submissions and their revisions, follow the peer-editing process in the academic environment, and collaborate with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking. Their collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will perfect their technological skills and give them a broader sense of the cultural impact and great potential of the digital humanities in the scholarly community.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Hannah Corrin Rich (2016)

Contrasting Views on Italian Immigration in Argentina, 1840-1920

This is a research project focusing on the representation of Argentina and the region of the Rio de la Plata between 1840s and 1920s. My intention is to compare the narratives of Italian travelers and migrant workers who arrived in the region at that time with journalistic reports, essays and literary works authored by Argentinians. Between 1870 and 1910 around 3.4 million immigrants arrived in Argentina, of whom about 55% wrom Italy. During 1860 and 1880, Italians were 75% o total.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: Tullio Pagano


Amber Lee Sands (2018)

The Experience of Small-Medium Wine Producers in Italy

I'm studying the experiences of small-medium scale wine producers in Italy, and the quality of their product compared to those produced by larger companies. I want to see if the reason large scale producers tend to do better in an international market is due to the amount of money they can spend on marketing, and whether or not the quality of the product is equal to that of the cost. This research is important because it studies a social phenomenon that largely connects to the economy of Italy. Wine is a crucial product in the Italian economy, and I am interested to see if there is more stimulation and focus on supporting local/smaller vendors and producers, how it could effect the local economy, and eventually, the international wine market. Participants in the study will be those involved in the wine business. I am focusing on people who work at "enoteche" (wine shops) or those who own/work for a vineyard.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Tullio Pagano


Amber Lee Sands (2018)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (5, 2018)

I am applying for Dana Research Assistantship Summer 2018 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and FIT SUNY. I received half of the grant (4 hours each for 14 weeks) I requested to support the work of two student Assistant Editors, Madigan Kay and Amber Sands, for Spring 2018. A Dana Research grant in Summer 2018 would support Maddie's and AMber's work on the advanced stages of the publication process, which will include copyediting, proofreading, and formatting articles and multimedia materials, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. Maddie and Amber will also assist me with source checking, continue to correspond via email with the authors and peer-reviewers, and will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will continue to mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The fifth issue will be finalized by August 31, 2018. Maddie and Amber should assist me for fourteen (14) weeks in Summer 2018, working again for an average of 4 hours each per week, under my constant supervision. Continuing to work on gender/sexuality/italy over the summer will be an invaluable learning opportunity for them, who would have the chance not only to read and (in case of multimedia files) listen to or watch the submissions and their revisions, but also to follow the peer-editing process up to its final steps, collaborating closely with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking, and concluding the publication process. Finally, their continued collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will help them perfect their technological skills, encourage them to explore the digital humanities, and allow them to contribute to the growth of the Italian scholarly community at Dickinson.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Amber Lee Sands (2018)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (5, 2018)

I am applying forDana Research Assistantship Spring 2018 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and FIT SUNY. "gender/sexuality/italy" publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries. The first issue was published in May 2014. I am now seeking funding to hire two (2) advanced students in Spring 2018 to support my work in the preparation of the fifth annual issue of g/s/i (2018). The Assistant Editors will work with me on all the stages of the publication process. They will collect and store the received articles in Google Drive and Dropbox, assist me with source checking, engage in email exchanges with the contributors and the reviewers, copyedit, proofread, and check the format of a selection from the received submissions, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. They will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will instruct the Assistant Editors in the preliminary steps of the copyediting and mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The candidates I identified, Madigan Kay and Amber Sanders, have sophisticated writing skills both in English and Italian, extended knowledge of contemporary Italian culture and literature, interest in the writing process, and motivation for both the field of research and the job. They will have the chance to read, listen to, or watch the submissions and their revisions, follow the peer-editing process in the academic environment, and collaborate with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking. Their collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will perfect their technological skills and give them a broader sense of the cultural impact and great potential of the digital humanities in the scholarly community.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Natura A Sant Foster (2020)

gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (7, 2020)

I am applying for Dana Research Assistantship Spring 2020 Student-Faculty Collaboration Grant to seek support for the online annual, peer-reviewed academic journal "gender/sexuality/italy," of which I am the Principal Editor and co-founder with colleagues from University of Bologna (Italy), UTexas, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and FIT SUNY. "gender/sexuality/italy" publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries. The first issue was published in May 2014. I am now seeking funding to hire one advanced student in Spring 2020 to support my work in the preparation of the seventh annual issue of g/s/i (2020). The Assistant Editors will work with me on all the stages of the publication process. She will collect and store the received articles in Google Drive and Dropbox, assist me with source checking, engage in email exchanges with the contributors and the reviewers, copyedit, proofread, and check the format of a selection from the received submissions, according to the standards of The Chicago Manual of Style and the non-commercial licensing policies of the Creative Commons. She will also help to translate and subtitle multimedia contributions from Italy. I will instruct the Assistant Editors in the preliminary steps of the copyediting and mentor them carefully throughout the whole process. The candidate I identified, Natura Sant Foster, has sophisticated writing skills both in English and Italian, extended knowledge of contemporary Italian culture and literature, interest in the writing process, and motivation for both the field of research and the job. She will have the chance to read, listen to, or watch the submissions and their revisions, follow the peer-editing process in the academic environment, and collaborate with Faculty and other Assistant Editors in an inter-institutional undertaking. Her collaboration with gender/sexuality/italy will perfect her technological skills and give her a broader sense of the cultural impact and great potential of the digital humanities in the scholarly community.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Vivian F Sicilia (2015)

A Specter Is Haunting Italy: Representations of the Aldo Moro Affair in Cinema, Television, and Theater

I am working on a manuscript on the representations of the abduction and murder of Italian political leader Aldo Moro in 1978. Emphasizing the centrality and the persistence of the "specter" of Aldo Moro haunting Italian collective memory in several fictional venues, my book illustrates how, over the years, the representation of the Moro Affair has diverged into a variety of fictional modes that reveal the problematic definition of political violence and the clash of political and cultural forces in Italian society. My articles and presentations on this topic have received extremely positive feedback, and my "theory of the specter" is widely cited in articles and books. With this project, I was part of the 2013-2014 Penn Humanities Forum on Violence (University of Pennsylvania). I am applying for the Dana Research Assistantship because I would like to work with one of our Italian majors on copyediting, proofreading, and bibliography compiling and indexing.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Taylor A Stroili (2018)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (3, 2016)

Research for gender/sexuality/italy -- Online Open-Access Peer-Reviewed International Journal (3, 2016)

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: Nicoletta Marini Maio


Latin America, Latinx & Caribbean Studies

Amanda Jo E Wildey (2013)

When the Modern meets Tradition: Technical and Cultural Changes in Contemporary Andean Agricultural Life

When the Modern meets Tradition: Technical and Cultural Changes in Contemporary Andean Agricultural Life

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor:


Library & Information Services (LIS)

Natalie Cortez (2009)

125 Years of Coeducation at Dickinson College

In the fall of 2009, Dickinson College will celebrate 125 years of coeducation. This approaching anniversary provides an opportune moment in which to study and reflect upon the unique experiences of Dickinson's alumnae, a topic on which a limited amount of scholarship currently exists. To this end, the staff of Archives and Special Collections would like to hire two interns during Spring 2009 to assist in identifying relevant primary sources in preparation for the creation of a year-long exhibit (to be mounted in Summer 2009) documenting women's experiences at the College. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the interns will search the College's historical records and document their findings by creating a blog that will provide the intellectual foundation for the subsequent exhibit and serve as a resource center for Dickinson and outside researchers. As the interns encounter items of interest, they will have the ability to post stories summarizing their findings, to create a bibliography of relevant resources, to develop timelines of noteworthy events, and to share digital images of primary sources. While the intent of this project is not to conduct an exhaustive search for all materials regarding coeducation at Dickinson, it is our hope that the exhibit and electronic resource center will serve as catalysts for additional inquiry and dialogue on the topic within the campus community.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Timothy James


Natalie Cortez (2009)

125 Years of Coeducation at Dickinson College

In the fall of 2009, Dickinson College will celebrate 125 years of coeducation. This approaching anniversary provides an opportune moment in which to study and reflect upon the unique experiences of Dickinson's alumnae, a topic on which a limited amount of scholarship currently exists. To this end, the staff of Archives and Special Collections would like to hire two interns during Spring 2009 to assist in identifying relevant primary sources in preparation for the creation of a year-long exhibit (to be mounted in Summer 2009) documenting women's experiences at the College. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the interns will search the College's historical records and document their findings by creating a blog that will provide the intellectual foundation for the subsequent exhibit and serve as a resource center for Dickinson and outside researchers. As the interns encounter items of interest, they will have the ability to post stories summarizing their findings, to create a bibliography of relevant resources, to develop timelines of noteworthy events, and to share digital images of primary sources. While the intent of this project is not to conduct an exhaustive search for all materials regarding coeducation at Dickinson, it is our hope that the exhibit and electronic resource center will serve as catalysts for additional inquiry and dialogue on the topic within the campus community.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Caitlin Victoria DeFazio (2016)

The Mixxer

The Mixxer is a social networking website developed at Dickinson College for connecting students in foreign language courses with native speakers abroad who are studying English. Students meet with their partner via Skype with each learner spending half of the time helping the other practice their target language. Currently these exchanges are almost entirely without structure. Our students prepare 25 questions to ask their partner before the exchange and in most case write a summary of the exchange as homework. This works fine when the exchanges work as an additional speaking activity within a regular course. However, if we can create lessons around the exchanges that incorporate new vocabulary and grammar along with the four skills of language learning, we can provide modules for language instructors that can be assigned to students as homework on a regular basis. This would allow the exchanges to be used in courses with minimal use of class time and would promote the resource for more advanced students to complete structured exchanges on their own. The Digital Danas will be tasked with creating these lessons. They will have the lessons already created to use as potential templates, and they can use language specific content provided from open education resources. One resource all three students will certainly use is COERLL, a national foreign language resource center that provides resources and content as part of its mission. We have informed Carl Blythe at the University of Texas that we intend to use their content and have discussed possibilities of better integrating the two sites. These lessons will then be offered to incoming first year students as we did with Spanish this previous summer and will be available to language instructors interested in further integrating language exchanges in their regular language courses. Goals By the end of the semester, students are expected to create lessons in their target language (German, French, and Chinese) ranging from the beginner-mid to intermediate-mid level that include the integration of new vocabulary and grammar into activities that focus on the basic four skills of language learning. The number of lessons will vary depending on their length, but they should be roughly equivalent in number to those already created for Spanish and English, approximately 50 lessons with completion time of varying from two to two and a half hours for each.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Todd Bryant


Linda Rosemary Genser (2017)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This academic year's goals: • Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Allyson Keiko Glazier (2011)

"Women's Experiences at Dickinson" Exhibit

In the fall of 2009, Dickinson College will celebrate 125 years of coeducation. This approaching anniversary provides an opportune moment in which to study and reflect upon the unique experiences of Dickinson's alumnae, a topic on which a limited amount of scholarship currently exists. To this end, the staff of Archives and Special Collections would like to hire two interns during Summer 2009 to assist in the creation of a year-long exhibit documenting women's experiences at the College. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the interns will assist with the following tasks: identifying important themes, issues, events, and stories to address; selecting appropriate archival materials to convey those stories; preparing items for display by applying appropriate preservation measures; physically arranging the items in the display cases; and conducting original research in order to create descriptive labels. It is our hope that the exhibit will serve as a catalyst for additional inquiry and dialogue within the campus community, and that it will also be useful as a resource for classroom instruction, research, and alumni reminiscence.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Michelle Suzanne Hadley-Ambord (2009)

125 Years of Coeducation at Dickinson College

In the fall of 2009, Dickinson College will celebrate 125 years of coeducation. This approaching anniversary provides an opportune moment in which to study and reflect upon the unique experiences of Dickinson's alumnae, a topic on which a limited amount of scholarship currently exists. To this end, the staff of Archives and Special Collections would like to hire two interns during Spring 2009 to assist in identifying relevant primary sources in preparation for the creation of a year-long exhibit (to be mounted in Summer 2009) documenting women's experiences at the College. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the interns will search the College's historical records and document their findings by creating a blog that will provide the intellectual foundation for the subsequent exhibit and serve as a resource center for Dickinson and outside researchers. As the interns encounter items of interest, they will have the ability to post stories summarizing their findings, to create a bibliography of relevant resources, to develop timelines of noteworthy events, and to share digital images of primary sources. While the intent of this project is not to conduct an exhaustive search for all materials regarding coeducation at Dickinson, it is our hope that the exhibit and electronic resource center will serve as catalysts for additional inquiry and dialogue on the topic within the campus community.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Peter C Lake (2006)

House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862

In summer 2004, we began working with experts at LIS to develop a web-based research project that aspired to become a premier web portal for students and teachers interested in the coming of the American Civil War. We plan to call the website "House Divided: A View of America, 1846-1862." Using the college community as a starting point and the period from 1846-1862 as a dramatic frame, the website will detail in day-by-day format how the crisis evolved and why fellow citizens from that era came to see each other as mortal enemies. The House Divided website will feature some of the college's unique archival resources - student diaries, letters, and recollections as well as a broad selection of the nation's daily newspapers and other relevant primary sources.

Term Funded:Year 2006
Professor: James Gerencser


Colin Winthrop Macfarlane (2012)

Finding History (book project)

Finding History is a book-length guide to research methodology and information literacy application for undergraduate scholars of history. My proposal has recently been accepted by Scarecrow Press and I am expecting a contract in the coming weeks. My book will help history students perform historical inquiry efficiently and with the standard, scholarly finding tools used by professionals. Finding History includes step-by-step instructions for discovering historical evidence using library catalogs, databases, and websites. It is illustrated with search samples and tables providing a wealth of scholarly starting points. Parts of the book have been used successfully with Dickinson history majors. I require additional assistance from an intern for the following: reorganizing chapters and testing instructions of new sections (both of these at request of external reviewers); creating high quality images for the book's illustrations; proofreading and editing the final draft; preparing and mailing requests for permission to reproduce images of copyrighted material; and completing the final stages of research on the book's case study, a biography of Dickinson alumnus John A.J. Creswell, class of 1848. This research includes citing and annotating primary and secondary sources according to the Chicago Manual of Style. I expect to submit a final draft to Scarecrow by the fall semester.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Christine Bombaro


W John Monopoli (2011)

Finding History (book project)

Finding History is a book-length guide to research methodology and information literacy application for undergraduate scholars of history. This book will help history students perform historical inquiry efficiently and with the standard, scholarly finding tools used by professionals. Finding History includes step-by-step instructions for discovering historical evidence using library catalogs, databases, and websites. It is illustrated with search samples and tables providing a wealth of scholarly starting points. Parts of the book have been used successfully with Dickinson history majors. I require additional assistance from my intern for the following: proofreading final chapters, testing instructions, preparing and mailing publisher correspondence, and transcribing and annotating documents we found during several research trips. Finally, I would like to John to complete a case study he started writing for possible inclusion in the book, pending approval from a publisher. The case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the methodology and recounts the results of our research trips.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Christine Bombaro


W John Monopoli (2011)

Finding History (book project)

Finding History is a book-length guide to research methodology and information literacy application for undergraduate scholars of history. This book will help new history students, particularly those intending to declare a history major, to perform historical inquiry efficiently and with the standard, scholarly finding tools used by professionals. Finding History includes practical, step-by-step instructions for discovering historical evidence using library catalogs, databases, and websites; and it is illustrated with search samples and tables providing a wealth of scholarly starting points. Parts of the book have been used successfully with Dickinson history majors. I would need assistance from a student with the following: researching appropriate representative webpages and scholarly articles, proofreading drafts, checking all instructions for clarity and accuracy, testing instructions on other students, preparing and mailing correspondence, creating screen captures for illustrations, checking that any websites mentioned are still active and function as described, and small writing assignments.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Christine Bombaro


Santiago Gaspar Princ (2016)

The Mixxer

The Mixxer is a social networking website developed at Dickinson College for connecting students in foreign language courses with native speakers abroad who are studying English. Students meet with their partner via Skype with each learner spending half of the time helping the other practice their target language. Currently these exchanges are almost entirely without structure. Our students prepare 25 questions to ask their partner before the exchange and in most case write a summary of the exchange as homework. This works fine when the exchanges work as an additional speaking activity within a regular course. However, if we can create lessons around the exchanges that incorporate new vocabulary and grammar along with the four skills of language learning, we can provide modules for language instructors that can be assigned to students as homework on a regular basis. This would allow the exchanges to be used in courses with minimal use of class time and would promote the resource for more advanced students to complete structured exchanges on their own. The Digital Danas will be tasked with creating these lessons. They will have the lessons already created to use as potential templates, and they can use language specific content provided from open education resources. One resource all three students will certainly use is COERLL, a national foreign language resource center that provides resources and content as part of its mission. We have informed Carl Blythe at the University of Texas that we intend to use their content and have discussed possibilities of better integrating the two sites. These lessons will then be offered to incoming first year students as we did with Spanish this previous summer and will be available to language instructors interested in further integrating language exchanges in their regular language courses. Goals By the end of the semester, students are expected to create lessons in their target language (German, French, and Chinese) ranging from the beginner-mid to intermediate-mid level that include the integration of new vocabulary and grammar into activities that focus on the basic four skills of language learning. The number of lessons will vary depending on their length, but they should be roughly equivalent in number to those already created for Spanish and English, approximately 50 lessons with completion time of varying from two to two and a half hours for each.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Todd Bryant


Caroline E Radesky (2009)

125 Years of Coeducation at Dickinson College

In the fall of 2009, Dickinson College will celebrate 125 years of coeducation. This approaching anniversary provides an opportune moment in which to study and reflect upon the unique experiences of Dickinson's alumnae, a topic on which a limited amount of scholarship currently exists. To this end, the staff of Archives and Special Collections would like to hire two interns during Spring 2009 to assist in identifying relevant primary sources in preparation for the creation of a year-long exhibit (to be mounted in Summer 2009) documenting women's experiences at the College. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the interns will search the College's historical records and document their findings by creating a blog that will provide the intellectual foundation for the subsequent exhibit and serve as a resource center for Dickinson and outside researchers. As the interns encounter items of interest, they will have the ability to post stories summarizing their findings, to create a bibliography of relevant resources, to develop timelines of noteworthy events, and to share digital images of primary sources. While the intent of this project is not to conduct an exhaustive search for all materials regarding coeducation at Dickinson, it is our hope that the exhibit and electronic resource center will serve as catalysts for additional inquiry and dialogue on the topic within the campus community.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Ezra Rigel Sassaman (2016)

The Mixxer

The Mixxer is a social networking website developed at Dickinson College for connecting students in foreign language courses with native speakers abroad who are studying English. Students meet with their partner via Skype with each learner spending half of the time helping the other practice their target language. Currently these exchanges are almost entirely without structure. Our students prepare 25 questions to ask their partner before the exchange and in most case write a summary of the exchange as homework. This works fine when the exchanges work as an additional speaking activity within a regular course. However, if we can create lessons around the exchanges that incorporate new vocabulary and grammar along with the four skills of language learning, we can provide modules for language instructors that can be assigned to students as homework on a regular basis. This would allow the exchanges to be used in courses with minimal use of class time and would promote the resource for more advanced students to complete structured exchanges on their own. The Digital Danas will be tasked with creating these lessons. They will have the lessons already created to use as potential templates, and they can use language specific content provided from open education resources. One resource all three students will certainly use is COERLL, a national foreign language resource center that provides resources and content as part of its mission. We have informed Carl Blythe at the University of Texas that we intend to use their content and have discussed possibilities of better integrating the two sites. These lessons will then be offered to incoming first year students as we did with Spanish this previous summer and will be available to language instructors interested in further integrating language exchanges in their regular language courses. Goals By the end of the semester, students are expected to create lessons in their target language (German, French, and Chinese) ranging from the beginner-mid to intermediate-mid level that include the integration of new vocabulary and grammar into activities that focus on the basic four skills of language learning. The number of lessons will vary depending on their length, but they should be roughly equivalent in number to those already created for Spanish and English, approximately 50 lessons with completion time of varying from two to two and a half hours for each.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Todd Bryant


Allison Marie Schell (2011)

"Women's Experiences at Dickinson" Exhibit

In the fall of 2009, Dickinson College will celebrate 125 years of coeducation. This approaching anniversary provides an opportune moment in which to study and reflect upon the unique experiences of Dickinson's alumnae, a topic on which a limited amount of scholarship currently exists. To this end, the staff of Archives and Special Collections would like to hire two interns during Summer 2009 to assist in the creation of a year-long exhibit documenting women's experiences at the College. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the interns will assist with the following tasks: identifying important themes, issues, events, and stories to address; selecting appropriate archival materials to convey those stories; preparing items for display by applying appropriate preservation measures; physically arranging the items in the display cases; and conducting original research in order to create descriptive labels. It is our hope that the exhibit will serve as a catalyst for additional inquiry and dialogue within the campus community, and that it will also be useful as a resource for classroom instruction, research, and alumni reminiscence.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: James Gerencser


Shayna Elise Solomon (2016)

Historical Simulations for Research and Critical Thought in the Humanities

Background: One of the ways we can use technology to ask new questions and allow learners to view a complex system is through simulations. While simulations are common in the sciences, they are used much less frequently in the humanities. At Dickinson, however, we have successfully used simulations using computer games to allow students to apply theories from their reading and help provoke critical discussion and questions. One of these courses has been Professor Ed Webb's interdisciplinary senior seminar "Empire". One section of the course is dedicated to covering the colonization of the Americas by Spain. Specifically, Professor Webb has the students consider an array of factors that allowed an extremely small number of Spanish soldiers to conquer what at the time was an extremely large and powerful empire, the Aztecs. Contrary to common belief, Tzvetan Todorov's book, "The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other" argues that technology and disease were not the only significant factors that led to the Aztecs ultimate defeat. Instead, it was Cortes's understanding of the Aztec's culture belief in fate and "signs" that ultimately led to his victory. To help students understand the array of factors against Cortes and his Spanish army that made his knowledge of Aztec beliefs so crucial, Todd Bryant created a historical simulation using the game Civilization IV, which to the greatest extent possible, recreates the two empires with military, economic, and diplomatic resources they possessed at the time. By playing the simulation, students experience just how large and advanced the Aztec empire was in comparison to the Europeans in the time of Columbus, and that a military campaign alone would have been essentially suicidal. More information regarding how the simulation was created and integrated into the course is available via Professor Webb's article for Academic Commons here, http://www.academiccommons.org/2013/09/learning-together-with-games-civilization-and-empire/ Project: The goal for this project would be to first to update the Spain/Aztec empire simulation for Civilization V, the latest in the Civilization series, and modify another existing simulation depicting the colonization of Africa to improve its historical accuracy. The update to Civ V is required because Civ IV is not supported on the latest Windows operating systems. Civ V also has improved capabilities that will allow students to create more detailed simulations. The second simulation of Africa during the period of colonization will be a modification of a historical simulation released as an expansion pack for Civ V. While the simulation already exists, students will need to evaluate it for accuracy and make adjustments where possible. These simulations will then be integrated into Professor Webb's future Empire seminars and may be of use for other courses as well. In addition to these simulations being beneficial to future courses, we also feel the students working on the project will be engaged in rewarding academic work throughout the summer. Students will be required to conduct extensive research of the world in each of the time period. They will also need to develop a sophisticated understanding of how a number of geo-political variables interact in an international context. To create the simulation itself, students will also need to develop technical competencies, including XML and at least an understanding of the logic that governs computer programming.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Edward Webb


Casey Candice Stock (2010)

Development of Spatial Literacy within the Dickinson Community

Spatial Literacy is a type of thinking that focuses on understanding the importance of geographic space and the relationships formed by this space. A powerful technology for engaging spatial thinking is called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which provides sophisticated tools for collecting, managing, analyzing, and visualizing spatial data. This project seeks to enhance the awareness of spatial literacy and increase the competency for GIS technology across the Dickinson community through the use of workshops, outreach programs, web portals, tutorials, and learning seminars. Specifically, the Dana Research Assistant will be tasked with developing a program methodology for raising the awareness of Spatial Literacy and GIS technology within the Dickinson Community utilizing the various activities listed above, assisting with implementing these activities within the context of that program, and assessing the overall success of these various efforts as a means for enhancing spatial literacy within an academic environment.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: James Ciarrocca


Casey Candice Stock (2010)

Development of Spatial Literacy within the Dickinson Community

Spatial Literacy is a type of thinking that focuses on understanding the importance of geographic space and the relationships formed by this space. A powerful technology for engaging spatial thinking is called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which provides sophisticated tools for collecting, managing, analyzing, and visualizing spatial data. This project seeks to enhance the awareness of spatial literacy and increase the competency for GIS technology across the Dickinson community through the use of workshops, outreach programs, web portals, tutorials, and learning seminars. Specifically, the Dana Research Assistant will be tasked with developing a program methodology for raising the awareness of Spatial Literacy and GIS technology within the Dickinson Community utilizing the various activities listed above, assisting with implementing these activities within the context of that program, and assessing the overall success of these various efforts as a means for enhancing spatial literacy within an academic environment.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: James Ciarrocca


Elizabeth Jeannette Vuchinich (2016)

The Mixxer

The Mixxer is a social networking website developed at Dickinson College for connecting students in foreign language courses with native speakers abroad who are studying English. Students meet with their partner via Skype with each learner spending half of the time helping the other practice their target language. Currently these exchanges are almost entirely without structure. Our students prepare 25 questions to ask their partner before the exchange and in most case write a summary of the exchange as homework. This works fine when the exchanges work as an additional speaking activity within a regular course. However, if we can create lessons around the exchanges that incorporate new vocabulary and grammar along with the four skills of language learning, we can provide modules for language instructors that can be assigned to students as homework on a regular basis. This would allow the exchanges to be used in courses with minimal use of class time and would promote the resource for more advanced students to complete structured exchanges on their own. The Digital Danas will be tasked with creating these lessons. They will have the lessons already created to use as potential templates, and they can use language specific content provided from open education resources. One resource all three students will certainly use is COERLL, a national foreign language resource center that provides resources and content as part of its mission. We have informed Carl Blythe at the University of Texas that we intend to use their content and have discussed possibilities of better integrating the two sites. These lessons will then be offered to incoming first year students as we did with Spanish this previous summer and will be available to language instructors interested in further integrating language exchanges in their regular language courses. Goals By the end of the semester, students are expected to create lessons in their target language (German, French, and Chinese) ranging from the beginner-mid to intermediate-mid level that include the integration of new vocabulary and grammar into activities that focus on the basic four skills of language learning. The number of lessons will vary depending on their length, but they should be roughly equivalent in number to those already created for Spanish and English, approximately 50 lessons with completion time of varying from two to two and a half hours for each.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Todd Bryant


Mathematics

Nam Quoc Tran (2021)

Pinch Families of Apollonian Circle Packings

This project will investigate curvatures of circles in "pinch" families of Apollonian circle packings. It will involve generating pictures using existing SageMath code (SageMath is a free open-source mathematics software system based in the Python language), performing computations with a mathematical software such as SageMath, Mathematica, or Matlab, and recording and making observations based on experimental data.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Holley Friedlander


Mathematics & Computer Science

Elisabeth Shyjka Baute (1994)

New Parallel Parsing Techniques

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor:


Kathryn Anne Elyse Beck (2020)

[TBA]

[TBA]

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Lorelei Koss


Marc Julien Besson (2015)

Research in Graph Theory

This project involves original research in graph theory. Messon and Tesman will be considering variations on T-colorgs of graphs. This is a fairly new area of research in graphy theory. The team will be considering optimization-type problems for various classes of graphs. This work is related to research that Tesman has been working on for a number of years.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Barry Tesman


Marc Julien Besson (2015)

Generalized Symmetric Spaces of the Modular Groups - Part i

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Jennifer Schaefer


Marc Julien Besson (2015)

Optimal Span of T-Colored Wheel Digraphs

Our plan for this summer is to work on some of the open problems from our previous research project and to apply our results to a new class of graphs. All of these problems come from my general area of research, T-colorings of graphs. This is a fairly new area of graph theory and one that is easily accessible to an undergraduate.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Barry Tesman


Travis Martin Brown (2013)

Sustainability Labs for Calculus

Sustainability Labs for Calculus

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Barry Tesman


James Patrick Cain (1994)

Identifying the Impact of Corrective Software Maintenance

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor:


Qian Chen (2000)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Nancy Hastings


Josephine Elizabeth Cook ()

FarmData2 Development

FarmData2 is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) project that builds on the FarmData and AnimalData applications currently in use on the Dickinson College Farm. From approximately 2012-2016, Prof. Tim Wahls and a number of students worked with Matt Steiman at the farm to produce FarmData and AnimalData to facilitate the accurate detailed record keeping necessary for navigating the organic certification process. With the loss of Prof. Wahls in 2016 these projects have remained stable and in use but have not evolved with the needs of the Dickinson Farm, the broader small organic farming community or modern web-based application architectures. The FarmData2 project aims to combine FarmData and AnimalData into a new unified application that is flexible enough to address both the needs of the Dickinson Farm as well as a community of other small organic farm, while also using modern web application technologies. This update provides an ideal platform for integration into the computer science curriculum. FarmData2 has been used in three courses across spring 2020, fall 2020 and spring 2021, and will continue to be involved in two courses (COMP190 and COMP290) each year going forward. These courses have helped shape FarmData2 and have begun to add features to the application. The aim of this project will be to take FarmData2 from its state at the end of COMP290 (spring 2021) to a form that has sufficient features that it can be beta-tested on the college farm by the end of the summer.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Grant Braught


Aleksey Denega (2003)

Characterization of the Pollincation Routing Algorithm for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

In a mobile ad-hoc network the nodes of network move about their environment and communicate with each other over wireless channels without the benefit of a suitable preexisting infrastructure (e.g. cell towers). In this environment two nodes can communicate directly with each other only if they are within the range it may be possible for them to communicate indirectly by relaying their communications through intermediary nodes. The process of discovering and maintaining communication routes between nodes is handled by a routing algorithm. The Pollination routing algorithm performs routing in a mobile ad-hoc wireless network. The algorithm is based on the concept of pollination (as in bees!) and combines aspects of current mobile ad-hoc routing algorithms with ideas from ant-based (as in ants!) algorithms for routing wired networks. A prototype of the Pollination algorithm has been developed. Simulation results based on this prototype show the performance of the Pollination algorithm to be comparable to several existing mobile ad-hoc routing algorithms. The prototype implementation of the Pollination algorithm did not fully optimize the Pollination algorithm nor has it been completely characterized in terms of all of its parameters. This project aims explore several optimizations to the algorithm and to perform a more complete characterization of the algorithm's performance with regard to its parameters. The performance of the optimized algorithm will be compared to existing mobile ad-hoc routing algorithms.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Grant Braught


Joseph Thomas Devlin (1991)

Computer Simulation of Evolution of the Spectrum of G2 Stars

Computer Simulation of Evolution of the Spectrum of G2 Stars

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor:


Jun Ding (1992)

Computer Aided Instruction System for Graph Theory Algorithms

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Nancy Hastings, Barry Tesman


Fabio Ariel Drucker (2011)

Fast Superpixel Algorithms

A superpixel is a small region of an image that lies within a single object. Superpixels are important because they dramatically improve the computational efficiency of some image analysis algorithms, but computing the superpixels themselves is a difficult computational problem. The author of this proposal recently developed a new superpixel computation technique, termed PathFinder, that runs at least 10 times faster than the fastest previously-published technique. However, significant additional analysis and experimentation are needed to quantify the performance and quality of PathFinder. In addition, generalizations of PathFinder may lead to exciting new methods of motion estimation in video sequences. The project consists of a student and faculty member working together to implement and carry out detailed experiments, rigorously comparing the speed and quality of PathFinder with the best previously-published algorithm. Further, both student and faculty member will collaborate on the development of new techniques for generalizing PathFinder to the motion estimation scenario.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: John MacCormick


Fabio Ariel Drucker (2011)

Symbolic Dynamics for Overlapping Partitions

Dynamical systems is the study of motion. Some of the fundamental quesitons that a dynamicist asks are: is there a fixed point, a periodic orbit, an attractor, or chaos? These are often difficult questions to answer. One tool we use is symbolic dynamics. This simplifies the analysis to the analysis of sequences of numbers. For example, a periodic point may correspond to the sequence (1,2,3,1,2,3,1,...). In this project the student and I will look at a new way to generate symbolic dynamics from a dynamical system. The analysis is more subtle than the classical case, but the payoff is potentially much greater. This is part of a larger research program that I have begun with Jim Wiseman (Agnes Scott College) and Sarah Day (College of William and Mary).

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: David Richeson


Thomas Jerome Edgar (2002)

The Dynamics of Beach Waves

We will create a computer model to simulate breaking ocean waves. We will use this computer model to examine the sequence of maximum wave heights on the beach (that is, we will measure how far up the beach each wave will reach). Our computer model will take into consideration such parameters as the speed of the waves, the height of the waves, the period of the waves and the pitch of the beach. It is our conjecture that as we vary these parameters, the resulting sequence will have some interesting dynamical properties. For instance, for certain parameter values the sequence may be periodic, for others the sequence may be chaotic. The student and professor will study each sequence as a dynamical system and use the tools from that subject to analyze the behavior of the breaking beach waves.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: David Richeson


Shari Jayne Feldman (1989)

Design of Computer Experiences using LOGO to Model Dynamic Mental Images of Geometric Concepts

Design of Computer Experiences using LOGO to Model Dynamic Mental Images of Geometric Concepts

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Nancy Hastings


Lisa Fumiye Fukuhara (1992)

A Bayesian Non-parametric Approach to Tournament Ranking and Design

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Allan Rossman


Christopher Eric Hanley (1991)

Computer Aided Instruction System for Graph Theory Algorithms

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Nancy Hastings, Barry Tesman


Linda Ellen Harrold (1994)

Graphical Query Interface for Standard Database Management Systems

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor:


Justine Sylvia Heritage (2014)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Interdisciplinary Program in High Performance Computing

High performance computing is a quickly rising area of research in mathematics and computer science. Understanding the many functions and applications of scientific computing will be advantageous in my future in either academia or industry. With applications in numerous fields including biology, linguistics, risk analysis, meteorology, and engineering, gaining experience in this area will certainly be useful in whatever field I ultimately pursue. Additionally, I will be able to hone my skills in statistical analysis, logical reasoning, and problem solving. There are several components to this REU. The first is a classroom aspect. I will take a course in Parallel Computing, a 400-level course in the Department of Mathematics University of Maryland Baltimore county. During this course, we will learn several new programming languages, how to use numerical analysis to create models of data, and how to utilize UMBC's high performance computing facility (HPCF). The second component is the actual research. For this particular REU, I will have the benefit of working with a client who will present me with a problem they need solved. These problems could range from optimizing programs that predict where proteins will bind to DNA to testing the speed of parallel computing software for corporations such as Intel. Teamwork is highly emphasized by the faculty mentors of this REU, so I will work with a team of approximately three other undergraduate students from other institutions. My research team and I will then collaborate and, employing theories and techniques we learned in class, use the HPCF to develop a viable solution to our client's proposal. We will then deliver a formal presentation the results of our research to our peers, mentors, and clients. Additionally, we will have a poster session along with the other research teams who were performing research for different clients. My writing skills will also be put to good use as my team and I will write a paper/technical report on our findings. Depending on the significance of our research outcome, we will have the opportunity to publish this paper in a scholarly journal. Other components of the REU include several field trips to government and industry labs in the Baltimore/DC area, as well as a GRE prep course. Firstly, it is important to note that the research I am doing this summer expands on a course I took this semester, Numerical Methods. Secondly, scientific computing as a field is an immense intersection between mathematics and computer science. As I am double majoring in these fields, this research opportunity is an ideal way to see both of my primary areas of interest intermingle. Additionally, since I will be living with other undergraduates who will be working on different projects in the same field, I will have plenty of opportunities to learn about and discuss research that is not my own. I am eager to utilize the material I have learned here at Dickinson in a more intense, interdisciplinary environment with practical applications. In terms of what I can bring back to Dickinson, I will return in the fall with an arsenal of new technical skills as well as improved research techniques and professional confidence.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Scott Mark Hopkins (2004)

Developing Pedagogically Powerful Instructional Materials for an Integrated Course in Functions, Data Analysis and Modeling

The Dana Research Assistant will be a member of the Workshop Precalculus development team, which consists of Allan Rossman from Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo, Priscilla Laws, Kevin Callahan from Cal State - Hayward, and Christa Fratto '94, who began working on the Workshop Mathematics project as a Dana Student Intern in the summer of 1992 and is currently in graduate school at Villanova University. The assistant will participate actively in the design and development of innovative, learner-centered, discovery-based curricular materials. In the process, the research assistant will develop a deeper understanding of one of the most important mathematical ideas: the concept of a function. He or she will learn how to model real-life situations and use statistics to analyze the models. The student assistant will benefit from working closely with the participants in the 2002 Workshop Precalculus Summer Institute, who will represent an international group of universities, colleges and high schools.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Nancy Hastings


Stephen Benjamin Hughes (1995)

Practical Algorithms for the K-server Problem

Practical Algorithms for the K-server Problem

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor:


Noah Cushman Hunt-Isaak (2020)

A Computational Study of Solution Techniques for 0-1 Quadratic Programs

There are a large variety of decision problems that can be formulated as 0-1 quadratic programs, including applications in computational biology, capital budgeting, seizure detection, and most recently in wildfire fuel management. The goal of this research project is to develop and perform a comprehensive computational study comparing all of the different solution methods in the literature applied to the standard classes of 0-1 quadratic programs. This study will be of great interest to the optimization community as it will indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the different solution approaches, providing practitioners with valuable information about how to best solve different applications.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Richard Forrester


Rebecca C Krause (2008)

Executing JML Specifications with Constraint Programming

The Java Modeling Language (JML) is an industrial-strength formal specification language that is used to document the interfaces of Java programs, to prove the correctness of implementations with respect to such specifications, and to prove other important properties of programs. In this project, we will continue work on a system for translating a JML specification to a Java program that implements the specification. Although such programs will be too slow and too memory-intensive to replace hand-written implementations, they will be very useful as prototypes and for developing and testing specifications. The translation will use constraint programming techniques, and the primary role of the students in the project will be to write constraint handlers for the built-in types of JML. As JML has a large user and developer community in both academia and industry, this project has the potential make a substantial contribution to the practical use of formal methods.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Adam Thomas Labadorf (2003)

Java applets for fractiles in the plan

Java applets for fractiles in the plan

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Lorelei Koss


Hieu Kinh Le (2016)

FARMDATA: An Internet-based Production Record System for Vegetable Farm Improvement

I have worked with Matt Steiman of the College Farm and computer science students to develop FARMDATA, a web-based interface to a database of planting, harvesting, tillage, spraying, scouting and invoicing information. FARMDATA provides "smart" forms for entering such data, and extensive reporting facilities for viewing data based on date ranges, field, crop and so on. See: https://farmdata.dickinson.edu/guest.php . I am applying for funding to work with a student on enhancing the security of FARMDATA and adapting it to store and report data for multiple farms simultaneously - making it generally useful for organic farms, rather than customized specifically for the Dickinson College Farm. Our goal is for FARMDATA to be adopted by the local nonprofit organization that certifies organic farms, making FARMDATA freely available to area farmers.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Hieu Kinh Le (2016)

FARMDATA: An Internet-based Production Record System for Vegetable Farm Improvement

I have worked with Matt Steiman of the College Farm and computer science students to develop FARMDATA, a web-based interface to a database of planting, harvesting, tillage, spraying, scouting and invoicing information. FARMDATA provides "smart" forms for entering such data, and extensive reporting facilities for viewing data based on date ranges, field, crop and so on. See: https://farmdata.dickinson.edu/guest.php . I am applying for funding to work with a student on enhancing the security of FARMDATA and adapting it to store and report data for multiple farms simultaneously - making it generally useful for organic farms, rather than customized specifically for the Dickinson College Farm. Our goal is for FARMDATA to be adopted by the local nonprofit organization that certifies organic farms, making FARMDATA freely available to area farmers.

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Hieu Kinh Le (2016)

FARMDATA: An Internet-based Production Record System for Vegetable Farm Improvement

I have worked with Matt Steiman of the College Farm and computer science students to develop FARMDATA, a web-based interface to a database of planting, harvesting, tillage, spraying, scouting and invoicing information. FARMDATA provides "smart" forms for entering such data, and extensive reporting facilities for viewing data based on date ranges, field, crop and so on. See: https://farmdata.dickinson.edu/guest.php . I am applying for funding to work with a student on enhancing the security of FARMDATA and adapting it to store and report data for multiple farms simultaneously - making it generally useful for organic farms, rather than customized specifically for the Dickinson College Farm. Our goal is for FARMDATA to be adopted by the local nonprofit organization that certifies organic farms, making FARMDATA freely available to area farmers.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Wendy Elizabeth Lee (1990)

Development of Programming Language ISETL and Implementation of a New Pedagogical Approach

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Nancy Hastings


Michael Meginnes Livingston (1995)

T-Colorings of Digraphs

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Barry Tesman


James David Midkiff (2017)

The Time Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem: Efficient Algorithms to Tour Hersheypark

One of the most frustrating aspects of visiting a theme park such as Disney World's Magic Kingdom or Hersheypark is waiting in lines to see the various attractions. Therefore, patrons wish to find a tour of the theme park that minimizes not only the time walking between attractions but also the time spent waiting in lines (which vary throughout the day as the demand for an attraction picks up or slows down). This problem is an instance of the Time-Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem. The goal of this project is to develop a hybrid genetic and branch-and-cut algorithm for efficiently finding near-optimal tours of a theme park. As a test case, we with focus on finding efficient tours of Hersheypark.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Richard Forrester


Edwin Jordan Padilla (2016)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - Developing a Mobile/Networked Invoice System for the College Farm

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Edwin Jordan Padilla (2016)

Networked Database for the College Farm

Networked Database for the College Farm

Term Funded:fall 2013
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Miguel Alejandro Rodriguez (2013)

Optimal Crop Rotation at Dickinson College Farm II

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Richard Forrester


Miguel Alejandro Rodriguez (2013)

Optimal Crop Rotation at the Dickinson College Farm

Optimal Crop Rotation at the Dickinson College Farm

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Richard Forrester


Michael Thomas Ryan (2012)

Extending Control Software for the Dickinson Biodiesel Plant

Extending Control Software for the Dickinson Biodiesel Plant

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Asir Saeed (2016)

Developing a Mobile/Networked Database for the College Farm

The existing planting and harvesting database application for the College Farm is resident on a single mobile device. This means that data must be manually transferred to and from a desktop machine for analysis, and that only a single user can work with the database at a time. We propose to port this system to a back-end database application with a Web interface, so that it could be accessed from any web enabled device (smartphone, tablet, ...) and so that multiple users could access and update data at the same time. This would also enable GIS integration of farm data. As we would be re-implementing the user interface from scratch, this project is also an ideal opportunity to incorporate user interface enhancements and bug fixes requested by Farm staff. We plan to present the results of this project at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) regional workshop which will be held on the Farm this fall.

Term Funded:spring 2013
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Asir Saeed (2016)

FARMDATA: An Internet-based Production Record System for Vegetable Farm Improvement

I have worked with Matt Steiman of the College Farm and computer science students to develop FARMDATA, a web-based interface to a database of planting, harvesting, tillage, spraying, scouting and invoicing information. FARMDATA provides "smart" forms for entering such data, and extensive reporting facilities for viewing data based on date ranges, field, crop and so on. See: https://farmdata.dickinson.edu/guest.php . I am applying for funding to work with a student on enhancing the security of FARMDATA and adapting it to store and report data for multiple farms simultaneously - making it generally useful for organic farms, rather than customized specifically for the Dickinson College Farm. Our goal is for FARMDATA to be adopted by the local nonprofit organization that certifies organic farms, making FARMDATA freely available to area farmers.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Asir Saeed (2016)

Applying Data Mining to Fracking & Watershed Data

Applying Data Mining to Fracking & Watershed Data

Term Funded:summer 2014
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Asir Saeed (2016)

Networked Database for the College Farm

Networked Database for the College Farm

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Dmitry Vladimorivch Satanovsky (1993)

Design and Implementation of Automated machine translator for Heiroglyphics

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor:


Iris Shaker-Check ()

NSF: Collaborative Research: Broadening Participation in Computing through Authentic Collaborative, Engagement with Computing for the Greater Good

NSF: Collaborative Research: Broadening Participation in Computing through Authentic Collaborative, Engagement with Computing for the Greater Good

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Grant Braught


Yutong Shang (2016)

Developing a Mobile/Networked Database for the College Farm

The existing planting and harvesting database application for the College Farm is resident on a single mobile device. This means that data must be manually transferred to and from a desktop machine for analysis, and that only a single user can work with the database at a time. We propose to port this system to a back-end database application with a Web interface, so that it could be accessed from any web enabled device (smartphone, tablet, ...) and so that multiple users could access and update data at the same time. This would also enable GIS integration of farm data. As we would be re-implementing the user interface from scratch, this project is also an ideal opportunity to incorporate user interface enhancements and bug fixes requested by Farm staff. We plan to present the results of this project at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) regional workshop which will be held on the Farm this fall.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Yutong Shang (2016)

Printing 3D Mathematical Surfaces for a Multivariable Calculus Course

The Dana assistant will learn how to create mathematical surfaces using a 3D printer, will print a collection of such objects for use in MATH 171 (Multivariable Calculus), and will produce a detailed set of instructions for how to make more.

Term Funded:fall 2013
Professor: David Richeson


John William Snyder (1993)

Implementation of a parallel queueing simulation model

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Nancy Hastings


Natalie Mary Stanley (2013)

Bioinformatic Analysis of Gene Promoters for Expression Pattern Prediction

Bioinformatic Analysis of Gene Promoters for Expression Pattern Prediction

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Jeffrey Forrester


Emily Marie Swain (2010)

NSF 0827262 UBM: Exploiting the Synergy of Mathematical and Molecular Biological Approaches in Studying a Complex Problem

The project involves the linkage of a course in Biology, The Biology of Cancer, and a course in Mathematics, Mathematical Techniques in the Biological Sciences. A cohort of 6-10 students from these programs will co-enroll in the courses in the spring semester of their Junior Year. The instructors to maximize areas of intersection and complementation will carefully coordinate the courses. The Biology of Cancer will examine the molecular basis of cancer including the genes and signaling networks involved in malignant transformation, with a strong emphasis on the experimental approaches to cancer study. Mathematical Techniques in the Biological sciences will survey biostatistical methods with a focus on network modeling. The project mentors will meet with the student cohort throughout the semester to further underscore the course connections and begin developing research questions that exploit the genomic approaches used to understand cancer coupled with the mathematical tools used to analyze large datasets and construct mathematical models. The students will form teams of 2-4 student researchers who will return to campus for an eight-week summer research experience. The projects will all utilized the human leukemia cell line, HL-60. HL-60 cells can be induced to differentiate in culture into one of several non-dividing specialized myeloid cell types. Differentiation results in the conversion of cells exhibiting a cancer cell phenotype to a normal cell phenotype through genetic reprogramming mediated by changes in gene expression. These changes will be monitored over time using DNA microarray analysis and the mathematical approaches for analyzing these data, including normalization, tests of significance and clustering will be employed. As data are obtained, students will begin modeling the expression responses in the context of signaling networks. These models w

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Michael Roberts, Jeffrey Forrester


Russell Charles Toris (2011)

Studying Self-Adaptive Mutation Rates in a Competitive Co-Evolutionary Game of Robot Tag

In the proposed project Russell Toris ('11) and I will investigate the evolution of self-adaptive mutation rates using the game of robot tag as a model for a competitive co-evolutionary (e.g. predator/prey) system. We outline a series of three experiments that determine if self-adaptive mutation rates allow predators or prey to out compete their opponent. We also propose a fourth experiment that will shed light on the evolutionary dynamics of self-adaptive mutation rates in competitive co-evolutionary systems. This project builds heavily on the work Russel has done as a Dana Research Assistant for me this academic year, and will form the basis of his honors research project next academic year. I anticipate that Russell will present our summer work at the student poster session of the 2010 Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) Eastern Regional Conference, and the continuation of this work, as his honors project, at a similar session at the 2011 CCSC Northeastern Regional Conference. Finally, I believe that this project has the potential to also result in a co-authored refereed conference paper.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Grant Braught


Russell Charles Toris (2011)

Interfacing dLife to Player/Stage/Gazebo Open-Source Robot Simulators

The dlife software package is a Java library that provides support for teaching and research in the areas of artificial life, artificial intelligence and robotics. Player/Stage/Gazebo is a collection of three closely related open-source projects that form one of today's most widely used robotic simulation platforms. The proposed project extends dLife to control 2 and 3 dimensional robot simulations running in Player/Stage/Gazebo. Support for control of simulated robots is an essential addition to dLife. It will allow rapid prototyping and experimentation with robot control algorithms. It will put in place a necessary prerequisite for the project I plan to propose for my anticipated 2010-2011 sabbatical. It will broaden the appeal of dLife to students and researchers who do not have access to physical robots, or have an insufficient number of physical robots for a particular course or experiment.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Grant Braught


Russell Charles Toris (2011)

Interfacing dLife to Player/Stage/Gazebo Open-Source Robot Simulators

The dlife software package is a Java library that provides support for teaching and research in the areas of artificial life, artificial intelligence and robotics. Player/Stage/Gazebo is a collection of three closely related open-source projects that form one of today's most widely used robotic simulation platforms. The proposed project extends dLife to control 2 and 3 dimensional robot simulations running in Player/Stage/Gazebo. Support for control of simulated robots is an essential addition to dLife. It will allow rapid prototyping and experimentation with robot control algorithms. It will put in place a necessary prerequisite for the project I plan to propose for my anticipated 2010-2011 sabbatical. It will broaden the appeal of dLife to students and researchers who do not have access to physical robots, or have an insufficient number of physical robots for a particular course or experiment.

Term Funded:Year 2010
Professor: Grant Braught


Dale Wesley Usner (1992)

A Bayesian Non-parametric Approach to Tournament Ranking and Design

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Allan Rossman


Andrew Joseph Wayne (1993)

Parallel Parsing Techniques

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor:


Karen Oster Weber (2001)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Allan Rossman


Matthew Robert Whitehead (1992)

Parallel Graph Theory Algorithms

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Nancy Hastings


Danfei Xu (2015)

Developing a Technique for Characterizing Pain-Related SEP Waveforms

This proposal involves the analysis of certain brain signals, known as somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs), in order to automatically determine the presence of pain, and the extent of any pain. Two promising techniques have already been developed using pilot data from earlier experiments, but this proposal seeks to develop additional, potentially more reliable, methods. Numerical experiments on the data, performed by the Dana Research Assistant, will employ techniques from both statistics and machine learning. Specifically, the initial approach will involve a applying a statistical tool known as a "filter bank" to each SEP waveform, and examining the results to determine whether thresholding or other simple feature extraction can reliably classify the pain signals. Additional experiments can employ other tools, such as artificial neural networks, support vector machines, decision trees, and the like to perform more sophisticated classification if necessary.

Term Funded:Year 2012
Professor: John MacCormick


Xiang Yao (2015)

Developing a Mobile/Networked Database for the College Farm

Developing a Mobile/Networked Database for the College Farm

Term Funded:spring 2013
Professor: Timothy Wahls


Ryan Eric Zeigler (2008)

A New Approach for Speeding the Evolution of Robot Controllers

In the proposed project, Ryan Zeigler '08 and I will investigate the effectiveness of a novel approach to evolving controllers for mobile robots. This approach is based on using a neural network that learns the differences between simulated and physical robots. The information learned by the neural network is used by the system to better evaluate the "fitness" of solutions evolving in simulation. We propose to spend eight weeks during the summer of 2007 implementing, testing and evaluating this approach. At the conclusion of the project we will have collected data useful in evaluating the effectiveness of the approach. This data along with a discusion of the approach, our experiments and the results will become the basis for a scholarly paper. I anticipate that Ryan and I will co-author this paper and submit it for publication by the end of the 2007-2008 academic year.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Grant Braught


Yujia Zhou (2013)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Quality Control of Sensor Data and Data Provenance Tracking

I am participating in an REU at Harvard Forest this summer. Harvard Forest is a long term ecological research site. It is in Petersham, MA, and has a history of more than a hundred years. A large amount of data is collected via both sensors and manual measurements. Questions arise when we try to control the quality of the data collected and track the process of raw data manipulation. The group project I work on this summer is "Data processing for a real-time hydrological sensor network." Our work will become part of the long term research project and improve the method of data processing and analysis for future raw data that comes from sensors, to ensure that more reliable and reproducible data can be obtained from raw data. This research project is half mathematics and half computer science. Quality control of raw data is more related to mathematics. I use statistical analysis, including regression analysis, to model and estimate ecological variables. Implementing the process into Little-JIL involves a lot of programming. It also requires familiarity with data structure and database query. The research experience helps me enhance the knowledge of mathematics and statistics and how the knowledge is applied in other scientific fields.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Middle East Studies

Sara Jayne Baker (2012)

Designing a curriculum for an Arabic conversation course and text book

I would like to design a curriculum for Arabic conversation and I want to do a text book for the advanced students studying Arabic. My focus in the text book will be explaining different strategies in teaching Arabic conversation, make supplement handouts, and power points for each lesson. I would like to put the power points and the recorded material on a CD that will be used with the text book. I need two senior students to work with me to help me to collect the material I need, I will assign them various duties in order to accomplish the task in spring. Their duties will include gathering information about each lesson, design power points, and find a media and pictures related to different topics. I need some funding about 300$ to buy some CDs, pictures, and books. I would like to start this project during the spring semester. If I get approved there will be a ready task for each student in this project.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: May George


Christopher William Barber (2014)

U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab World

"Public Diplomacy in the Arab World" is a textbook that provides advanced students of Arabic with an introduction to the theory and practice of public diplomacy, while enhancing their Arabic language proficiency and real-life communication skills. The research fills a void in the instruction of Arabic by focusing on the specialized vocabulary of the diplomat while exploring critical social, political, security, economic and environemtnal issues in the region. To appreciate the challenges of conducting public diplomacy in the Arab world, research will focus on an examination of actual programs in four key countries: Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and the UAE, with an overview of bilateral relations. The Dana Research Assistant for this project will conduct internet based research, literature review, and site visits (he will accompany me on 2-3 visits to Washington to interview/record interviews with practitioners and grantees). He will edit recordings, index them, and provide summary.

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Magda Siekert


Giancarlo Daniel Duffy (2014)

Designing a curriculum for an Arabic conversation course and text book

I would like to design a curriculum for Arabic conversation and I want to do a text book for the advanced students studying Arabic. My focus in the text book will be explaining different strategies in teaching Arabic conversation, make supplement handouts, and power points for each lesson. I would like to put the power points and the recorded material on a CD that will be used with the text book. I need two senior students to work with me to help me to collect the material I need, I will assign them various duties in order to accomplish the task in spring. Their duties will include gathering information about each lesson, design power points, and find a media and pictures related to different topics. I need some funding about 300$ to buy some CDs, pictures, and books. I would like to start this project during the spring semester. If I get approved there will be a ready task for each student in this project.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: May George


Anum Khan (2011)

Saudi Women and How They Negotiate with State-Sponsored Limitations

Saudi Women and How They Negotiate with State-Sponsored Limitations

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor:


Music

Jamie L Leidwinger (2015)

The Isomer Project: Ongoing Research in Computational Creativity

The Isomer Project is a suite of software tools that is the culmination of a decade of independent research and commercial development. The scope of the proposed student-faculty collaboration is to validate the boundaries of the Isomer software's capacity for musical analysis, model representation and algorithmic transformation using advanced machine-learning techniques. The student-faculty team will work on the Isomer Project's (http://composingthefuture.com/) ongoing research in computational creativity at Drexel University's ExCITe Center (http://drexel.edu/excite/) in Philadelphia in summer 2013.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Gregory Wilder


Megan Elizabeth Powers (2002)

Franco-Flemish Music in Medicean Florence: Sources, Practices and Pattersn of Dissemination

This study will focus on the influx of northern polyphonic (and primarily secular chanson) repertory into Florence during the second half of the fifteenth century, when Florence became one of the primary Italian markets for this music. However, the diffuse patronage environment of Florence was unique among Italian centers that fostered northern composers and sources both per se(as 'international') and in relation to the Italian courts, this study will be the first to view the significant group of Florentine chansonniers as the artistic products and cultural manifestations of a particular time and place. To what extent does this pervasive and international repertoire assume a local character in a particular environment? What, then, is Florentine about the layout, contents, concordances, unica, and styles in these sources, and, conversely, to what extent did this music penetrate local venues and influence local styles and practices? Megan Powers, the student researcher in this project, will prepare a research paper on a specific aspect of this topic (a particular composer, source, or related group of compositions) that will be read in a Music Department seminar, and submitted for presentation at a chapter meeting of the American Musicological Society or comparable venue. In preparation for this, she will read and listen broadly in the secondary literature in preparation for her more specialized work in which she will be given ample opportunity to use the language skills refined during her current year in Toulouse.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Blake Wilson


Olivia Ann Riordan (2021)

Cue the Music: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as a 21st century mentonym

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was a sitcom that aired on the CW network from 2015-19. The series was critically acclaimed for its innovative original music, critical attention to issues of mental health, and narrative complexity. Though it is one of the longest lasting U.S. television series to feature original music and is well regarded critically, it has received no scholarly analysis. My book length study Cue the Music: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as a 21st century mentonym examines the series as a unique reflection of 21st century technologies, cultural practices, and social anxieties. In preparation for the longer study I am drafting an essay for a peer-reviewed media journal. The article addresses the series' reflection of what media scholar Brian L. Ott has termed "hyperconscious tv" by examining the unique role of social media as a narrative device and its unique fusion of musical theatre conventions and contemporary television aesthetics.

Term Funded:Year 2020
Professor: Vincent Stephens


Megan Elizabeth Sarno (2009)

Philadelphia Orchestra's "Getting to Know You" Series: Arnold Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie No. 1

Each year, the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) a sponsors a series of chamber music concerts as part of their "Getting to Know You" series, a program that encourages subscribers to expand their musical horizons through engagement with a shorter work by a twentieth-century composer. The concert itself is designed as a lecture recital in which a prominent scholar serves as the audience's "host" for the evening, providing an academic presentation and lecture on the piece, interviewing the conductor and musicians prior to the performance, and producing a series of multi-media materials that clarify the complex musical structure to a lay audience. This year, the PPO has invited me to host Arnold Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie No. 1 to be conducted by Christopher Eschenbach on January 21, 2009. My role is to write the script, create multimedia materials, provide the academic lecture, and host an interview with Maestro Eschenbach.

Term Funded:Fall 2008
Professor: Amy Wlodarski


Sara Lantry Zorich (2009)

Reconsidering the Arts in the German Democratic Republic: An Interdisciplinary Conference (October 25-27, 2007)

This conference seeks to explore new avenues in East German research with specific attention to the role of the visual and performing arts. It aims to move the discourse surrounding art in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) away from traditional paradigms and rhetoric of the Cold War. In the case of the GDR, art dialogued with governmental systems, political ideologies, propaganda, minority rights, national mythology, memory, and social parameters such as gender, religion, race, and class. The conference will explore some of these points of intersection in a series of scholarly presentations by established experts in the field, a literary reading by a former GDR author, and a musical performance consisting of works by GDR composers.

Term Funded:Fall 2007
Professor: Amy Wlodarski


Sara Lantry Zorich (2009)

Reconsidering the Arts in the German Democratic Republic: An Interdisciplinary Conference

This conference seeks to explore new avenues in East German research with specific attention to the role of the visual and performing arts. It aims to move the discourse surrounding art in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) away from traditional paradigms and rhetoric of the Cold War. In the case of the GDR, art dialogued with governmental systems, political ideologies, propaganda, minority rights, national mythology, memory, and social parameters such as gender, religion, race, and class. The conference will explore some of these points of intersection in a series of scholarly presentations by established experts in the field, a literary reading by a former GDR author, and a musical performance consisting of works by GDR composers.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Amy Wlodarski


Neuroscience

Kelsey Marie Barclay (2013)

Human Electrophysiology Lab

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Jonathan Page


Imani Regina Beard (2017)

NSF 085670: STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Teresa Barber


Alexandra Shelly Bova (2014)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Epigenetics of Alcohol Addiction

The research team I am joining is studying the effects of paternal, preconception exposure to alcohol on the sensitivity to alcohol and the drinking behavior of their offspring when they become adults. These studies are conducted in mice and the researches have some exciting data, already, demonstrating that exposure of father mice to alcohol before they mate can produce changes in ethanol-induced behaviors in their adult offspring. Very similar results with cocaine were recently published by others. The researcher thinks that the effects they are seeing are likely due to the epigenetic effects of ethanol. This is the extent of what I know about the research project. The results of the study should expand current understanding about the underlying genetic factors of addiction and could possibly help in the development of treatments for alcohol addiction. The research is appropriate to fulfill the neuroscience major research requirement since I will be working for ten weeks in a lab on a research project that will expose me to different neuroscience techniques and give me an understanding of what neuroscience research is like. The program is an REU program funded by the NSF and, thus, is of a caliber that is guaranteed to provide a strong research experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Monica Gabrielle Coran (2015)

Effects of argument structure and processing load on sentence processing in aphasia

This summer I am working at the Eleanor M. Saffran Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in the Aphasia Lab. The lab researches different types of treatment and problems found among aphasia patients with varying degrees of aphasic deficits and conditions. The main question surrounding the current research is whether or not verb particles or verb prepositions can be used as a priming tool to prime and encourage the production of other verb and sentence structures in patients who were previously unable to correctly produce these complex structures.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Melynda Dalzon (2013)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Teresa Barber


Krista Denise Dionne (2015)

Gsx2 and Calretinin in the Developing Human Neocortex

The Zecevic Lab at the University of Connecticut Medical Center focuses on neural development and the different genes and transcription factors that are responsible for interneuron development and differentiation. In order to perform these experiments, I will be trained to use immunoflorescence techniques and will also have the opportunity to observe different protocols such as Western Blot and human tissue cultures.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Ryan Callahan Duggan (2014)

Testing the impact of sustained dopamine D2 receptor blockade on motor learning and performance

The project on which I served as research assistant involved studying the effects of two antipsychotic drugs, haloperidol and risperidone, on motor skills and learning in mice, particularly the drugs' effects upon D2 medium spiny neuron pathways. This research experience provided me with firsthand exposure to many of the principal research techniques used in behavioral neuroscience. Through research, meetings, journal clubs, and other activities, I got the sense of what it is like to work in a research laboratory setting. I also learned a great deal about the dopaminergic system and its role in learning and in mental disorders. I gained experience in animal handling, drug administration, behavioral tests, and the various protocols that govern laboratory activity. The research's focus on antipsychotic drugs and dopamine systems has led me to become interested in further work in this field. I have found myself more prepared to complete coursework in neuroscience courses. I believe this experience has made me more confident in the field, thus being indispensable to my future neuroscience career.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Emma C Frair (2015)

Decipher the role of PRMT5 in Glioblastoma

Dr. Balveen Kaur's research lab focuses on the development of novel therapies for cancers. Interests range from immuno-modulation, anti-angiogenic strategies, and tumor microenvironment, viral and gene therapies, and nanotherapeutics. I specifically work with Dr. Yeshvanth Banasavadi-Siddegowda, a post-doc, a part of Dr. Kaur's research team. Our two current research projects specifically focus on deciphering the role of PRMT5 in glioblastomas. This is some of the most innovative cancer research in the world and I am proud to be a part of it. We hope to have two papers published on our research by the end of this year.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Gabrielle Bernstein Frenkel (2016)

Behavioral Interventions in Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in this country. It is a progressive, incurable disorder, whose hallmark symptoms are impaired memory and cognition. Due to the prevalent nature of this disease, many turn to homeopathic remedies in order to increase memory and cognitive abilities. Many of these remedies include stimulus enhancement (here done through the use of almond extract) or increased social interaction. These homeopathic remedies were tested by inducing amnesia in day-old chicks using scopolamine and subsequently applying a paradigm called taste avoidance learning. Chicks are presented with a bead covered in methylanthranilate (a bird deterrent) at which they peck, after which the applicable homeopathic remedies were/were not applied. After a period of rest, the chicks were retested to determine if they remembered the previously unpleasant experience of tasting methylanthranilate. If they avoided the bead, that meant that their scopolamine-induced amnesia was averted. It was found that both increased cue saliency (the almond extract) and increased socialization in day-old chicks increased recall and reduced the drug induced amnesia. This suggests that these homeopathic remedies may have a significant impact on those with Alzheimer's disease, making them actual treatments for the improvement of memory and cognition.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Teresa Barber


Courtney Ann Fyock (2012)

Increased Strategy Use is Associated with Subjective Memory Improvement Following Cognitive Rehab

Increased Strategy Use is Associated with Subjective Memory Improvement Following Cognitive Rehab

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Angela Khadija Guy (2012)

Brain and Spine Surgeons of New York

Several years ago, Dr. Abrahams began using a different device made of poly-ethyl- ethyl (a type of plastic) for spinal fusion surgeries of the spine. This compares to the standard use of titanium hardware in traditional spinal fusions. This new device is about 1 inch long and acts to emulate the function of a disc after the actual disc is removed. Dr. Abrahams states that this device is preferred as it offers fewer limitations and concerns to patients when compared to titanium. The research project I am working on is titled: Outcomes of Patients using Intervertebral Fusion Devices in the Cervical Spine.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Kaitlyn Hajrije Hajdarovic (2014)

Sex Differences in Ischemic Outcomes and Inflammatory Responses in Aged and Neonatal Stroke

Sex Differences in Ischemic Outcomes and Inflammatory Responses in Aged and Neonatal Stroke

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Nora Hajnoczky (2012)

Mitochondria Fusion and Motility Dynamics

Mitochondrial fusion-fission and motility allow matrix content mixing within a mitochondrial population, thereby preventing a loss of essential components, most importantly, mitochondrial DNA. Fusion and fission is mediated by specific dynamin family proteins; optic atrophy 1, and mitofusions 1 and 2. The mutations of these proteins can cause severe neurodegenerative conditions in humans. Therefore it is important to measure mitochondrial fusion in cells and to determine the factors inhibiting fusion activity.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor:


Chelsea Lynn Homa (2014)

The Impact of Multiple Modalities of Learning on the Retention of Education in Stroke Patients

For my research experience, I will be aiding the Overlook Medical Center Stroke Department in their efforts to increase their patient's knowledge of their personal risk factors and signs and symptoms of a stroke. Their program offers education in the form of videos using iPADS. The primary video, given to all patients, addresses preventing a secondary stroke, while supplemental videos, such as videos on hypertension and diabetes, will be administered in relation to the patient's medical history. The program will then determine whether or not exposing the patients to multiple modalities of learning, such as verbal from nurses, written, and visual, will improve their retention of the education that they receive while in the hospital. Being a Neuroscience major, involvement in this project will be an eye opener into a brain injury that I believe is commonly seen within this field. Working with patients is something that I am not completely familiar with yet, so it will be a good introduction into it if I decide to do something along those lines after my graduation from Dickinson. I also do not know much about stroke patients in general, so I also believe that it will be a possibly tough, but rewarding challenge working with patients that have different severities of injuries from their stroke.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Meredith Johnson (2018)

Music Therapy Effects on Sedation Requirements in Ventilated ICU Patients

2015 summer research scholar program at Lehigh Valley Hospital

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Meredith Johnson (2018)

Behavior of Specialist Bees

This allowed me to travel to Turkey and Greece to study the behavior of specialist bees, which forage on only one type of flower, and generalist bees, which visit different types of flowers, and learn more about their importance to our everyday lives as pollinators. We caught more than 100 bees; placed them in incubators, where they were in constant darkness; and recorded their movements and rhythms. Then we compared the circadian rhythms, or sleep/wake cycles, of specialist and generalist bees that visit the morning glory flower. Specialist bees are thought to have different circadian rhythm than generalist bees, which visit many types of flowers. As part of the program, we will present our research this winter in New Orleans and learn about the value of scientific conferences in sharing ideas and developing new collaborations with others from all over the world.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor:


Kathryn B Langan (2014)

Sphingomyelinase research

I will be working with the enzyme sphingomyelinase on two of the NeuroAIDS projects at the Hopkins Brain Science Institute. I will be working through the entire research process in a molecular biology lab, beginning with harvesting the cells from the animals to running assays on specific cells influenced by various compounds. I will receive training on a multiple number of lab techniques, such as tissue culture practices and running various assays. I will also deal with rat brains, which is preparation for Psychology 325. Therefore I will not only gain knowledge from the specific sphingomyelinase projects I am working on, but I will obtain lab skills that will be valuable moving forward at Dickinson and into graduate school. I worked two weeks during the winter break, 1/21/13 - 2/1/13, plus I will be working 6 weeks this summer.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Marleni Fabiola Milla (2011)

Developing a Methodology to Electronically Measure Pain

Pain is a subjective experience that is difficult to quantify. Currently, there are no objective methods for detecting pain or rating its intensity. This makes it difficult for health professionals to diagnose and treat pain, often leading to the under-treatment or over-treatment of symptoms. We are developing an objective way to electronically measure pain. Pilot data collected from human subjects show our techniques are promising. The purpose of this funding application is to develop a method for testing our techniques on an animal model of joint soreness. We plan to induce joint soreness in the front knee of rats, electrically stimulate the sore knee and the (opposite) non-sore knee, and record brain potentials to this stimulation using the electroencephalograph (EEG). Analyses of brain responses should reveal systematic differences in EEG signals from the sore knees versus the non-sore knees, thus detecting the presence of pain in a non-verbal being.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Jonathan Page


Miriam Claire Miller (2015)

mGluR5 Effects on Alcohol Related Plasticity in the BNST

My research has focused on a specific part of the brain, called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and the mGluR5 receptors (metabotropic glutamate receptor) it houses. In the brain, plasticity is the molecular basis of learning, and pathological alcohol use is thought to result in aberrant plasticity in regions like the BNST. mGluR5 receptors are necessary for certain types of plasticity in the BNST and are known to be sensitive to alcohol's effects. In these studies, we wanted to see if mGluR5 receptors are responsible for the abnormal plasticity seen in the BNST that occurs with long-term alcohol use. These results will provide a better understanding into the molecular mechanisms of alcoholism.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Gina Marie Norato (2012)

Developing a Methodology to Electronically Measure Pain

Pain is a subjective experience that is difficult to quantify. Currently, there are no objective methods for detecting pain or rating its intensity. This makes it difficult for health professionals to diagnose and treat pain, often leading to the under-treatment or over-treatment of symptoms. We are developing an objective way to electronically measure pain. Pilot data collected from human subjects show our techniques are promising. The purpose of this funding application is to develop a method for testing our techniques on an animal model of joint soreness. We plan to induce joint soreness in the front knee of rats, electrically stimulate the sore knee and the (opposite) non-sore knee, and record brain potentials to this stimulation using the electroencephalograph (EEG). Analyses of brain responses should reveal systematic differences in EEG signals from the sore knees versus the non-sore knees, thus detecting the presence of pain in a non-verbal being.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Teresa Barber


Joshua Adam Singer (2016)

Non-invasive electrical brain stimulation improves recovery for stroke patients with aphasia

My research within the Cognitive Recovery Lab with Dr. Peter Turkeltaub asks what the effects of using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to enhance left lateralization in the brain are on the recovery of stroke patients. My specific research goal is to determine the effects of tDCS on neglect after a stroke.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Abigail Louise Stasior (2017)

"Erasing" Drug Memories

Environmental cues associated with addictive drugs (e.g. methamphetamine) facilitate relapse in users, perhaps by inducing craving via a classical conditioning mechanism. While traditional extinction alone (i.e., presenting the environmental cue in the absence of the drug, often called exposure therapy in clinical settings) has been proposed as a behavioral technique to lessen the ability of environmental cues to produce relapse in users (i.e., "erase" drug memories), its clinical efficacy has been limited. Thus, using an animal model of drug craving (i.e., drug sensitization), the present two-experiment project seeks to examine the effects of two different behavioral manipulations (increasing the number of extinction trials, Experiment 1; and combining voluntary physical exercise with extinction training, Experiment 2) to enhance extinction learning and blunt methamphetamine sensitization in mice. These anticipated preclinical results may suggest that extensive exposure therapy, or combining voluntary physical exercise with exposure therapy, would prevent relapse in methamphetamine users.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Philosophy

Sarah Campbell (2019)

The Sociology of Concepts

This project investigates concepts: roughly, the representational entities expressed by words. Research over the past 50 years or so has suggested that at least some concepts aren't confined to the brains of individual speakers but are instead distributed throughout a language community. Consider the concepts expressed by "beech" and "elm": even if one can't distinguish beech trees from elm trees, one expresses different concepts with these words. In this research project, we aim (i) to spell out which social acts and practices can ground concepts like these, (ii) to identify common social structures in these grounds or that affect these grounds, and (iii) to discern how these common social structures may be related to widespread social ills.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Jeffrey-Joseph Engelhardt


Sarah Campbell (2019)

Balkanized Knowledge Enclaves and Semantic Oppression

Communities have practices and norms that inform both how know is produced and how their terms are given their meanings. Scholars researching The Rush Limbaugh Show and its audience have suggested that Limbaugh creates a distinctive knowledge community with his audience, a community in which norms and practices of knowledge production are different from those found in the broader American community. Our project investigates this community's practices and norms for giving meaning to their terms and asks how this influences and is influenced by their norms and practices of knowledge production.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Jeffrey-Joseph Engelhardt


Charles Truett Elder ()

Misandrogyny Around the World

The proposed project would advance my research on misandrogyny. As I use it, "misandrogyny" refers to mechanisms that enforce the norms that constitute the gender binary. In a forthcoming paper, "The Logic of Misandrogyny," I introduce this conception of misandrogyny and describe three broad kinds of misandrogynistic mechanism. In the summer research, I plan to expand on this work by combing through the diverse literatures that concern binary gender norms and their effects. While I'm well acquainted with relevant philosophical and gender studies literature, the proposed research project will examine work from queer theory, post- and de-colonial studies, Africana studies, Native American and Indigenous studies, and trans studies. Our goals are to (1) identify the ways in which gender binary has been enforced wherever and whenever it has been enforced, (2) to identify the ways in which trans and non-binary theorists have theorized the gender binary and its enforcement, and (3) to articulate the kinds of social, economic, legal, and epistemic exclusion that befall those who resist assimilation to gender binaries.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Jeffrey-Joseph Engelhardt


Rehoboth Ketema Gesese (2017)

How Concepts Can Oppress, Disempower, and Marginalize

Not all communities have the same concepts. We have the concept expressed by the word "quark", for instance, but Aristotle's community did not. A community's conceptual repertoire reflects the concerns and experiences of its members, and it can also reflect the community's biases, stereotypes, and power structures. A community's concepts may thereby contribute to the oppression of some of its members. From political 'code words' like "states' rights" to concepts common in philosophical theorizing (e.g. rationality) or popular media (e.g. "inner city"), we're investigating (i) how words or concepts may covertly make reference to race, gender, class or other social groupings while seeming to be neutral on these matters and (ii) how such covert reference may contribute to the oppression of genders, races, classes, etc. We aim to develop a system for classifying oppressive words and concepts and thereby to identify previously unrecognized cases.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Jeffrey-Joseph Engelhardt


Amy Halstead (2019)

What is Mental Illness?

The philosophy of psychiatry is, first and foremost, the study of the concepts of mental health and illness. One of the central questions in the philosophy of psychiatry, then, is just: what features are either necessary or sufficient for a particular condition to count as a mental illness? Answering this question is not as easy as simply consulting the DSM, for the DSM's own account of mental illness is ambiguous in places, arbitrary in others, and rests upon philosophical assumptions that are themselves deeply problematic. We propose to collect and evaluate various attempts throughout the psychiatric and philosophical literature to define "mental illness." Evaluating these definitions will not only provide us with a better understanding of how the term ought to be defined, but will also help us find answers to difficult questions lying at the intersection of psychiatry and ethics, e.g., about moral character, responsibility, and the good life.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: James Sias


Tatyana M Matveeva (2008)

Multiple Tasks and Titles

Ms. Matveeva would help me with four distinct projects: (a) I am editing a moral psychology anthology for Blackwell Press, (b) I am working on a book manuscript entitled The Uses (and Abuses) of Intuitions in Philosophy-which will be submitted to Oxford University Press, (c) I am organizing the third installation of the On-line Philosophy Conference, and (d) I am conducting a series of studies on moral cognition (which will be a continuation of the research Ms. Matveeva and I conducted this summer).

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: Thomas Nadelhoffer


Tatyana M Matveeva (2008)

Probing Folk Intuitions: The Trolley Problem Revisited

During the past few years there has been gathering interest among both philosophers and scientists in trying to understand the sources (and limitations) of human moral cognition. One of the central problems in moral psychology is determining what moral intuitions are and how they are produced. The goal of my project this summer will be to shed light on this problem by investigating (a) whether people's moral intuitions are shaped partly by the way the scenarios they read are presented, and (b) what factors affect people's intuitions about self-defense. Along the way, we will run a series of studies, analyze the data, write a co-authored paper, and present both the data and a rough draft of the paper to members of the Harvard psychology department.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Thomas Nadelhoffer


Molly Kathleen Mullane (2015)

Animal Cognition

Many non-human animals exhibit sophisticated cognitive skills. Are these merely skills for coping with localized challenges, or are they evidence of a general ability to think about how the world is? Philosophers use the term "intentionality" for this ability to think about how the world is. What intentionality requires is a long-standing question in philosophy, cognitive science, and ethology. On the one hand, it seems to involve more than merely responding consistently to stimuli-even plants do that. On the other hand, it seems to involve less than language. But then what does it require, exactly? Those questions are at the heart of our research. Specifically, we aim to find cases of animal cognition that are maximally instructive for assessing theories of intentionality. These cases will be presented in an introductory book on intentionality that Maher is working on. We plan to study empirical work on animal cognition, both data and theory. Molly will also research recent philosophical work on intentionality and animal minds.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Chauncey Maher


Ruodan Que (2021)

Engineering Concepts and Contexts

For many purposes, it matters which concepts we use. Scientific revolutions are often eventuated or at least accompanied by conceptual changes, as when the Einsteinian concept of space-time replaced the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and absolute time. The concept GUARDIAN was developed as a replacement for or supplement to PARENT for various purposes in the care and education of children. In 1997, the US Office of Management and Budget engineered five race concepts (revised from Directive No. 15 in 1977) in order to collect data for the Census. In this collaborative research project, we're investigating the conditions from which such conceptual changes emerge, especially for 'social concepts', the concepts we use to organize social worlds. We'll survey the rules of order of various social and political organizations from which conceptual changes have emerged, aiming to identify rules that are more conducive to productive conceptual innovation.

Term Funded:8 Summer
Professor: Jeffrey-Joseph Engelhardt


Ariana J Watson (2018)

Defining Racism

Despite seemingly widespread efforts to stop it, racial injustice persists in America. Why? Although part of the explanation might be that we lack sufficient will or resources, it is also plausible that we do not sufficiently understand the problems or their likely solutions. In particular, it is common to suppose that racial injustice stems primarily from racism. However, it is not obvious what racism is. In the past few decades, for instance, we have learned that racism can be unconscious ("implicit bias"), and that it can transcend individual persons ("institutional racism"). Can institutions be racist without even unconsciously racist participants? Could there be racial injustice without racism? In this summer research project, we propose to study the definition of 'racism,' and cognate terms, such as 'racial prejudice' and 'racial discrimination.' How have different people (with different aims, in various contexts) defined 'racism'? And how should we define 'racism'?

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Chauncey Maher


Physical Education

Kelly Hummer Facciola (1995)

Disordered Eating Behaviors in Female Athletes

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Judith Yorio


Physics

Natalie Griffin Ferris (2018)

Optimizing collimator head angle to minimize radiation therapy treatment time

"Radiation treatment of tumors is complex and expensive therefore researchers are constantly searching for methods to make the treatment more efficient. In planning treatment, several variables are optimized to generate the treatment, including gantry angle, table angle, and collimator leaf movement. Adding one more degree of freedom in planning adds complexity but could potentially be used to minimize the delivery time for radiation therapy. By optimizing the collimator angle, delivery time can be minimized during tumor treatment with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). We attempted to determine the optimal collimator angle by testing a range of angles. To maintain accuracy, the rotated simulation of the radiation field, the fluence (or intensity) map must be a close reproduction of the original fluence map. Through rotating the map to angles between 0 and 180, it is possible to accurately assess the angle for which the prescribed radiation fluence map will take the least time to deliver. The single angle that minimizes the delivery of a set of fluence maps can then be found. This same principle can be applied to a combination of maps, allowing for more timely treatments due to optimizing collimator angle. The addition of allowing the collimator to rotate during IMRT allows for a decreased delivery time. Expanding this to VMAT treatment and allowing the collimator to rotate within the gantry arc could also minimize delivery time for arc treatments. "

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Mauro David Lifschitz Arribio (2013)

NSF-PFI/ITN - Seed/Assistance Funding for Faculty Research with Commercial Partners: Development of a Energy Efficient and Versatile Distributed Illumination System

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been touted as the future of illumination with its longevity and energy-savings, for some time. While there have been a number of attempts to introduce various lighting systems around LED-technologies, their potential as large-scale distributed illumination source is far from realized. Industry trends indicate that most recent advances in LED- technologies are focused on OLED displays. These technologies are not cost-effective to enable applications to large-scale illumination systems. An alternative approach using the versatility of Intrinsic Localized Modes (ILMs) in a lattice- based system offers more commercially viable prospect. The proposed research project involves the design and construction of two-dimensional electrical lattices incorporating LEDs in each unit cell, for the purpose of implementing a distributed lighting scheme. In the proposed scheme, the light distribution could be made into a spatial pattern of one's choice, by means of creating temporary impurities at the various lattice locations. Alternatively, one could also choose a uniform light distribution, or a mixture of uniform distribution and localized pattern. More interesting patterns could be induced by relying on the intrinsic nonlinearity present in the proposed lattice. The objective of the project is to prove that these properties can be effectively realized in the context of these lattices. The research would be completed at Dickinson College by myself in collaboration with my corporate partner, Dr. Sunil Acharya.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Lars English


Hanyu Ma (2016)

Mu2e

The Mu2e experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) aims at observing the conversion of muons to electrons in the field of a nucleus. The omnipresent cosmic muon ray background, however, can influence the experimental result significantly. In this project, we mainly focus on verifying the consistency between the theoretical prediction and the G4beamline simulation, a simulation tool for particle physics experiments, of the [delta] ray created by cosmic muon ray background. In order to make this comparison, we modified muon stopping target to a 1cm long aluminum cylinder. The comparison indicates that G4beamline simulation agrees with the theoretical prediction and it is a reliable simulation tool for further researches.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Michael A Vecchio (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Emily C Whitaker (2017)

Kinetic Energy Study of Wisconsin Lake Ecosytems

Lake ice depth provides important information about local and regional climate change, weather patterns, and recreational safety, as well as impacting in situ ecology and carbon cycling. However, it is challenging to measure ice depth continuously from a remote location, as existing methods are too large, expensive, and/or time-intensive. Therefore, I researched a novel application that reduces the size and cost issues by using soil water content reflectometer sensors. Analysis of sensors deployed in an environmental chamber using a scale model of a lake demonstrated their value as accurate measures of the change in ice depth over any time period, through measurement of the liquid-to-solid phase change. A robust correlation exists between volumetric water content in time as a function of environmental temperature. This relationship allowed me to convert volumetric water content into ice depth. An array of these sensors will be placed in Lake Mendota, Madison, Wisconsin in winter 2015-2016, to create a temporally high-resolution ice depth record, which will be used for ecological or climatological studies while also being transmitted to the public to increase recreational safety.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor:


Physics & Astronomy

Mara Eugenia Roze Anderson (2010)

Nonlinear Localization and Pattern Formation in Two-Dimensional Electrical Lattices

We propose to study the nonlinear dynamics of two-dimensional electrical lattices. In particular, we will experimentally search for the existence of nonlinear intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) can exist in two dimensions. Our previous work (see detailed proposal and publications) has demonstrated that ILMs can be generated and sustained in a one-dimensional electrical lattice. The question we would like to address is how the addition of an extra dimension affects these results. In continuous systems, it destroys localized modes (called solitons), but theoretical predictions indicate that the discreteness of the lattice would stabilize the localized modes in higher dimensional lattices. We propose to continue our previous research by first building a 2D version of the electrical lattice, and then studying the nonlinear pattern formation that results from uniformly driving this system. We will study whether ILMs can result from the pattern formation at longer times under various driving conditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Lars English


Daniel Harrison Barnak (2010)

Generation of lattice solitons via modulational instability in discrete electronic transmission lines

Generation of lattice solitons via modulational instability in discrete electronic transmission lines

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Lars English


Michael Christian Bartosiewicz (2000)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Scott Franklin


Ritoban Basu Thakur (2008)

Generation of lattice solitons via modulational instability in discrete electronic transmission lines

In close analogy to nonlinear microwave studies on magnetic crystals, we propose to investigate the generation of lattice solitons or intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) in the macroscopic lattice of an electronic transmission line consisting of capacitive and inductive elements periodically arranged. Such systems have been demonstrated to support traveling solitons when pulses are launched at its ends. In this study, however, we would like to focus on generating stationary localized modes as a result of driving the uniform plane-wave mode in this lattice into a nonlinear regime where it becomes unstable against modulations. Further, we would like to study the spatial signature of these lattice solitons as well as of the preceding modulational instability as a function of the position of the uniform mode relative to the rest of the plane-wave dispersion curve. We plan on controlling this parameter via electronic feedback acting on the uniform mode. In the magnetic context this parameter was numerically shown to be significant in determining the type of instability. In our system this question can be investigated experimentally and the pattern formation process observed directly.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Lars English


Ritoban Basu Thakur (2008)

Generation of lattice solitons via modulational instability in discrete electronic transmission lines

In close analogy to nonlinear microwave studies on magnetic crystals, we propose to investigate the generation of lattice solitons or intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) in the macroscopic lattice of an electronic transmission line consisting of capacitive and inductive elements periodically arranged. Such systems have been demonstrated to support traveling solitons when pulses are launched at its ends. In this study, however, we would like to focus on generating stationary localized modes as a result of driving the uniform plane-wave mode in this lattice into a nonlinear regime where it becomes unstable against modulations. Further, we would like to study the spatial signature of these lattice solitons as well as of the preceding modulational instability as a function of the position of the uniform mode relative to the rest of the plane-wave dispersion curve. We plan on controlling this parameter via electronic feedback acting on the uniform mode. In the magnetic context this parameter was numerically shown to be significant in determining the type of instability. In our system this question can be investigated experimentally and the pattern formation process observed directly.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Lars English


Ritoban Basu Thakur (2008)

Exploring Pattern Formation in Two Nonlinear Lattices

This application is for a two-part research project centered around two experimental systems: coupled mechanical pendula and coupled electrical oscillators. Though physically very different, these two systems share some strong underlying similarities. They both consist of individual nonlinear oscillators linked together and can both exhibit the spontaneous formation of patterns. In the context of the coupled pendula, pattern formation takes the form of synchronization of the pendula;s motion, even in the presence of frequency mismatches. We have already demonstrated this remarkable effect and would like to investigate the role of friction in determining the characteristics of the synchronized state. In the context of the electrical system, pattern formation refers to a spatial (not temporal) pattern consisting of so-called solitons. The emergence of solitons was experimentally verified last summer; this summer we would like to study in greater detail how these highly nonlinear solutions form and      what role feedback may play.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Lars English


Amanda Christine Baylor (2020)

Photometry of 10 Eclipsing Variables in the Field of NGC 2362

W Ursa Majoris stars (EWs) are contact binaries with unique light curves. They have been observed to exhibit changes in orbital period, which has been attributed to mass transfer within the system. EWs are also known to obey a relationship between their period, color, and absolute brightness, which has been calibrated and can be used as a distance indicator. We discovered ten eclipsing systems in the field of NGC 2362 by analyzing photometric I-band data obtained in 2006 January with the 0.8-m telescope at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX. Some of these eclipsing systems have light curves representative of EWs. Using data obtained with 1.3-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in January 2018, we intend to verify whether or not these systems can be considered members of the young cluster NGC 2362 using the Period-Luminosity-Color (PLC) relationship. If these stars are truly members of the young cluster NGC 2362, they will provide direct measurements of the stellar mass, and a ratio of effective temperatures for stars within a cluster that has an age estimated to be between 5 and 13 Myr. Additionally, if we detect any period changes, this could infer that mass transfer is occuring within the system.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Amanda Christine Baylor (2020)

Recalibration and Analysis of Seven Eclipsing Variables in the Field of NGC 2362 and Observing NGC 6611 and NGC 6328 with the Britton Observatory

For this assistantship, Amanda Baylor '20 will be identifying stable comparison stars in the fields of eight eclipsing variables in the field of NGC 2362. These comparison stars will allow her to place the photometry of our program stars from 2006, 2007, 2016, 2017, and 2018 on the same scale. With these data, she will analyze the light curves for any shifts in orbital period over the past twelve years. Additionally, Amanda will spend the fall 2018 semester using the 24-inch telescope at the Britton Observatory on campus to observe two young clusters with the VRI filters and CCD.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Amanda Christine Baylor (2020)

Recalibration and Analysis of Seven Eclipsing Variables in the Field of NGC 2362 and Observing NGC 6611 and NGC 6328 with the Britton Observatory

For this assistantship, Amanda Baylor '20 will be identifying stable comparison stars in the fields of eight eclipsing variables in the field of NGC 2362. These comparison stars will allow her to place the photometry of our program stars from 2006, 2007, 2016, 2017, and 2018 on the same scale. With these data, she will analyze the light curves for any shifts in orbital period over the past twelve years. Additionally, Amanda will spend the fall 2018 semester using the 24-inch telescope at the Britton Observatory on campus to observe two young clusters with the VRI filters and CCD.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Emma Jansen Behta ()

Synchronization Phenomena in Physical and Electronic Systems

I propose to continue my lab's multi-year experimental study of the spontaneous synchronization of (A) a pair of metronomes, and (B) a network of electronic self-oscillators.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Lars English


Melia Elizabeth Bonomo (2013)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Exploration in the Laser Teaching Center

This summer I will be completing an eight-week research project in the Laser Teaching Center of Stony Brook University. During the REU, I will be working with Optical and Acoustical Physics to try to understand the behavior of electromagnetic and pressure waves, as well as their interactions with both matter and each other. The whole concept of the Laser Teaching Center is to give students an individualized learning experience to research a topic they find interesting, and then teach others about their findings. The program is geared towards students who have not had much prior participation in research or a limited experience with optics. Therefore, figuring out my specific research question upon arrival will be one of the most important steps of the project. The way this has been carried out in the past at the Stony Brook REU is that several options are at first considered based on the students' prior experiences, interests, and curiosities. After brainstorming together in the first week or so, the mentoring professor and student work one-on-one to create a project that is not overly complicated, but one that still will involve dedicated measurement, analysis, and mathematical models of the experimental discoveries. This summer research experience is both relevant to my physics major, and is supportive of my goals after graduating Dickinson, which are that I would like to do research before or during graduate school and then eventually become certified to go into physics teaching. At Dickinson I have not had the opportunity yet to work on a comprehensive research project. As a senior next year I will have to do hands-on research as well as write up reports on my methods and findings. For that reason, participating in an REU this summer will give me an idea of what this will actually entail. Additionally, up to this point I have had a very limited education on applied physics. Most of the courses I have taken have dealt with general physics topics or have been introductory courses to a more detailed applied physics topic. I am hoping to therefore expand my knowledge base by participating in this research program. I believe that it is very beneficial for a science major to have fieldwork experience. It is one thing to be studying out of books all the time, but it is an entirely different kind of education, and sometimes a more beneficial one, when you are actually testing a theory or making a discovery. Since one of my eventual goals is to go into physics teaching, my involvement in the program will be a wonderful introduction to this. The opportunity is different then the typical undergraduate research project, where the student usually just joins into something already planned out and in motion. At the Stony Brook REU however, each student starts from scratch to develop his/her own project, while still learning what professional research entails. The Laser Teaching Center aims to provide students with a valuable learning experience and train them for leadership roles in the field. Their core perspective is to create individualized projects through a collaborative development between student and mentor. I will be learning how to use lab equipment, document my progress without being too formal in my reports, and explain my findings in such a way that others will be able to clearly understand and repeat my procedures, which are all valuable teaching skills. As soon as more concrete details have been established, I will create a more specific goal/methods summary. Overall, this REU will give me the opportunity to explore some of the topics that I find fascinating, make me more familiar with the professional methods used in these fields of study, and prepare me for senior year at Dickinson, graduate school, and my future teaching career.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor:


Zachary Lee Carson (2010)

Biological Imaging with Ultrafast Lasers

This proposal aims to develop a multiphoton microscope for biological imaging using ultrafast lasers. Confocal microscopy using fluorescent markers is a well-established method for examining biological specimens that allows scientists to image live cells at the single-cell level. More recently, the extension of this technique to multiphoton microscopy has addressed many of the limitations of traditional confocal microscopy. Advances in short-pulse laser technology have enabled this development, and the broad spectral bandwidth of femtosecond lasers opens the door for controlled excitation during the imaging process. Here we propose to construct a multiphoton imaging apparatus for examining biological specimens. The work builds on existing infrastructure and offers ample opportunity for student involvement.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Brett Pearson


Raheem Ahmed Chowdhury (2015)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College - Research on Solar Air Heater, Flywheel Energy Storage Device, and Sponge Resistor Analogy

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Hans Pfister


Francis Joseph Cressotti (2010)

Extending the Timeline for Angular Momentum Evolution: What Role Do Disks Play in Regulating Stellar Rotation at 5 Myr?

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Kathleen Ann Demarest (1989)

Upgrading an Argon Plasma System

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Guy Vandegrift


Sean Michael Diamond (2008)

Design and Construction of a Sun-Tracking Solar Heat Exchanger

The solar energy device converts solar energy directly into thermal energy. The four and one quarter square meter large mirror surface simply intercepts the solar radiation and converts it into thermal energy. The amount of solar energy incident on the mirror's surface would have arrived at the surface of the earth regardless of the presence of the mirror. The device therefore does not add more thermal energy to the surface of the earth. The device only concentrates the thermal energy and stores it temporarily in the warm water reservoir of a residence.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Hans Pfister


James Michael Diodato (2008)

Determining Rotation Periods of the Stars in NGC 2362: Extending the Timeline for Angular Momentum Evolution

We propose to determine rotation periods for stars in the young cluster NGC 2362 (age ~ 5 million years old) that are believed to have masses between 0.25 and 2 solar masses. Bimodal period distributions for stars in this mass range have been observed in clusters of ages ~1 and ~3 Myr. Theory suggests that the stars in the "slow rotator" group are, or have recently been, magnetically locked to their circumstellar disks, which thereby regulates the rate at which a star can spin, shunting away angular momentum in the process. The distributions seen in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC, t ~ 1 Myr) and NGC 2264 (t ~ 3 Myr) are similar however, the slow rotator peak observed for NGC 2264 is shifted to faster periods. This would indicate that a star has been freed from its disk (most likely due to the condensation of gas and dust particles into planetesimals), it is able to spin up, conserving angular momentum. We wish to determine wheter or not this trend continues for even older clusters. At ~5 Myr, NGC 2362 is an ideal cluster in which we can test this hypothesis further.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Linnea Nicole Engstrom (2005)

Feedback and Pattern Formation in Electrical Transmission Lines

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the study of intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) [1], which are the analogs of solitons in discrete media. Much numerical and theoretical research has focused on nonlinear localization of energy in nano-scale atomic lattices, where experimental observation is necessarily indirect. We will extend existing experimental studies [2] on ILM formation in discrete, nonlinear electrical transmission lines. In particular, we investigate the modulational instability of standing waves and its dependence on feedback in the circuit. The important role of feedback in pattern formation was already reported in the context of spin lattices [3]. This study will elucidates the role of feedback in a nonlinear macroscopic system. [1] D.K. Campball, S. Flach, Y.S. Kivshar, Physics Today, January 2004; [2] J.M. Bilbault, P. Marquie, B. Michaux Phys. Rev. E 51 (1995), 817; [3] L.Q. English, M. Sato, A.J. Sievers, Phys. Rev. B 67 (2003), 024403

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Lars English


Nickolas Evagelou (2008)

Development of Experiments for a Project Centered Course in Electronics based on the Design and Construction of a Sustainable Solar Powered LED Lighting System

The development of Solar powered LED based lighting systems promise to provide a much needed solution to the lighting dilemma faced by communities in rural parts of the developing world. This summer I plan to work with a student to investigate the operating characteristics of solar powered LED lighting systems and to develop activities designed to introduce the idea of appropriate technology into the Dickinson electronics curriculum using these lighting systems as a central example.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Kerry Browne


Nickolas Evagelou (2008)

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research. Hansen Technologies

A project for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requested $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: David Kushner


Natalie Griffin Ferris (2018)

Double-slit interference using one beam of a quantum-entangled light source

Double-slit interference is a standard topic in physics, and is traditionally produced using a monochromatic (single color) and coherent (fixed phase relationship) source of light. One can also observe a double-slit interference pattern using other light sources, but the patterns are usually less well defined and somewhat harder to observe and understand. Interestingly, there is currently some disagreement about whether a double-slit interference pattern should be observable, even in principle, when using only one beam from an entangled light source. Our goal is to design an experiment that attempts to observe such an interference pattern, and, if successful, to understand the physical conditions that are necessary for the pattern to be visible.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: David Jackson


Christopher Brandon Fritz (2017)

Synchronization in Networks of Electrical Self-Oscillators

I propose to experimentally study the synchronization behavior of a network of electronic self-oscillators. A recent paper of mine in Physical Review E showed that such synchronization could occur in a network of all-to-all coupled Wien-bridge oscillators. However, this paper did not yet explore the detailed role of the network topology. The idea, then, for the summer research would be to explore how the route to synchronization depends on the connectivity of the network. One could imagine building a lattice of oscillators, where oscillators only communicate locally. Can global sync establish itself in such lattices? From a lattice, one could then move to a small-world network by adding random long-range connections between oscillators. Here the expectation would be of a much enhanced robustness of the synchronized state. Another related aspect of the project would be to experimentally look for so-called chimera states in oscillator chains, as well as other spatial patterns of synchronization. Generally speaking, the literature in this field is dominated by numerical and theoretical studies. What makes this project particularly noteworthy is its experimental nature.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Lars English


Justin Tyler Gardner (2017)

Determining Rotation Periods of Stars in the Young Cluster NGC 2129

Rotation periods of stars in young clusters (age ~ 1 to 100 million years) allow us to explore ways in which angular momentum is conserved as a star is born and contracts from its nascent cloud to a fully-fledged star. Presumably, stars contract under the force of gravity as they evolve and their rotation rate increases accordingly. By observing clusters of different ages, we can map out how this transition to rapid rotation takes place. We have been using the Britton 24-inch telescope to observe the young cluster (age ~ 10 million years) NGC 2129 (and will continue to do so throughout the spring 2016 semester). I intend to have my student this summer reduce and analyze these data and determine rotation periods for the stars in the cluster. To the best of my knowledge, a study of this nature, on this cluster, has never been conducted before.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Elon Isaac Gordon (2018)

Design, Construction, and Analysis of a Singly Glazed Solar Air Heater with Matrix Absorber and Unique Air Flow.

A solar air heater (SAH) is a renewable energy device that uses solar energy and converts it into thermal energy in the form of hot air, which could be used, e.g., to heat a building, dry fruit, or improve the production of biogas. In 2012 I invented and designed a new SAH, obtained a Pat. Pend., and built it in collaboration with physics major Sung Woo Kim, Class of '2013, and Rick Lindsey. It is worth noting that while a typical photovoltaic panel converts solar energy into electricity with an efficiency of only 15 to 20 percent, our SAH converts solar energy into thermal energy with an efficiency of up to 80 percent. ast semester I invented two more SAHs, both fundamentally different from each other and different from the SAH we built in 2012. I will obtain a Pat. Pend. for the second one of these SAHs this semester. Over the course of the summer I would like to construct this SAH and perform initial measurements on this solar collector with the help of two physics majors. I am hereby requesting R&D summer support for myself and these two students.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Hans Pfister


Jiahao Han (2017)

Experimental exploration of multi-frequency intrinsic localized modes in pendulum chains with subharmonic driving

We propose to experimentally study the dynamics of a system of pendula torsionally coupled by springs and driven sinusoidally in a horizontal direction. At first glance, one might expect the resultant dynamics to be trivial - shouldn't the pendula simply swing back and forth in unison? As we demonstrated in two previous publications, that expectation is not necessarily what happens; in fact, the collective behavior of the system can be surprisingly complex, exhibiting instabilities that often lead to chaos out of which a new kind of nonlinear order arises. In particular, periodic but highly nonlinear localized modes can emerge and be stabilized in this pendulum chain. The new aspect concerns the way the system is driven by an outside motor. A recent theoretical paper discusses the possibility that one might be able to produce and stabilize intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) via subharmonic driving. This is intriguing because it would mean that a nonlinear mode (the ILM) could be generated via a nonlinear mechanism (subharmonic forcing). We propose to observe this process, leading to the generation of muti-frequency ILMs, for the first time in the pendulum system.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Lars English


Karen Lewis Hirsch (1992)

Observations of 13.5 micron rotation-vibration lines of SiS in IRC 10216

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Robert Boyle


Karen Lewis Hirsch (1992)

High Resolution Astronomical Infrared Spectroscopy

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Robert Boyle


Evan Cowling Howlett (2007)

Exploring Pattern Formation in Two Nonlinear Lattices

This application is for a two-part research project centered around two experimental systems: coupled mechanical pendula and coupled electrical oscillators. Though physically very different, these two systems share some strong underlying similarities. They both consist of individual nonlinear oscillators linked together and can both exhibit the spontaneous formation of patterns. In the context of the coupled pendula, pattern formation takes the form of synchronization of the pendula;s motion, even in the presence of frequency mismatches. We have already demonstrated this remarkable effect and would like to investigate the role of friction in determining the characteristics of the synchronized state. In the context of the electrical system, pattern formation refers to a spatial (not temporal) pattern consisting of so-called solitons. The emergence of solitons was experimentally verified last summer; this summer we would like to study in greater detail how these highly nonlinear solutions form and      what role feedback may play.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Lars English


Sean H Jones (2017)

Updated Videos for Analysis in Introductory Physics

Video analysis is an important tool in a hands-on introductory physics curriculum such as Dickinson's Workshop Physics. A number of the videos we use in class are outdated and in need of updating. A current major in our department is very interested in taking the lead on this project, and we are proposing a Dana Research Assistantship for Summer 2015 to support the efforts of two students in cataloging, remaking, and adding to the department's video collection. The completion of this project would not only be extremely beneficial for the department, but would also serve as an excellent learning experience for the students involved.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Brett Pearson


Emily Carolyn Kaplita (2016)

Precollege experiences shape attitudes of science

The main science objective of this project is to collect and analysis data on students beginning college in order to re-think how science courses are taught. This work is part of ongoing research between Dr. Reed and two collaborators at different great plains colleges. This grant will allow a Dickinson student, Emily Kapilta, to work as a research assistant part-time for eight weeks this summer. She will be tasked with data entry, database management and preliminary analysis on the project. As a mentor, the main goal for Ms. Kaplita is to give her experience with scientific analysis and project management, as well as the opportunity to submit an abstract to a major scientific conference (AGU Annual meeting).

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: David Reed


Maya Faye Keller (1999)

137Cs distribution in soil

137Cs distribution in soil

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: John Luetzelschwab


Samuel Livingston Kelly (2014)

Department of Homeland Security H-STEM Programm: Automatic Software Flaw Detection via Static Analysis

I was awarded this summer research opportunity as part of the Department of Homeland Security H-STEM summer research program, which allows students to do cutting edge, defense or national security related scientific research at various U.S. Government owned sites and National Laboratories. I will be working under Dan Quinlan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on the ROSE project. ROSE is an open source software analysis platform and source-to-source compiler suited for large-scale C, C , UPC, OpenMP, Java, Python and PHP applications. Working with ROSE will provide me with some excellent experience with large-scale software development practices and standards, and will give me greater familiarity with working on large, multi-developer projects using version control systems (in our case we will be using Git). I have never worked with a version control system before, nor have I developed a large-scale application using C , so this experience should be extremely valuable. Compass, and ROSE in general are extremely ambitious projects. One of my mentors has informed me that once Compass is completed, it will likely be the most powerful static analysis tool of its kind in the world, so I am very excited to be working on such an important project. This is particularly exciting considering the fact that Compass II is only being developed at present by myself and one other student! As part of the DHS-HSTEM program, I am also expected to attend a number of cybersecurity and computer science related lectures, conferences, and presentations (a total of ten) during my stay at LLNL. I have also registered for tours of many of the exciting facilities at LLNL, including NIF (the National Ignition Facility), and the Terascale high performance computing facility, home of Sequoia, which a few years ago was the fastest super computer in the world. The DHS also requires that I participate in a poster session and submit a 1000 word essay summarizing my research experience at the conclusion of my stay at LLNL.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Justin Robert Kiehne (2014)

Surface Acoustic Waves in Recombinase Polymerase Amplification

The use of surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology in the field of microfluidics offers a number of distinct advantages, especially in "lab on a chip" i.e., small-sized analytical device, applications. Easy and inexpensive to fabricate, SAW microfluidic devicesare a compact, versatile way to perform contact-free manipulation of fluids and particles. Creating "lab on a chip" technology pushes the boundaries of chemistry, biology, and medicine by enabling portable, inexpensive tools for research and diagnosis. Microfluidics is an important platform for this technology. Microfluidics provides distinct advantages relative to traditional laboratory techniques, such as system miniaturization, automation, low cost, reduced reagent and sample consumption, rapid turnaround time, and precise microenvironment control. With an aim to improve the functionality, versatility, and performance of "lab on a chip" devices researchers continue to integrate new physics into the microfluidic platform. For example, SAW devices have been, and currently are, used for cell manipulation in the study of intercellular communication. By taking advantage of my dual background in biology and physics I hope to address a question that exists somewhere between the two fields. By utilizing methods taken from physics training we hope to accomplish a distinctly biological goal.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Benjamin Joseph Kimock (2015)

Analysis of Observations of KH 15D Obtained with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory

In the 2011/2012 observing season, Star B of the pre-main sequence eclipsing binary system, KH 15D, emerged unexpectedly, from the bottom of the occulting circumbinary ring. We have, in this incredible pre-main sequence eclipsing binary system, an exciting opportunity to explore in great detail, a circumbinary disk that has formed large grains that have settled toward the mid-plane, which is considered the first step toward planet formation. Serendipitously, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was conducting a survey of the young cluster NGC 2264, the cluster in which KH 15D resides, during December 2011. Although we did not obtain these data, they are now publically available through the Chandra Data Archive. It is our plan to extract these data from the Archive and analyze the X-ray flux for Star B in this system. We can then compare our results to those found for Star A back in 2005. These two stars are of similar spectral types (temperatures), so it should be interesting and informative to see if they differ greatly in their X-ray flux. If so, this could be an indication of interacting magnetospheres, which would support the idea of pulsed accretion during closest approach. Additionally, should this analysis lead to a detection of X-ray activity, it will lay the foundation for an additional observing proposal to be submitted to the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope in October 2013.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Benjamin Joseph Kimock (2015)

Rotation Rates and Radii of Young Stars in the Cluster NGC 2362

In the 2011/2012 observing season, Star B of the pre-main sequence eclipsing binary system, KH 15D, emerged unexpectedly, from the bottom of the occulting circumbinary ring. We have, in this incredible pre-main sequence eclipsing binary system, an exciting opportunity to explore in great detail, a circumbinary disk that has formed large grains that have settled toward the mid-plane, which is considered the first step toward planet formation. Serendipitously, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was conducting a survey of the young cluster NGC 2264, the cluster in which KH 15D resides, during December 2011. Although we did not obtain these data, they are now publically available through the Chandra Data Archive. It is our plan to extract these data from the Archive and analyze the X-ray flux for Star B in this system. We can then compare our results to those found for Star A back in 2005. These two stars are of similar spectral types (temperatures), so it should be interesting and informative to see if they differ greatly in their X-ray flux. If so, this could be an indication of interacting magnetospheres, which would support the idea of pulsed accretion during closest approach. Additionally, should this analysis lead to a detection of X-ray activity, it will lay the foundation for an additional observing proposal to be submitted to the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope in October 2013.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Benjamin Joseph Kimock (2015)

Rotation Rates and Radii of Young Stars in the Cluster NGC 2362

Rotation Rates and Radii of Young Stars in the Cluster NGC 2362

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Sophie Dallas Kirkman (2019)

Investigation of the Absorber Efficiency of a Gridded Single-Pass Solar Air Heater

Over the course of the past five years I invented four different solar air heaters (SAHs). These SAHs convert solar energy into thermal energy in the form of hot air, which can then be used as supplementary heating for a room, a garage, a woodshop, or even an entire building if several SAHs are used in parallel. The solar air heater I invented in 2014 (US Pat. Pend.) turns out to have a very high solar to thermal conversion efficiency of about 80%. Throughout the research performed on this SAH, which we published in the journal Solar Energy, the SAH had a fixed absorber configuration of 6 corrugated, blackened aluminum mesh grids. Clearly, more grids would ensure absorption of more solar radiation; however, fewer grids would provide a better airflow through the SAH. The proposed investigation aims to find the optimal number and configuration of absorber grids.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Susan Perabo


Michael Johnathan Kmetz (2019)

Does the Bloch theorem of quantum mechanics apply in analogous hydrodynamic systems?

Since Yves Couder's seminal paper in 2006, the physics community has been forced to re-examine one of the central tenets of modern physics: the dynamic motion of microscopic entities such as electrons and quarks are fundamentally different from the dynamics of macroscopic entities such as cars and animals. This tenet has been upheld since the Solvay Conferences in the early 1900s because the recent experiments of the dynamics of quantum objects exhibited a particle-wave duality that was unheard of in macroscopic systems. Yves Couder presented a system consisting of a millimeter-sized droplet (a particle) that bounces on the surface of a vibrating bath of the same fluid. With each bounce, the droplet excited a wave in the bath, a wave that does subsequently influence the motion of the particle. Using this macroscopic particle-wave combination, Couder reproduced the results of the Young's double slit experiment (the main experiment that brought about the idea of the particle-wave duality in the first place) and since then other researches have been showing how a variety of quantum behaviors can be reproduced with similar bouncing droplet systems. By patterning the bottom of the fluid bath container into what would serve as a periodic potential, I aim to see if the Bloch theorem also has analogous consequences for these hydrodynamic bouncing drops. Bloch's theorem is the central theorem for describing the behavior of electrons in crystalline solids, whether geological formation or those crystals used in piezzo-electric materials, quartz crystal oscillators, superconductors, or crystals used for their unique optical properties (e.g. birefringent crystals).

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Stephen Strickland


Ryan Irwin Lane (2014)

Using Fermi LAT Data to Probe the Interstellar Cosmic Ray Spectrum

The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope was launched in July of 2008. Since its launch, it has collected a vast amount of data focused particularly on active galactic nuclei, pulsars, and other cosmological, high-energy sources such as gamma-ray bursts. Its mission is to better explain the means of particle acceleration in active galactic nuclei, pulsars, and supernova remnants; to identify unknown sources of gamma rays; and to probe the universe for traces of dark matter. Of these goals, my research is concerned primarily with the first. Until recently, scientists were unsure of how cosmic rays (high-energy protons and atomic nuclei constantly bombarding the Earth) became so energetic. Now, they think that shock waves expanding from supernova remnants hold the key. My research aims at analyzing the data taken by Fermi to produce a model of the energies of incoming cosmic rays. Scientists are interested in studying cosmic rays primarily because they wish to know of their effects on life forms outside the protection of an atmosphere. Additionally, they are interested simply because of their ultra-high-energy characteristics. In order to learn more about cosmic rays, scientists are now looking at their origins, namely the supernova remnants. What complicates the study of these particles, however, is that the supernova remnants are thousands of light years away and so the cosmic rays that they emit often collide with interstellar dust or other stray particles. When the cosmic rays collide with other particles, they most frequently break up into particles of high energy called gamma rays. This is how the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope can be of use in the detection of cosmic rays. The gamma rays it detects are traced back to cosmic rays which have now been traced back to supernova remnants. Because the Fermi Space Telescope is in space, the only method of research possible is analyzing the data that it pipes down to Earth. Among other places, this data is transmitted to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where my internship is taking place. The most significant data that Fermi records is the energy and the flux (the amount of something that passes through a given area per second) of the gamma rays. This data is made available for processing at SLAC where computer codes can be used to make sense of the data and compare it with the most up to date models of particle interactions. As of now, a key source of uncertainty that goes along with the data is solar modulation. Although we are protected from them on Earth, powerful solar winds have the ability to distort the trajectory of incoming particles. Fermi is better able to take into account the sun's influence on gamma rays. Thanks to improvements in technology, what we expect from analyzing the data is a more precise model of the interactions between cosmic ray and interstellar gases as well as a more clearly defined picture of the amount of high energy gamma rays and cosmic rays coming into our atmosphere over time. As a physics major with an astronomy minor, this research experience constitutes a fantastic opportunity to expand my knowledge of particle physics as it relates to astronomy.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Hieu Dang Minh Le (2019)

Construction of a Comprehensive Catalogue of Possible Cosmic Topologies

Cosmic topology relates to the shape of our Universe and plays an important role in understanding the structure and evolution of the Universe. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB, remnant radiation from the Big Bang) has potential for displaying phenomena caused by topology; with the release of unprecedentedly high quality CMB data in 2015, collected by the Planck mission, we have never been in a better position to try to constrain cosmic topology. There is a vast number of possible topologies, ways to express them mathematically and methods for analysing CMB data for evidence of topology. To date, publications analyse only a handful of topologies at a time, each using a different formalism and method. To enable a more consistent and meaningful approach to this endeavour, we will construct a comprehensive catalogue of topological spaces, all of which can be incorporated into the same code for modelling the CMB in the presence of these topologies.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Laura Watson


Hongyi Li (2019)

Interference with Incoherent Sources

Interference of light with a "coherent" laser source is a standard experiment in the undergraduate curriculum. The term coherent implies that the light looks like a flat wave front with a well-defined wavelength, similar to the waves you might see trailing a boat in water. However, many experiments of interest in the research area of quantum optics utilize interference of incoherent light. The proposed project involves performing a series of interference experiments capable of measuring light sources that lack the perfect spatial and temporal coherence of many lasers. By examining a number of light sources with varying degrees of coherence (as well as different geometric arrangements), we will map out the visibility of the interference pattern for different experimental conditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Brett Pearson


Richard Alan Loomis (1989)

Upgrading an Argon Plasma System

Upgrading an Argon Plasma System

Term Funded:Summer 1988
Professor: Guy Vandegrift


Joshua Taylor Margolis (2013)

Low-cost Spatial Light Modulator for Fourier Domain Pulse Shaping

Optical pulse shapers, which selectively modify both the amplitude and phase properties of light sources, are widely used in a variety of scientific research areas including optical communications, precision measurements, and quantum chemistry. The primary method relies on Fourier-domain pulse shaping, where the frequency components of the light source are spatially resolved so that a patterned mask can individually address each color. Liquid-crystal displays (LCD) are the most common mask element, and the recent development of flat-screen monitors and projectors using LCD technology has substantially reduced the cost of such devices. In this project we plan to develop a programmable mask using a commercial LCD for use in a departmental Fourier optics experiment.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Brett Pearson


Kelly Lynn McFarland (1998)

X-Ray and Optical Properties of X Persei

X-Ray and Optical Properties of X Persei

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Windsor Morgan


Shane Karl Mitchell (2014)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): Visible Light Refraction in Opal Photonic Crystals

This summer I am participating in the REU program at The University of Texas at Brownsville. I will be working under Dr. Malik Rakhmanov studying refractive properties of opal photonic crystals. The primary goal of my research is to investigate how the opal photonic crystals refract visible light.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Anubhav Mohan (2011)

Rotational Velocities, Radii, and Spectral types of Pre-main Sequence Stars in NGC 2362

I recently obtained high-resolution spectra for a large number of pre-main sequence (PMS) stars in the young cluster NGC 2362 in order to measure their projected rotational velocity, or v sin(i) value. The sample includes ~ 100 stars for which accurate rotation periods are known from photometric monitoring. By combining rotation periods with projected velocities for this large sample of stars, we will be able to apply statistical arguments to arrive at estimates for the mean radii of the stars in NGC 2362. Stellar radii and rotational velocities are crucial fundamental parameters, which constrain theoretical models describing PMS evolution, as well as magnetospheric accretion. As a part of the cross-correlation process used to measure the v sin(i), we plan to measure the target stars' radial velocities. These radial velocity measurements, to my knowledge, will be the first for the PMS stars in NGC 2362. Low-resolution spectra of these targets were also obtained for the purpose of spectral classification. This will provide an independent assessment of each star's radius by traditional means using luminosity and effective temperature.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Brian William Motter (1994)

Investigation of the Merging Mechanisms of Filamentary Plasma Currrents

Investigation of the Merging Mechanisms of Filamentary Plasma Currrents

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Hans Pfister


Matthew Jude Murray (2011)

Pulse Shaping for Enhanced Discrimination in Multiphoton Microscopy

Fluorescence microscopy, where optical light is used to image biological systems, has led to numerous advances in our understanding of cellular function. For example, imaging fluorescent proteins or other intrinsic fluorophores with optical microscopes provides detailed information about cellular processes in real time. Despite these advances, some restrictions remain, including a limited capacity to rapidly acquire images of multiple fluorophores when there is little or no distinction between their single-photon absorption or emission spectra. In this proposal, we outline an approach to substantially improve the ability to generate such multiplexed images of competing fluorophores. The approach relies on selective multiphoton excitation of the fluorophores using shaped laser pulses, thereby removing the need to spectrally separate the excitation or detection processes. The proposed method is quite general, and therefore not tied to a specific set of fluorophores.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Brett Pearson


Tyler Louis Ralston (2015)

Investigation of the Effect of Glazing on the Conversion Efficiency of A Gridded Solar Air Heater

About two years ago Dr. Pfister designed and built a cost-effective Solar Air Heater (SAH), having a very high (approx. 80 percent) solar to thermal energy conversion efficiency. A solar air heater is a device that converts solar energy directly into hot air and can therefore be used for supplemental space heating. Essentially every building that is presently being heated with forced air can be heated on a sunny day with a solar air heater, thereby drastically reducing the use of fossil fuels and consequently reducing the emission of CO2. During the fall 2013 semester Prof. Pfister and his students determined the optimal mass flow rate, i.e., air speed through the SAH. Presently, Prof. Pfister and his students are optimizing the SAH's absorber surface. The remaining part that needs to be optimized is the SAH's glazing. The glass should be such that it lets as much of the solar spectrum into the SAH and keeps as much as possible of the reradiated infrared radiation inside the solar collector. We propose here to collaborate with PPG in Mount Holly to optimize the glazing of the Solar Air Heater.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Hans Pfister


Kristen Ann Recine (2011)

Modeling the Evolution of the Cataclysmic Variable System V723 Cas

Kristen Recine will spend eight weeks this summer completing a project that we have been working on together throughout this academic year, half of which while I have been on sabbatical. Kristen has nearly completed her Honors Thesis in physics at the time of this submission, and the outcome of our collaborative research is extremely exciting and publication-worthy. We require an additional eight weeks to complete the reduction and analysis of photometric data obtained with the Michael L. Britton 24-inch telescope located here on the campus of Dickinson College and to write the paper for submission to the Astronomical Journal. Kristen has already spent an entire academic year reducing six years' worth of data obtained at the National Undergraduate Research Observatory (NURO) located in Flagstaff, AZ. The Britton data are critical to our final analysis of the system due to the timing of those observations.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Kristen Ann Recine (2011)

Extending the Timeline for Angular Momentum Evolution: What Role Do Disks Play in Regulating Stellar Rotation at 5 Myr?

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Professor Catrina Hamilton- Drager on a subject that I have been in love with for as long as I can remember: astronomy. Professor Drager took on myself and another student to continue the work of many past advisees, which was the study of the open cluster NGC 2362. This internship has been filled with highly valuable experience and an immense amount of learning, for which I am very grateful. We started off on the first of June, jumping right into our work. For me, everything in the internship was new; I had never used UNIX before, nor did I know very much about star formation in general and specifically the kind of stars we were to study. Professor Drager taught us about a type of star called T Tauri, on which we would be focusing. In addition, we had to learn IRAF (Image Reduction and Analysis Facility) and IDL (Interactive Data Language), the two main programs we would use to complete our work. I was amazed by how much knowledge was required, and though I was slightly intimidated I was very excited to start working. We started off reducing the data that had been collected from an observing run in 2006, which meant subtracting out noise from the atmosphere and the equipment. We also started reading up on our cluster, studies that had been done on stars like those in our cluster, and charge coupled devices (CCD) or the device used to take pictures. We then took our pictures and identified stars within the cluster, beginning to find stars whose light output did not vary over time. Since our end goal was to find stars with a varying light output, we would use these static stars for comparisons. We went through lists of thousands of stars, editing programs many times to find our periodic stars. As it turned%2

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Catrina Hamilton-Drager


Tyler Richey-Yowell (2017)

Updated Videos for Analysis in Introductory Physics

Video analysis is an important tool in a hands-on introductory physics curriculum such as Dickinson's Workshop Physics. A number of the videos we use in class are outdated and in need of updating. A current major in our department is very interested in taking the lead on this project, and we are proposing a Dana Research Assistantship for Summer 2015 to support the efforts of two students in cataloging, remaking, and adding to the department's video collection. The completion of this project would not only be extremely beneficial for the department, but would also serve as an excellent learning experience for the students involved.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: David Jackson


Joel Todd Schwendemann (1996)

Research Corp-Pfister 1995

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Hans Pfister


Angel Shiwakoti (2017)

NSF: Interactive Video Vignettes

8 week summer internship at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Emerita Laws


Angel Shiwakoti (2017)

NSF: Interactive Video Vignettes

8 week summer internship at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Emerita Laws


Kevin Joseph Skowronski (2017)

Synchronization in Networks of Electrical Self-Oscillators

I propose to experimentally study the synchronization behavior of a network of electronic self-oscillators. A recent paper of mine in Physical Review E showed that such synchronization could occur in a network of all-to-all coupled Wien-bridge oscillators. However, this paper did not yet explore the detailed role of the network topology. The idea, then, for the summer research would be to explore how the route to synchronization depends on the connectivity of the network. One could imagine building a lattice of oscillators, where oscillators only communicate locally. Can global sync establish itself in such lattices? From a lattice, one could then move to a small-world network by adding random long-range connections between oscillators. Here the expectation would be of a much enhanced robustness of the synchronized state. Another related aspect of the project would be to experimentally look for so-called chimera states in oscillator chains, as well as other spatial patterns of synchronization. Generally speaking, the literature in this field is dominated by numerical and theoretical studies. What makes this project particularly noteworthy is its experimental nature.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Lars English


Deborah Velat Smith (1990)

Development of a Cold Plasma Source and Diagnostics to Study Plasma

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1989
Professor: Guy Vandegrift


Ryan Alan Stearrett (2007)

Engineering plane-wave dispersion curves to study different nonlinear instabilities leading to pattern formation in electrical transmission lines

We propose to study wave propagation in electrical transmission lines consisting of a number of discrete circuit elements (capacitors and inductors) in sequence. It is known that sinusoidal voltage waves (plane waves) can propagate down this electronic lattice. If nonlinear capacitors (reversed-biased diodes) are used, spatially localized "solitons" can exist in addition to the plane waves, which have the unusual property of remaining sharply focused as they travel (no dispersion). In this proposed study, we would focus on engineering the plane-wave spectrum (dispersion curve) via a feedback mechanism and to characterize the resulting effect on the nonlinear instabilities of plane waves. If the analogy to magnetic spin-lattices holds true in this system, we should see a suppression of the typical modulational instability under certain feedback conditions.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Lars English


Juntian Tao (2016)

NSF: Interactive Video Vignettes

8 week summer internship at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Emerita Laws


Michael A Vecchio (2014)

Piezoelectric Prototype Mirror Fabrication for NASA SMART-X Telescope

Piezoelectric thin films provide a promising avenue to replace current lightweight optics in the field of X-ray telescope design. My project aims to fabricate the adaptive optics for the Square Meter Arc Second Resolution X-ray Telescope known as SMART-X. By creating a telescope with a much larger collection area than existing forms of x-ray optical devices, the improved resolution would allow one to see the formation of galaxies and black holes in our universe. The unique aspect of this project at Penn State is that it is giving me exposure to advanced technology and tools that I have not had experience with prior to coming here. Through this project, I also think that I will gain respect for the wide range of knowledge this project requires. Since the project is such a large undertaking, I am forced to collaborate with more people than I am used to. In my previous experiences doing research, I have not had to rely on previously acquired data in order to complete on a project. The SMART-X project will teach me how to interact as part of a greater whole, eventually developing skills that will aid my performance as a team member.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Jeremy Dane Wachtel (1993)

Interaction of a Plasma Current with a Stationary Axial Current

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Hans Pfister


Andrew Joseph Wayne (1993)

Parallel Parsing Techniques

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1990
Professor: Ann Hill


Stephanie Ellis Williams (1992)

Adsorption of 222 Rn by open-faced and barrier charcoal canisters in the presence of different temperatures and humidities

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: John Luetzelschwab


Zhuwei Zeng (2016)

Experimental Verification of the Subpopulation Approach to the Finite Kuramoto Model

Many systems in nature exhibit spontaneous synchronization, a decentralized collective agreement on a constant cyclic rate. The most important manifestation of this behavior in humans arises in the heart: the pacemaker cells agree on a consistent beating rhythm without needing a governing oscillator to dictate that rhythm. The canonical model for analyzing the emergence of spontaneous synchronization is the Kuramoto model. The model can be stated very simply, yet it exhibits rich phenomena. I have recently developed a new theoretical representation of the model that lends itself to predictions for small populations of oscillators. The new representation depends upon a number of symmetries in the underlying Kuramoto model that may not hold in real systems. Does the theory provide useful predictions in spite of these asymmetries? The goal of this project is to build a collection of coupled electronic oscillators and find out.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: David Mertens


Physics and Astronomy

Hillel Paz Hauck Finder ()

Synchronization Phenomena in Physical and Electronic Systems

I propose to continue my lab's multi-year experimental study of the spontaneous synchronization of (A) a pair of metronomes, and (B) a network of electronic self-oscillators.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Lars English


Political Science

Sidney Jayne Bashago (2002)

Finding the "where" and "how": Geography and Implementation in Pennsylvania Welfare Reform

One of the reforms of welfare (in the 1996 legislation) was the transfer of primary authority for welfare from the national government to state goverments. During the period of this transfer, welfare caseloads declined dramatically (51%). We propose to explore the causes of this decline in Pennsylvania. This project represents the continuation of a project begun last summer (as part of student faculty research). We will gather county-level data and conduct surveys in order to test a series of hypotheses about the role of implementation and geography (particularly urbanity) on welfare caseload decline. In particular, we will use the quantitative model to assess variation by county in caseload decline, and we will use a more qualitative model to explore the effects of CAO culture on caseload decline.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: James Sloat


Elizabeth Markman Becker (2020)

The Religious Life of Legal Death: Capital Punishment in the Anthropocene

Recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court have raised questions about the religious rights of prisoners at the moment of execution, as well as what these rights may have to say about the meaning of torture and "cruel and unusual" punishment. This project draws from historical and philosophical accounts of both secularism and capital punishment, sociological interrogations of religious and legal "control" over who lives and who dies, and death penalty jurisprudence in order to question whether these new decisions represent a return to punitively-oriented spectacles of state power and/or if they illuminate a nascent - and troubling - trend in the undermining of the protections afforded to religious inmates by the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Kathryn Heard


Lingwei Cheng (2014)

Chinese Veterans Protests in the Reform Period (2000-2012)

I wish to hire Ms. Lingwei Cheng as my RA for the fall semester. During this time Lingwei will plumb the numerous online sources that have become available in Chinese in the last decade or so, mainly on social networking websites, including blogs, local government websites, court records, microblogs, newletters and pamplets, with regard to the political, economic, and social factors that have resulted in veterans protests. Why, in contrast to most the world, do veterans protest in China? Many veterans in China, like others with various grievances, have taken to the internet to connect with others and voice their discontent, sometimes directly and sometimes more obliquely. This source can be a valuable addition to more traditional ones, such as newspapers, journals, and scholarly analysis producted in the PRC about veterans' problems (little of this deals with protest, which is still sensitive). In addition to locating these materials, Lingwei will also provide me with a first-cut at translation of the text. LIngwei and I will communicate regularly about the research, either through Skype, email or telephone. Lingwei is the perfect person for this job. She is very well versed in Chinese media sources (she wrote a paper on the media's role in litigation for my class and later presented it at the regional meeting of the Association for Asian Studies), and she is a Political Science major who is very familiar with my previous work. I am applying for a Dana largely because the US Army War College, which is funding my sabbatical, wants me to produce scholarship that is of interest to the US military, and this necessitated a change from my initial sabbatial project which did not have a military focus.

Term Funded:fall 2012
Professor: Neil Diamant


Daniel William DeArment (1993)

Preparation and Editing of Constitutional Law Texts

Preparation and Editing of Constitutional Law Texts

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Harold Pohlman


Daniel William DeArment (1993)

Curriculum Revision and Textbook Development for Constitutional Law Courses

Curriculum Revision and Textbook Development for Constitutional Law Courses

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Harold Pohlman


Gabriella Kimberly Farrell (2021)

A Right Turn in Latin America?

In light of recent electoral victories by conservative parties in Latin America, particularly the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil-an ex-army captain who is openly sympathetic to militaristic and authoritarian political alternatives-astute observers have proclaimed a region-wide shift to the rightIs Latin America. But, is Latin America in the midst of a region-wide turn to the right? According to most experts, 2019 appears to be a key year to address this question. Elections in three countries-Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia-will likely shape the regional landscape in the years to come. This semester I will be tracking the dynamics of those elections and writing about their larger political implications, as well as their implications for scholarly debates on electoral dynamics in the region. I suspect that a left-wing party will win elections in Argentina and Bolivia, though not in Uruguay, which will further complicate existing arguments about the "right turn" in the region.

Term Funded:fall 2020
Professor: Santiago Anria


Layne Alison Feldman (2010)

Research on the Congressional Women's Caucus

The goal of this project is to compile information on the voting behavior of the female members of Congress, with particular attention to their behavior in civil rights policy, defined broadly to include racial minorities, women and LGBT communities. In particular, I hope to use this research to add depth and breadth to my ongoing research on the voting behavior of the Congressional Tri-Caucus, which includes the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific American Caucuses. I already have statistical information indicating that female members tend to be more liberal than their male counterparts when it comes to specific types of legislation, but I would like to flesh that out to understand what the implications are for groups that are often marginalized in the political arena.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Vanessa Tyson


Benjamin Samuel Fleming (2019)

Instagram and the United States Congress

In this project, I will be studying how members of the United States House of Representatives use their Instagram accounts. This will be - to the best of my knowledge - the first such study that has been conducted. I will be collecting data on posts over a 6 month time period. The goal will be to code the posts for certain attributes (i.e. the location of the photo, how long the caption was, etc.), and then to run a statistical analysis that identifies the predictors of these kinds of posts. This study should be relevant to anyone with an interest in political communication, representation, and other topics.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: David O'Connell


Benjamin Samuel Fleming (2019)

Instagram and the United States Congress (tentative)

In this project, I will be studying how members of the United States House of Representatives use their Instagram accounts. This will be - to the best of my knowledge - the first such study that has been conducted. I will be collecting data on posts over a 6 month time period. The goal will be to code the posts for certain attributes (i.e. the location of the photo, how long the caption was, etc.), and then to run a statistical analysis that identifies the predictors of these kinds of posts. This study should be relevant to anyone with an interest in political communication, representation, and other topics.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: David O'Connell


Sadie R Fowler ()

Building 'Little Punjab'' in West London? Southall Migrants' Experiences in their Own Words

Building 'Little Punjab'' in West London? Southall Migrants' Experiences in their Own Words

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Kristine Mitchell


Pamela Fukuda (1993)

When Death Comes Knocking: The Right to Die on the Edge of Eternity

When Death Comes Knocking: The Right to Die on the Edge of Eternity

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: James Hoefler


Caitlin Steirman Goss (2008)

"Like Donkeys Killed After Grinding the Wheat: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Martial Citizenship and Patriotism in China"

During the academic year 2006-7 I completed a draft of my book manuscript, the main goal of my sabbatical leave. Comprised of seven substantial chapters in addition to an introduction and conclusion, the manuscript will be shipped to the publisher on August 15, 2007. I would like to hire a Dana Assistant (Caitlin Goss_ for 8 hours a week for 26 weeks to improve, polish, and fill in some gaps in the text. These tasks will include editing, proofreading, map-making, preparing a Chinese glossary, bibliography and searching for new sources on veterans in three other Asian counties, among others. All of these tasks will benefit the student in terms of substance (they will learn a lot about China and improve their Chinese), and learning about the research and editing process. She will also learn new skills. If reviewers from the press will get back comments in the early winter, with the Dana Assistant's help, I will be able to submit to the press a revised, complete and read-to-go manuscript by the end of the spring semester.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: Neil Diamant


Ilana Jessica Gruber (2020)

Citizenship Rights and Democracy in Latin America

I am applying for a Dana Research Assistantship so I may complete two projects in the summer of 2018. The first project is on political parties and citizenship rights. Recent research shows that if we study organizational characteristics of parties in power the differences between cases in the "moderate" and the "radical" strands of the Latin American left are less stark than we initially thought. Uruguay's FA, for instance, has more in common with Bolivia's MAS than with Brazil's PT-particularly in its degree of openness and responsiveness to the party's social bases. Bolivia and Uruguay are, in many ways, representative of broader regional trends of the early twenty-first century: both cases experienced a dramatic growth of the middle class, the expansion of social programs benefiting large groups, notable declines in social and economic inequalities, and the increased access of subordinate social groups to national decision-making arenas. This project explores how party organizational attributes of the MAS and the FA and the conditioning effects of institutional arrangements have shaped these outcomes. It also explains how underlying pressures generated by each party's social bases have constrained progress in areas that are crucial to sustaining important advances made in the past decade, such as tax, education, and health reform. The second project is on Bolivian democracy. It will seek to answer whether present-day Bolivia can be classified as a democracy, or whether it has degenerated into an authoritarian regime. This project updates my earlier research and findings on this topic and it aims to refine widely used concepts in political science.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Santiago Anria


Mychal Ruth Herber (2019)

Exit Poll 2018 - PA Voters' Perceptions of Women in Politics

This scholarly project is a continuation of the Cumberland County Exit Poll that I have coordinated each of the past two even-numbered Election Years (2014 and 2016). On the fall 2016 questionnaire, we asked respondents to select reasons why more women do not hold elected office in the United States. We plan to expand this project further in fall 2018, asking more questions about the perceptions PA voters have related to gender and politics. Additionally we plan to expand the geographic scope of the project gathering responses in Cumberland, Lehigh, and Allegheny Counties.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Sarah Niebler


Mychal Ruth Herber (2019)

Campaign Contributions following Mass Shootings: What Impact do NRA Scores Have?

The second scholarly project I seek research assistance on is a new project I am just beginning to explore. We are interested in examining the degree to which campaign contributions to members of congress are affected by mass shootings. In addition to seeing the effect of mass shootings on candidates' fundraising in general, we also plan to analyze whether the NRA-PVF rankings/grades have any effect on campaign contributions to legislators following mass shootings.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Sarah Niebler


Juliana Nicole Horwath (2008)

Bolivian Political Parties Database Project

This is a database-generating project. As part of a larger investigation on Bolivian political parties, I need to develop a systematic database of Bolivia's political party system during the 20th century. The database itself will be an academic contribution (no such database currently exists, either in English or Spanish); as such, it will be publicly available online. Additionally, the database will then be used for at least one conference paper (to be presented in the Spring), with hope of turning this into an article soon after. The database will also serve as a starting point for a larger multi-case study for which I am the Bolivian investigator (we have applied for an NSF grant for 2008-2010). The duties of the student will primarily include indexing, organizing bibliographical material, fact-checking, and database organization & design, as well as some archival work (when appropriate). The student co-researcher must be able to read in Spanish.

Term Funded:Year 2008
Professor: Miguel Centellas


Brian Edward Kamoie (1993)

When Death Comes Knocking: Deathright

When Death Comes Knocking: Deathright

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: James Hoefler


Brian Edward Kamoie (1993)

The Right to Die: A Comparative Analysis

The Right to Die: A Comparative Analysis

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: James Hoefler


Amie Elizabeth Knauer (2004)

Television News Coverage of Speaker of the House, 1969-2001

Scholarship on congressional leadership and media (Harris 1998; Melechan & Reagan 2001) document an increase in coverage of speakers of the House on television news over time. They use this evidence to argue leaders' power has been enhanced. As I have argued before "more coverage" does not necessarily result in "more power" because the nature of media coverage is often adversarial and beyond the control of politicians (Larson 1989). It is the purpose of this study to examine the actual television news coverage of Speaker of the House by content analyzing a sample of stories from 1969 to 2001. Variables of particular interest will be tone, conflict, prominence, and Speaker control of the story. Most of these stories have already been obtained using a grant from the Dirksen Congressional Center.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Stephanie Larson


Thomas William Kozdron (2018)

"Intersecting Interests: Diversity in Organizational Advocacy and Representation"

This project focuses on the representation of disadvantaged groups via organizations and policymakers. More specifically, it considers how intersections of identity (e.g., race and class, gender and sexuality) are represented by advocacy groups and whether this intersectionality is reflected in policies taken up in state legislatures. Data on the policy priorities of organizations have already been collected via an original survey of over 200 advocacy groups across 14 U.S. states. The next stage of the project examines whether these same policy topics are reflected in state legislative agendas. To answer this question, we will search state legislative records for the policy issues mentioned by survey respondents and record the movement of these bills. This is one of the first studies to examine intersectional representation in state organizational and legislative agendas. Work from the first stage of the project has been published in several academic journals; data gathered from the second stage of the project will provide the foundation for future student-faculty collaboration on an academic paper and will be used as part of Professor Marchetti's larger book project.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Thomas William Kozdron (2018)

Gubernatorial Elections and Coattail Effects of Female Candidates

Political scientists often seek to understand the factors that shape people's chances of being elected to public office. One of these factors is the effect that well-known political leaders can have on candidacies of people running for lower profile offices further "down ballot." This tendency is known as "coattail effects." Much of the existing research on coattail effects focuses on the president's ability to attract votes for congressional candidates of the same political party. However, coattail effects could be explored for other identities that describe a candidate such as gender. In this project, we plan to examine the degree to which coattail effects exist not just at the party-level, but with respect to gender as well. More specifically, we want to explore whether female candidates for governor attract votes for female candidates in state legislative races down ballot.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Sarah Niebler, Kathleen Marchetti


Molly Elizabeth LaBelle (2019)

Instagram and the United States Congress

In this project, I will be studying how members of the United States House of Representatives use their Instagram accounts. This will be - to the best of my knowledge - the first such study that has been conducted. I will be collecting data on posts over a 6 month time period. The goal will be to code the posts for certain attributes (i.e. the location of the photo, how long the caption was, etc.), and then to run a statistical analysis that identifies the predictors of these kinds of posts. This study should be relevant to anyone with an interest in political communication, representation, and other topics.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: David O'Connell


Jillian Louise Laux (2010)

Investigation of the socialization effect of the European Union's ERASMUS university exchange program

The research project we conducted was intended to investigate the role of the European Union's ERASMUS university exchange program in fostering European identity - a shared 'we' feeling that transcends national identity - among program participations. We hypothesized that students who participated in ERASMUS programs to study abroad in another EU member country would tend to identify themselves as more 'European' than students who did not participate in such programs. We also believed that ERASMUS participation would increase students' knowledge of and interest in the European Union, other European countries and other Europeans. To test these hypotheses, we designed a survey, administered it to ERASMUS and non-ERASMUS (French) students studying in Toulouse in the Spring of 2009 and compared the survey responses of the two groups. Questions asked about European identification, attachment to the EU, interest in other Europeans, multilingualism, knowledge about the EU, and a host of other questions. Jillian was studying in Toulouse during this time and her on-site presence facilitated the distribution of the survey to relevant students at five different universities. Our survey was bilingual (offering students either a French or and English option) and administered online. During the two months the survey was 'live' we received around 60 responses.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Kristine Mitchell


Peter John Moore (1993)

Political Cultures and the Collection of Official Statistics

Political Cultures and the Collection of Official Statistics

Term Funded:Summer 1992
Professor: Stephen Erfle


Katelyn Anne Musgrave (2012)

Digital literacies in the Dickinson College Class of 2014: a qualitative assessment

A qualitative study of the digital literacies of incoming students at Dickinson, surveying the whole class but focused on one First Year Seminar, will yield insight into how digital media can be effectively deployed in education. A second phase will attempt to apply lessons learned to a Middle East media class in spring 2011. Results will be reported within Dickinson and through conference presentations and articles. A Dana assistant will help with data processing and research in secondary materials.

Term Funded:YearYear 2011
Professor: Edward Webb


Gerald Patrick Neugebauer (2000)

Voluntary Terminal Dehydration (VTD) Handbook

Voluntary Terminal Dehydration (VTD) Handbook

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: James Hoefler


Michael Joseph O'Brien (2009)

Seizing Domestic Tranquility: Federal Military Intervention between the World Wars (1919-1940)

Breakdowns in political order associated with labor or race violence have at times required American presidents to use federal military force internally. Yet, quantitative research into when and why presidents respond to violent emergencies with military force-as opposed to letting states manage their own societal dislocations-remains limited. Building upon an ongoing investigation into patterns of federal military intervention, a senior political science major named Zak Rosenberg and I will convert roughly 2000 digitized newspaper articles into a dataset that contains over 350 cases of state or federal uses of military force. We will follow protocols I developed for earlier datasets, which code a variety of internal military force use to quell labor, race, and political violence. Federal military intervention during the interwar years (1919 to 1940) was unusually high, marking a transition toward expansions in federal law enforcement and contributing to the emergence of the "modern" presidency. This research posits a political-economy explanation for the increase in federal intervention and endeavors to expand upon investigation into presidential decisions to use soldiers as police.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Daniel Kenney


Lawrence J Olson (1996)

Challenging the Elite Perspective of American Government

Challenging the Elite Perspective of American Government

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Stephanie Larson


Edwin Jordan Padilla (2016)

Historical Simulations for Research and Critical Thought in the Humanities

Background: One of the ways we can use technology to ask new questions and allow learners to view a complex system is through simulations. While simulations are common in the sciences, they are used much less frequently in the humanities. At Dickinson, however, we have successfully used simulations using computer games to allow students to apply theories from their reading and help provoke critical discussion and questions. One of these courses has been Professor Ed Webb's interdisciplinary senior seminar "Empire". One section of the course is dedicated to covering the colonization of the Americas by Spain. Specifically, Professor Webb has the students consider an array of factors that allowed an extremely small number of Spanish soldiers to conquer what at the time was an extremely large and powerful empire, the Aztecs. Contrary to common belief, Tzvetan Todorov's book, "The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other" argues that technology and disease were not the only significant factors that led to the Aztecs ultimate defeat. Instead, it was Cortes's understanding of the Aztec's culture belief in fate and "signs" that ultimately led to his victory. To help students understand the array of factors against Cortes and his Spanish army that made his knowledge of Aztec beliefs so crucial, Todd Bryant created a historical simulation using the game Civilization IV, which to the greatest extent possible, recreates the two empires with military, economic, and diplomatic resources they possessed at the time. By playing the simulation, students experience just how large and advanced the Aztec empire was in comparison to the Europeans in the time of Columbus, and that a military campaign alone would have been essentially suicidal. More information regarding how the simulation was created and integrated into the course is available via Professor Webb's article for Academic Commons here, http://www.academiccommons.org/2013/09/learning-together-with-games-civilization-and-empire/ Project: The goal for this project would be to first to update the Spain/Aztec empire simulation for Civilization V, the latest in the Civilization series, and modify another existing simulation depicting the colonization of Africa to improve its historical accuracy. The update to Civ V is required because Civ IV is not supported on the latest Windows operating systems. Civ V also has improved capabilities that will allow students to create more detailed simulations. The second simulation of Africa during the period of colonization will be a modification of a historical simulation released as an expansion pack for Civ V. While the simulation already exists, students will need to evaluate it for accuracy and make adjustments where possible. These simulations will then be integrated into Professor Webb's future Empire seminars and may be of use for other courses as well. In addition to these simulations being beneficial to future courses, we also feel the students working on the project will be engaged in rewarding academic work throughout the summer. Students will be required to conduct extensive research of the world in each of the time period. They will also need to develop a sophisticated understanding of how a number of geo-political variables interact in an international context. To create the simulation itself, students will also need to develop technical competencies, including XML and at least an understanding of the logic that governs computer programming.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Edward Webb


Baylie E Rubin (2018)

Gender and Lobbying, Gender and Coattail Effects

1) Gender and Lobbying: In this project we seek to learn how men and women lobbyists differ in terms of their issue focus, the types of lobby organizations they work for, and their experiences working in the lobbying field. 2) Gender and Coattails: Using electoral data from gubernatorial and state legislative races in 2014, this paper examines the degree to which female candidates for governor attract votes for female candidates for state legislative races down ticket.

Term Funded:Fall 2018
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Baylie E Rubin (2018)

Interest Groups and Social Media

This project with a co-author at Penn State University explores how interest groups engage their supporters and the public via social media. Analysis of political phenomena via social media is becoming increasingly common in political science but none of the studies thus far have considered how interest groups use social media to engage policymakers, the public, and their constituents. We will build an original dataset connecting Twitter data with federal Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) reports to examine how interest groups use social media to engage various issues. Do organizations engage both policymakers and the public on the same set of issues? Are there issues that groups discuss with policymakers but want to keep out of the public eye? This project will allow us to answer these and other questions related to social media and politics.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Patrick David Schlee (2015)

Historical Simulations for Research and Critical Thought in the Humanities

Background: One of the ways we can use technology to ask new questions and allow learners to view a complex system is through simulations. While simulations are common in the sciences, they are used much less frequently in the humanities. At Dickinson, however, we have successfully used simulations using computer games to allow students to apply theories from their reading and help provoke critical discussion and questions. One of these courses has been Professor Ed Webb's interdisciplinary senior seminar "Empire". One section of the course is dedicated to covering the colonization of the Americas by Spain. Specifically, Professor Webb has the students consider an array of factors that allowed an extremely small number of Spanish soldiers to conquer what at the time was an extremely large and powerful empire, the Aztecs. Contrary to common belief, Tzvetan Todorov's book, "The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other" argues that technology and disease were not the only significant factors that led to the Aztecs ultimate defeat. Instead, it was Cortes's understanding of the Aztec's culture belief in fate and "signs" that ultimately led to his victory. To help students understand the array of factors against Cortes and his Spanish army that made his knowledge of Aztec beliefs so crucial, Todd Bryant created a historical simulation using the game Civilization IV, which to the greatest extent possible, recreates the two empires with military, economic, and diplomatic resources they possessed at the time. By playing the simulation, students experience just how large and advanced the Aztec empire was in comparison to the Europeans in the time of Columbus, and that a military campaign alone would have been essentially suicidal. More information regarding how the simulation was created and integrated into the course is available via Professor Webb's article for Academic Commons here, http://www.academiccommons.org/2013/09/learning-together-with-games-civilization-and-empire/ Project: The goal for this project would be to first to update the Spain/Aztec empire simulation for Civilization V, the latest in the Civilization series, and modify another existing simulation depicting the colonization of Africa to improve its historical accuracy. The update to Civ V is required because Civ IV is not supported on the latest Windows operating systems. Civ V also has improved capabilities that will allow students to create more detailed simulations. The second simulation of Africa during the period of colonization will be a modification of a historical simulation released as an expansion pack for Civ V. While the simulation already exists, students will need to evaluate it for accuracy and make adjustments where possible. These simulations will then be integrated into Professor Webb's future Empire seminars and may be of use for other courses as well. In addition to these simulations being beneficial to future courses, we also feel the students working on the project will be engaged in rewarding academic work throughout the summer. Students will be required to conduct extensive research of the world in each of the time period. They will also need to develop a sophisticated understanding of how a number of geo-political variables interact in an international context. To create the simulation itself, students will also need to develop technical competencies, including XML and at least an understanding of the logic that governs computer programming. Background One of the ways we can use technology to ask new questions and allow learners to view a complex system is through simulations. While simulations are common in the sciences, they are used much less frequently in the humanities. At Dickinson, however, we have successfully used simulations using computer games to allow students to apply theories from their reading and help provoke critical discussion and questions. One of these courses has been Professor Ed Webb's interdisciplinary senior seminar "Empire". One section of the course is dedicated to covering the colonization of the Americas by Spain. Specifically, Professor Webb has the students consider an array of factors that allowed an extremely small number of Spanish soldiers to conquer what at the time was an extremely large and powerful empire, the Aztecs. Contrary to common belief, Tzvetan Todorov's book, "The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other" argues that technology and disease were not the only significant factors that led to the Aztecs ultimate defeat. Instead, it was Cortes's understanding of the Aztec's culture belief in fate and "signs" that ultimately led to his victory. To help students understand the array of factors against Cortes and his Spanish army that made his knowledge of Aztec beliefs so crucial, Todd Bryant created a historical simulation using the game Civilization IV, which to the greatest extent possible, recreates the two empires with military, economic, and diplomatic resources they possessed at the time. By playing the simulation, students experience just how large and advanced the Aztec empire was in comparison to the Europeans in the time of Columbus, and that a military campaign alone would have been essentially suicidal. More information regarding how the simulation was created and integrated into the course is available via Professor Webb's article for Academic Commons here, http://www.academiccommons.org/2013/09/learning-together-with-games-civilization-and-empire/ Project The goal for this project would be to first to update the Spain/Aztec empire simulation for Civilization V, the latest in the Civilization series, and modify another existing simulation depicting the colonization of Africa to improve its historical accuracy. The update to Civ V is required because Civ IV is not supported on the latest Windows operating systems. Civ V also has improved capabilities that will allow students to create more detailed simulations. The second simulation of Africa during the period of colonization will be a modification of a historical simulation released as an expansion pack for Civ V. While the simulation already exists, students will need to evaluate it for accuracy and make adjustments where possible. These simulations will then be integrated into Professor Webb's future Empire seminars and may be of use for other courses as well. In addition to these simulations being beneficial to future courses, we also feel the students working on the project will be engaged in rewarding academic work throughout the summer. Students will be required to conduct extensive research of the world in each of the time period. They will also need to develop a sophisticated understanding of how a number of geo-political variables interact in an international context. To create the simulation itself, students will also need to develop technical competencies, including XML and at least an understanding of the logic that governs computer programming.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Edward Webb


Rebecca O'Brien Smith (2000)

Vanishing Caseloads: Exploring the Effects of Welfare Reform

Vanishing Caseloads: Exploring the Effects of Welfare Reform

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: James Sloat


Emma Dietrich Spector (2019)

The Pink Collars Project: Do Women Lobbyists Represent the Interests of Women-dominated Industry Sectors?

Pink Collars Project: This project is an extension of the Gender and Lobbying project (co-authored with Tim LaPira, James Madison University and Herschel Thomas, University of Texas- Arlington) where we match Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) industry codes with federal government North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes for economic industry sectors. We will use this data crosswalk of classification codes to understand whether gendered patterns in lobbying mirror gendered patterns of work across a variety of industries. Specifically, we seek to answer the question: do women lobbyists represent the interests of women-dominated industry sectors?

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Emma Dietrich Spector (2019)

Interest Groups and Social Media Project

Interest Groups and Social Media Project: This project (co-authored with Marie Hojnacki, Penn State University) explores how interest groups engage their supporters and the public via social media. More specifically, we consider how interest groups lobbying the federal government on healthcare issues use Twitter to "go public" with their policy agendas. Do lobbyists engage members of Congress and the general public on the same set of issues? Are certain types of interests (e.g., business groups vs. non-profit organizations) more or less likely to "go public" with their issue agendas?

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Kathleen Marchetti


Samuel Heath Waltman (2020)

Creating engaging syllabi for two new courses to be taught in Bologna

A senior or junior Education Studies major also majoring in a relevant second major will assist me in researching and designing syllabi for two new courses to be delivered in Bologna, Italy, 2020-22. The courses are INST/POSC290 Mediterranean Politics and INST/POSC290 Media & Politics in Europe. Notable features of these courses include their interdisciplinarity and the ambition to identify and make productive use of place-based educational resources. The collaboration would involve us working together to: research the latest and most important theories and findings in these fields; analyze how others teach similar/related courses; identify productive readings and other materials that will work well in off-campus study, where printed materials may not be readily available; and analyze ways to make use of place-based and other active learning techniques in these courses.

Term Funded:Fall 2020
Professor: Edward Webb


Margaret D Wiggins (2015)

Resiliency and Special Operations and Intelligence Officers

Kim Dozier, the 2014-2015 Bradley Chair, plans to write a 250-page book on resilience and the clandestine force, including intelligence officers and special operators, compiling anonymous stories of their individual struggles to balance combat or conflict with time at home. The book would be a self-help guide for the quiet professionals who know what to do when you give them a tool. It will also illustrate the challenges facing the force likely to carry the burdens of war far into the future, as the United States continues its efforts against Al Qaeda and groups like the Islamic State. Ms. Dozier is looking for a student to help her with library and online research on the topic of resiliency and combat stress. She also seeks assistance transcribing interview tapes that cover confidential and personal matters, requiring a student who has the maturity to keep such confidences, as well as transcribing accurately.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Kimberly Dozier


Psychology

Leodor Altidor (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Megan Yost


Leodor Altidor (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Teresa Barber


Melanie Alyse Baime (2021)

Conversational Influences on Recall of Personally Meaningful Events

We will study of the effects of autobiographical memory conversations on what is shared and how. In my research area, theoretical work points to the importance of conversations about life experiences in influencing the way people make connections between memory and a sense of self. However, due to the difficulty of observing natural conversations in a controlled way, little empirical work on the matter involves people talking about pivotal events in their lives. In work on eyewitness testimony, researchers orchestrate events to be witnessed, such as staged thefts or car accidents, and then attempt to skew people's memories to test if eyewitness errors will emerge. They have shown that memories can be influenced in these contexts. Most of our life experiences are far less controlled: important events are not always high-intensity, and the conversations we have with friends and loved ones happen in varied ways. By studying memory conversations, we can explore the influences that others have on our memories in everyday circumstances.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Azriel Grysman


Imani Regina Beard (2017)

Behavioral Treatments of Alzheimer's model in the day-old chick

"For the research that was performed this summer, the overall objective was first to see if we could induced short term memory loss and if so, using this chemical if we can reverse its affects using both social and environmental stimulants. The test participants were daily batches of 20 day-old chicks. Our research was broken down into 3 smaller experiments. The first was the verification of scopolamine as an agent that could be used for short-term amnesia. In the first experiment, half of the chicks were injected with scopolamine directly into their brain while the other was given saline as a control. They were trained before and after being injected and then they were tested based on the taste-avoidance paradigm using MeA. The second experiment was built on the first experiment after scopolamine was proven as a chemical that can be used to induce short term amnesia. The chicks were again trained before injection but this time they were trained with a bead that had either just MeA or a bead that had both MeA and almond extract so that the enhanced smell may provide cues for the chick's memory. The last experiment included the training involved in experiment with the difference being that they were housed in groups of either two or four. Overall, we were had significant data that proved that Scopolamine produced significant amnesia in the MeA bead, but when you used the almond bead, there was not amnesia. For the research that was performed this summer, the overall objective was first to see if we could induced short term memory loss and if so, using this chemical if we can reverse its affects using both social and environmental stimulants. The test participants were daily batches of 20 day-old chicks. Our research was broken down into 3 smaller experiments. The first was the verification of scopolamine as an agent that could be used for short-term amnesia. In the first experiment, half of the chicks were injected with scopolamine directly into their brain while the other was given saline as a control. They were trained before and after being injected and then they were tested based on the taste-avoidance paradigm using MeA. The second experiment was built on the first experiment after scopolamine was proven as a chemical that can be used to induce short term amnesia. The chicks were again trained before injection but this time they were trained with a bead that had either just MeA or a bead that had both MeA and almond extract so that the enhanced smell may provide cues for the chick's memory. The last experiment included the training involved in experiment with the difference being that they were housed in groups of either two or four. Overall, we were had significant data that proved that Scopolamine produced significant amnesia in the MeA bead, but when you used the almond bead, there was not amnesia. "

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Teresa Barber


Lisa Marie Bollwage (2008)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Margaret Xiaomei Booth (2019)

Measuring Change Over Time: A Longitudinal Study of Parent Involvement and Student Engagement Across Two School Transitions

Measuring Change Over Time: A Longitudinal Study of Parent Involvement and Student Engagement Across Two School Transitions

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: Naila Smith


Margaret Xiaomei Booth (2019)

The Impact of Media Representations of Caribbean Immigrants on their Educational Outcomes (Phase II)

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Naila Smith


Margaret Xiaomei Booth (2019)

The Impact of Media Representations of Caribbean Immigrants on their Educational Outcomes (Phase II)

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Naila Smith


Margaret Xiaomei Booth (2019)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Margaret Xiaomei Booth (2019)

Research in the Department of Psychology

Research in the Department of Psychology

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Naila Smith


Jasmine Alaina Britton (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor:


Jasmine Alaina Britton (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Ethan Max Cantor ()

Conversational Influences on Recall of Personally Meaningful Events

We will study of the effects of autobiographical memory conversations on what is shared and how. In my research area, theoretical work points to the importance of conversations about life experiences in influencing the way people make connections between memory and a sense of self. However, due to the difficulty of observing natural conversations in a controlled way, little empirical work on the matter involves people talking about pivotal events in their lives. In work on eyewitness testimony, researchers orchestrate events to be witnessed, such as staged thefts or car accidents, and then attempt to skew people's memories to test if eyewitness errors will emerge. They have shown that memories can be influenced in these contexts. Most of our life experiences are far less controlled: important events are not always high-intensity, and the conversations we have with friends and loved ones happen in varied ways. By studying memory conversations, we can explore the influences that others have on our memories in everyday circumstances.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Azriel Grysman


Allen Gearhart Castner (2007)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Bettina Mariel Cerban (2010)

NIH 1 R15 CA133152-01: Moralization, Risk Perceptions, and Smoking Cessation in the U.S. and denmark

Do smokers truly appreciate the health risks they undertake by smoking? We know little about how people come to believe that they are personally at risk and the role that cultural messages play. One important cultural factor is moralization - the individual and cultural process by which preferences are converted into values. In the proposed research, two studies will be conducted in the U.S. (a smoking-prohibitive culture where smoking is moralized) and Denmark (a smoking-lenient culture where smoking is much less moralized.) Study 1 - a qualitative interview study among U.S. and Danish smokers - will examine whether smokers' perceptions of being targets of moralization are associated with risk perceptions of smoking and willingness to quit.  Study 2 - a longitudinal survey study among representative samples of U.S. and Danish smokers and non-smokers - will examine the extent to which individual moralization predicts risk perceptions of smoking and how these factors among smokers predict willingness to quit. This research will lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs and thereby contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2010 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Alicia Whitney Claggett (2007)

Physical and Sexual Trauma and the Conservation of Resources: Advancing Substance Abuse Research on Women and Gender

This project focuses on the study of individuals recovering from substance abuse in Oxford House-a network of self-supported democratically-operated homes that provide a mutual-help setting for recovering substance abusers. The proposed research will use data that was collected as part of a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)(grant# 5-R01-DA132231) that ended August 31, 2005 and used an accelerated longitudinal design containing four waves of data collected once every four months. Specifically the research will examine this national sample of 896 participants for gender differences in the relationships between trauma history; inter- and extra-personal resources; and recovery processes and outcomes. By working on this project, a student will gain valuable experience as a research assistant related to secondary analyses of a large NIDA research grant, and be involved in both administrative and applied aspects of research (e.g., preparing literature review and data bases for analyses).

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor: Margaret Davis


Alicia Whitney Claggett (2007)

Trauma History, Resources, and Addiction Recovery: Resources, Addictions, and Gender Theories Research in Concert

The proposed study investigates gender similarities and differences in the recovery processes of individuals who suffer from substance dependence, and examines how losses and gains of multi-level coping resources predict successful outcomes. Using a national NIDA-study (grant# 5-R01-DA132231 ) sample of 897 residents of Oxford House-a network of self-supported, democratically-operated homes for recovering substance abusers, the longitudinal data collected as part of NIDA study captures changes in stressors, resources, and substance use over a 1 year interval. Specifically the proposed research will examine gender differences in the relationships between trauma history; intra-, inter-, and extra-personal resources; and recovery processes and outcomes. By collaborating in this research, the student will gain valuable experience working on a large-scale study, being involved in both administrative and applied aspects of research (including conducting data analyses, writing up results for professional publication, and presenting findings at a conference).

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Margaret Davis


Sophia Helen Coates (2018)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Elizabeth Rose Corrigan (2003)

Using a computerized symptom-reporting task with non-students

The summer project will complete an experiment begun this semester. The experiment is intended to advance our understanding of symptom-reporting behavior by asking, Can gender-related variation in self-reported physical symptoms be traced to systematic differences between women and men in the accessibility of symptom memories and/or construals of the symptom-reporting task? The summer project will be devoted to recruiting non-student adults to complete a computer-administered symptom-reporting task and writing a report of the outcome. This proposal requests support for personnel costs and for payments to adults who will be recruited from attendees at summer conferences on the Dickinson campus.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: James Skelton


Kristen Leigh Cunningham (2016)

Sexual consent: Pleasure and danger

Sexual assault, including acquaintance rape, is a significant problem on college campuses and among young adults. Various prevention programs are currently aimed at improving sexual communication ("No means no and yes means yes") and many are based on a black-and-white definition of consent and non-consent. However, recent research suggests that young adults' definitions of sexual consent are not so simplistic, and that the messages around gender and sexuality that young adults are faced with make sexual relationships complex and make negotiating consent complicated. The purpose of the present research is to examine young adults' internalization of messages about gender, sexuality, power, and sexual consent. Using semi-structured interviews, we will explore how individuals think about gender roles, gendered expectations, romantic relationships, and sexual relationships, and how those understandings contribute to their actual negotiations of sexual encounters. This work could ultimately help inform prevention and education programs around healthy sexuality.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Megan Yost


Katherine Anne DeBroeck (2018)

Sexual consent: Pleasure and danger

Sexual assault, including acquaintance rape, is a significant problem on college campuses and among young adults. Various prevention programs are currently aimed at improving sexual communication ("No means no and yes means yes") and many are based on a black-and-white definition of consent and non-consent. However, recent research suggests that young adults' definitions of sexual consent are not so simplistic, and that the messages around gender and sexuality that young adults are faced with make sexual relationships complex and make negotiating consent complicated. The purpose of the present research is to examine young adults' internalization of messages about gender, sexuality, power, and sexual consent. Using semi-structured interviews, we will explore how individuals think about gender roles, gendered expectations, romantic relationships, and sexual relationships, and how those understandings contribute to their actual negotiations of sexual encounters. This work could ultimately help inform prevention and education programs around healthy sexuality.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Megan Yost


Katherine Anne DeBroeck (2018)

Sexual consent: Pleasure and danger

Sexual assault, including acquaintance rape, is a significant problem on college campuses and among young adults. Various prevention programs are currently aimed at improving sexual communication ("No means no and yes means yes") and many are based on a black-and-white definition of consent and non-consent. However, recent research suggests that young adults' definitions of sexual consent are not so simplistic, and that the messages around gender and sexuality that young adults are faced with make sexual relationships complex and make negotiating consent complicated. The purpose of the present research is to examine young adults' internalization of messages about gender, sexuality, power, and sexual consent. Using semi-structured interviews, we will explore how individuals think about gender roles, gendered expectations, romantic relationships, and sexual relationships, and how those understandings contribute to their actual negotiations of sexual encounters. This work could ultimately help inform prevention and education programs around healthy sexuality.

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: Megan Yost


Michelle Menuhah Deitchman (2000)

Localizing a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks That Controls Learning and Memory for a Non-pecking Aversive Task

Localizing a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks That Controls Learning and Memory for a Non-pecking Aversive Task

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Teresa Barber


Michelle Menuhah Deitchman (2000)

n/a

n/a

Term Funded:Fall 1999
Professor: James Skelton


Christina Marie Del Valle (2003)

An Investigation of spatial learning in Wistar-Kyoto rats

The aim of the proposed project is to examine the spatial learning abilities of Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats, which have been proposed as an animal model for treatment-resistant depression. The behavior of the WKY rat is impaired, in similar ways, to depressed humans and the WKY rat shows increased emotionally and reactivity. We recently found learning impairments in WKY rats trained in a food-rewarded radial arm maze. This raises the possibility that the poor performance of WKY rats in other tasks may actually be due to impaired memory for spatial cues. Previous studies with the WKY rat used aversively motivated escape tasks, which increase stress, and therefore confuse emotionally and reactivity with spatial memory abilities. The proposed project will directly test the hypothesis that the WKY rats have difficulty using spatial cues in an elevated plus shaped maze. In this maze, the rat starts from one of two opposite start arms and then must turn right or left to find a food reward. We hypothesize that if the WKY rat is impaired in spatial ability, then they should be able to learn a simple "response learning" paradigm (turn right or left for food reward regardless of where start arm is located), but should be impaired in acquiring a "place learning" paradigm (turn left or right depending on where start arm is located; this task cannot be solved without using spatial cues).

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Teresa Barber


Karen Marie Del Vecchio (2009)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Margaret Carmela Della Vecchia (2010)

NIH 1 R15 DA019866-01: Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Kristyn Diane DiDominick (2004)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Kristyn Diane DiDominick (2004)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Sarah Helweg DiMuccio (2015)

Collaborative Research in Precarious Manhood and Masculinity

Term Funded: 2013
Professor: Megan Yost


Sarah Helweg DiMuccio (2015)

Precarious Manhood in Young Danish Men: An Interview Study

In many cultures around the world, it is believed that real men are not born, and must instead be made. Through interviews with nine Danish, college-aged, heterosexual, Caucasian men, Sarah examined men's thoughts and feelings about the nature of manhood, how it is achieved, if and how it can be list, and the nature of masculinity. It was expected that Danish men would have egalitarian perspectives on gender roles and would see manhood as being more of a biological state that a social state. Data analyses revealed three main clusters: (1) manhood involves appearing physically manly, (2) manhood involves maturity and behaving like an adult, and (3) masculinity is an important part of manhood, but not a necessity. These finding can help better understand how man in a more egalitarian society think about their manhood and masculinity.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Megan Yost


Sarah Helweg DiMuccio (2015)

NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU): The influence of word frequency on the acquisition of new meanings

I have been accepted to an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates, a prestigious NSF funded internship) at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. I am currently working under renowned cognitive psychologist Charles Perfetti in the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. I am working on two projects under two graduate students. The first project is a long-term, ongoing research project in which participants learn a novel language modeled after Thai in order to test which way is the best way to learn an alphasyllaberic language (using symbols instead of letters). For this project I am assisting in data collection and eventually data analysis. I am also assisting a second graduate student with developing a new study and eventually running this study once the materials have been created. Since this study is only in its beginning stages, there is not much to say about it yet. What I can say is that the study will be testing to see how learning new meanings for a word effects the old meanings.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Kathleen Marie Dougherty (2006)

Norepinephrine and the Behavioral Effects of Nicotine

Considerable research has shown that the mesolimbic dopaminergic system mediates the locomotor-activating and rewarding properties of nicotine; properties associated with the addictive potential of nicotine. Recently, several studies have shown that the noradrenergic system interacts with the dopaminergic system to mediate the locomotor-activating and rewarding properties of other addictive drugs (e.g., psychostimulants and opioids). Little research, however, has examined the interaction of the noradrenergic and dopaminergic systems in mediating the locomotor-activating and rewarding properties of nicotine. The present proposed experiment seeks to determine the role of the noradrenergic system in mediating the rewarding and locomotor-activating properties of nicotine. To this end, the effect of the α1-receptor antagonist, prazosin, on nicotine-conditioned place preference and nicotine-induced hyperactivity will be determined. A better understanding of the mechanism(s) by which other neurotransmitter systems interact with the mesolimbic dopaminergic will help gain a richer and more complete understanding of nicotine addiction.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Pamela Dawn Duchars (1996)

Role of the Intermediate Medial Hyperstriatum Ventrale in memory formation for sickness conditioned aversion in chicks.

Role of the Intermediate Medial Hyperstriatum Ventrale in memory formation for sickness conditioned aversion in chicks.

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Teresa Barber


Pamela Dawn Duchars (1996)

Role of the Intermediate Medial Hyperstriatum Ventrale in memory formation for sickness \conditioned aversion in chicks.

Role of the Intermediate Medial Hyperstriatum Ventrale in memory formation for sickness \conditioned aversion in chicks.

Term Funded:Summer 1995
Professor: Teresa Barber


Alaisa Cordes Emery (2012)

Developing a new model of human perception and action under danger or threat

The integration of human perception and action is fairly well understood. However, there currently is not a model to describe how these systems work when danger or threat is present. I am developing such a model. Researching with two students in the summer would allow me to finish a current study and conduct another. These two studies are key to developing and testing the new model. One study investigates top-down influences on perception, the other subconscious influences. The students I would be working with have been in my lab for about two years and have a full understanding both of the model and the studies, and are highly proficient at operating the electrophysiological equipment and analyzing data. The students and I are collaborating with other researchers and have assigned roles and authorship for the project. Students will help in all phases of the project, including help in writing the manuscript.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Jonathan Page


Kelle Diane Falls (2004)

Effects of Unilateral Lesion Studies in Left or Right IMHV on Memory for Two difference Learning Tasks in Day-old Chicks.

The aim of the proposed research in my NSF-RUI grant was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the IMHV, in memory formation in day-old chicks. During the first three years of the grant, my research students collaborated with me to examine the role of the IMHV in memory formation for a one trail water reward task, sickness-conditioned place aversion learning, and conditioned place preference. An important aspect of this research, proposed in the original grant, but as yet undetermined, is whether the effects of our lesions in these tasks are specific to the left or right hemispheres. The approved extension of the NSF-RUI is to examine the effects of unilateral left or right IMHV lesions in the sickness-conditioned place aversion and conditioned place preference tasks (bilateral lesions were not amnestic in the water-reward task). Two students working together during the summer will be able to collect data during the 8 weeks of summer, and the following months of the grant will be devoted to analyses and dissemination of the results. The students will alternate between and become proficient in all components of the research project. Each student will take major responsiblity for one of the projects, and this project will become the focus of their research training. Following this summer of data collection, the students will analyze the results, write reports based on these studies, and then, as is often the case, will attend and present their research, as first authors, at a National Conference.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Teresa Barber


Kelle Diane Falls (2004)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Teresa Barber


Robert Kennedy Flatley (1992)

An Investigation of Intellectual Level during Schizophrenic Disorder

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1991
Professor: Margaret Pepe


Michael Stephen Fogler (2014)

Examining Environmentally-Relevant Attitudes and Behavior

Examining Environmentally-Relevant Attitudes and Behavior

Term Funded:Academic Year 2013
Professor: James Skelton


Gregory Dix Frantz (1997)

Towards a Cognitive Structural Model of Computer Aversion in Multiple Subject Populations

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Walter Chromiak


Gabrielle Bernstein Frenkel (2016)

Behavioral Interventions in a model of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in this country. It is a progressive disorder, whose hallmark symptoms are impaired memory and cognition. The fear of acquiring Alzheimer's has led to the use of a variety of treatments purported to enhance memory. The effectiveness of these treatments is often based on testimonial evidence. We research these treatments to determine if they are actually effective. We produce amnesia in day-old chicks by administering a drug called scopolamine. Previous studies show that many drugs can improve memory. We now seek to understand the effects of a two behavioral treatments, enhanced cue stimulus and increased social interaction. Experiments will assess the ability of these behavioral treatments to ameliorate scopolamine-induced amnesia in our paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Teresa Barber


Emily Louise Furthman (2004)

Effects of Unilateral Lesion Studies in Left or Right IMHV on Memory for Two difference Learning Tasks in Day-old Chicks.

The aim of the proposed research in my NSF-RUI grant was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the IMHV, in memory formation in day-old chicks. During the first three years of the grant, my research students collaborated with me to examine the role of the IMHV in memory formation for a one trail water reward task, sickness-conditioned place aversion learning, and conditioned place preference. An important aspect of this research, proposed in the original grant, but as yet undetermined, is whether the effects of our lesions in these tasks are specific to the left or right hemispheres. The approved extension of the NSF-RUI is to examine the effects of unilateral left or right IMHV lesions in the sickness-conditioned place aversion and conditioned place preference tasks (bilateral lesions were not amnestic in the water-reward task). Two students working together during the summer will be able to collect data during the 8 weeks of summer, and the following months of the grant will be devoted to analyses and dissemination of the results. The students will alternate between and become proficient in all components of the research project. Each student will take major responsiblity for one of the projects, and this project will become the focus of their research training. Following this summer of data collection, the students will analyze the results, write reports based on these studies, and then, as is often the case, will attend and present their research, as first authors, at a National Conference.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Teresa Barber


Emily Louise Furthman (2004)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Teresa Barber


Emily Louise Furthman (2004)

Behavioral model of reinforcement to examine the effects of feedback and goal setting on organizational productivity

Much of the research in Industrial and Organizational psychology focuses on the productivity of the employee. The student will be taken through the research process step by step and will participate (with the guidance of the researcher) on every step of the project. The student will accompany the researcher in meetings with the organization's manager and will assist in the planning stages of the research. This project has scholarly significance because the student will be involved with every aspect of a research project from start to finish. By going through these steps it is my hope that the student will get a clear understanding of the planning that goes into a research project before any data is collected. The student will also be applying the tenets of behavioral theory to a concrete organizational problem, and through conducting an experiment in an actual organization, the student will have a first hand account of the ethics of applied research.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Diane Brockman


Samantha Gerhard (2019)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Kaitlyn Ann Gregory (2014)

How Prior Information and Context Influences Perception

One of my long-term research goals is to develop a new model of perception and action that takes into account how the human central nervous system functions when a threat or danger is present. Numerous studies have shown that our system does operate differntly under stress; a theoretical model is needed to synthesize these findings and give direction for future questions. Related to this is a need to develop techniques to appropriately deal with dangerous or threatening situations. Thus, another goal of mine is to develop a cognitive technique where verbal cues are learned to automatization and used as a tool to reduce stress and increase cognitive functioning and control during such encounters. The research described in this application would further both of these goals.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Jonathan Page


Christopher William Griffith (2001)

Gender differences in symptom-reporting behavior: Examining characteristics of the reporting task.

The summer project will lay groundwork for two experiments, to be conducted during the 2000-01 academic year, on the problem of gender differences in reports of physical symptoms. The experiments are intended to advance our understanding of symptom-reporting behavior by asking, What are respondents doing when they answer health surveys?, and Does variation in respondents' interpretation of survey instructions help explain men's under-reporting of symptoms, relative to women, on retrospective questionnaires? The summer project will be devoted to drafting and pilot-testing the survey questionnaires to be used in the planned experiments and to developing and testing computer software for administering questionnaires and measuring speed of replies to the questionnaire items. This proposal requests support for personnel costs, software purchases, and payments to staff and students who will be recruited for trial runs of our questionnaire and computerized procedure during the summer months.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: James Skelton


Megan K Haggarty (2008)

Acetylcholine, Glutamate, and Learning in a Model of Alzheimer's Disease

An estimated 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, whose symptoms include progressive, marked defecits in perception, cognition, memory, and language. While there is no cure for Alzheimer's, there are two pharmacological treatments, acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and glutamate receptor blockers. There is considerable evidence that both acetylcholine and glutamate are involved in memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease, but the relationship between acetylcholine and glutamate is unclear. The current study seeks to determine the relationship between acetylcholine and glutamate in memory, by examining the effects of memantine in scopolamine-induced amnesia in the day-old chick. Experiments will assess the ability of memantine to ameliorate the amnesia produced by scopolamine and determine the specificity of the effect through the glutamate system.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Teresa Barber


Matthew Delayne Halvorson (2013)

Attributions in Sports

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: James Skelton


Jennifer Catherine Hannett (2000)

Do posttraining IMHV lesions impair retention of a one-trial, water-reward task in day old chicks?

Do posttraining IMHV lesions impair retention of a one-trial, water-reward task in day old chicks?

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Teresa Barber


Andrew Robert Hart (2005)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Andrew Robert Hart (2005)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Megan L Harvey (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Fall 2005
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Megan L Harvey (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Michael Peter Hawrylak (2007)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Michael Peter Hawrylak (2007)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


David Ryan Hengerer (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant: Estimated Savings from Smart Power Strips

Estimated Savings from Smart Power Strips

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: James Skelton


Amanda Marie Hitz (1997)

Memory formation for sickness conditioned aversion in day-old chicks

Memory formation for sickness conditioned aversion in day-old chicks

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Teresa Barber


Ashley Lyn Hoover (2007)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Ashley Lyn Hoover (2007)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Carrie Ann Keck (2002)

RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

Funding from the NSF would support an in-depth study of the role of a forebrain structure thought to control learning and memory in the day-old chick. This three-year grant will provide support for myself and two student researchers for 12 hours a week during the Spring Semester, and 8 weeks each summer (2000-2002). Experiments are designed to investigate the functional role of this forebrain area (the IMHV) in greater detail, to allow us to understand the specific role of the IMHV in pecking, non-pecking, aversive and appetitive types of learning in the day old chick. During the first spring-summer we will turn our attention to the role of the IMHV in memory formation for passive avoidance and sickness conditioned learning. In the second spring-summer, we will focus on the role of the IMHV in memory formation for an aversive, non-pecking task. During the third, spring-summer, we will investigate the effects of IMHV lesions on memory formation for an appetitive, non-pecking task.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Teresa Barber


Carrie Ann Keck (2002)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Teresa Barber


Tiffany Nicole Kimbrough (2007)

Study of the Relationship Between Arousal and Learning

In summer 2004 I mentored Jen and a second student, Shannon Lilly '05. My faculty stipend was funded through Research and Development, in conjunction with a Howard Hughes Medical Institute student faculty research grant (Lilly), and funds provided by Pennsylvania Department of Health collaborative grant with Carnegie Mellon University (Lilly).

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Teresa Barber


Emily Courtney Knight (2014)

Substance Use and Substance Abuse Recovery in Adolescents and Young Adults

The Dana Research Assistantship would support the final phase of a mixed method investigation designed to address two research questions: (1) to describe the contexts of individual's substance use initiation and to investigate whether the contexts of initiation differ for early initiators when compared to later initiators and (2) to describe the process of recovery from substance abuse and responses to 12-Step Recovery programs (Alcoholic Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous) for young adults. The results of this study will inform substance abuse prevention efforts designed to deter early initiation of substance use, a risk factor for substance dependence and other poor developmental outcomes. The study will also add to the very sparse literature on substance abuse recovery among young adults. The Dana Research Assistant will assist in the coding of 90 qualitative research interviews using qualitative research software MaxQDA and will develop her own research question using the study data and will prepare a first author poster to be presented at a professional research conference in 2014. The Dana Research Assistant will also assist with the compilation of bibliographies and literature reviews and manuscript preparation.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Sharon Kingston


Brendan Lavin (2000)

An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memor

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Teresa Barber


Kymberly Dawn Lewis-Young (2005)

Chronic Bupropion and Nicotine Reward

In the United States, tobacco smoking is the number one cause of disease and preventable death, contributing to 40 diseases and 500,000 deaths a year. Several studies have shown that the antidepressant, bupropion (Zyban®), is an efficacious smoking-cessation agent. Its therapeutic mechanism of action, however, is unknown. The rewarding properties of nicotine are thought to contribute to its addictive potential. Previous research has shown that acute bupropion exposure facilitates a nicotine-conditioned place preference, suggesting that acute bupropion exposure enhances the rewarding properties of nicotine. When used therapeutically, however, bupropion is adminstered chronically. Thus, in order to more closely approximate the therapeutic use of bupropion, the present experiment will determine if chronic bupropion exposure enhances the rewarding properties of nicotine, as assessed using the conditioned place preference paradigm. The conditioned place preference paradigm is widely considered a good and reliable measure of a drug's rewarding properties. A better understanding of bupropion-nicotine interactions will help lead to greater knowledge regarding nicotine addiction and perhaps contribute to the development of novel, more efficacious smoking-cessation agents.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Kaixin Liu (2014)

Recording Somatosensory Evoked Potentials in Humans

Recording Somatosensory Evoked Potentials in Humans

Term Funded:Year 2013
Professor: Jonathan Page


An K Luc (2019)

Diversity Ideologies and Attitudes toward Cultural Appropriation

This project aims to investigate people's attitudes toward cultural appropriation, which refers to use or borrowing of cultural elements of one group by another group. Specifically, I am interested in people's reasoning for criticizing or defending cultural appropriation and whether their attitudes as well as the reasons in support of the attitudes are related to three diversity ideologies: colorblindness (which downplays the importance of group categories), multiculturalism (which recognizes and appreciates group distinctiveness), and polyculturalism (which emphasizes how cultures have influenced and interacted with each other throughout history). One key goal is to test if endorsing polyculturalism will lead to having a more positive attitude toward cultural appropriation for reasons related to appreciating exchanges among cultures. Demonstrating the role of intergroup ideologies, polyculturalism in particular, will make a crucial contribution to understanding why people may be divided over the issue of cultural appropriation.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Rui Zhang


Taylor Marie Ludman (2014)

How Prior Information and Context Influences Perception

One of my long-term research goals is to develop a new model of perception and action that takes into account how the human central nervous system functions when a threat or danger is present. Numerous studies have shown that our system does operate differntly under stress; a theoretical model is needed to synthesize these findings and give direction for future questions. Related to this is a need to develop techniques to appropriately deal with dangerous or threatening situations. Thus, another goal of mine is to develop a cognitive technique where verbal cues are learned to automatization and used as a tool to reduce stress and increase cognitive functioning and control during such encounters. The research described in this application would further both of these goals.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Jonathan Page


Stacey Kathryn Mardekian (2008)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

Recently, in vitro (i.e., preparations involving brain tissue) studies have shown that the atypical antidepressant, bupropion, targets and antagonizes nicotinic receptors (Slemmer et al., 2000). Many of the behavioral effects of nicotine are mediated by its interaction with nicotinic receptors. Little research, however, has examined the ability of bupropion to antagonize the behavioral effects of nicotine in an in vivo (i.e., whole animal) preparation. Thus, the present experiment determined the ability of bupropion, to alter the aversive properties of nicotine. To this end, the effect of bupropion on nicotine conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in male CD-1 mice was determined.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Stacey Kathryn Mardekian (2008)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

Recently, in vitro (i.e., preparations involving brain tissue) studies have shown that the atypical antidepressant, bupropion, targets and antagonizes nicotinic receptors (Slemmer et al., 2000). Many of the behavioral effects of nicotine are mediated by its interaction with nicotinic receptors. Little research, however, has examined the ability of bupropion to antagonize the behavioral effects of nicotine in an in vivo (i.e., whole animal) preparation. Thus, the present experiment determined the ability of bupropion, to alter the aversive properties of nicotine. To this end, the effect of bupropion on nicotine conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in male CD-1 mice was determined.

Term Funded:Fall 2006
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Stacey Kathryn Mardekian (2008)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

Recently, in vitro (i.e., preparations involving brain tissue) studies have shown that the atypical antidepressant, bupropion, targets and antagonizes nicotinic receptors (Slemmer et al., 2000). Many of the behavioral effects of nicotine are mediated by its interaction with nicotinic receptors. Little research, however, has examined the ability of bupropion to antagonize the behavioral effects of nicotine in an in vivo (i.e., whole animal) preparation. Thus, the present experiment determined the ability of bupropion, to alter the aversive properties of nicotine. To this end, the effect of bupropion on nicotine conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in male CD-1 mice was determined.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Erica Summer Marshall (2017)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Brian Francis McGettigan (2003)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Teresa Barber


Brian Francis McGettigan (2003)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Teresa Barber


Brian Francis McGettigan (2003)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Spring 2002
Professor: Teresa Barber


Jennifer Davis Meis (2002)

RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old ChicksThought to Control Learning and Memory

Funding from the NSF would support an in-depth study of the role of a forebrain structure thought to control learning and memory in the day-old chick. This three-year grant will provide support for myself and two student researchers for 12 hours a week during the Spring Semester, and 8 weeks each summer (2000-2002). Experiments are designed to investigate the functional role of this forebrain area (the IMHV) in greater detail, to allow us to understand the specific role of the IMHV in pecking, non-pecking, aversive and appetitive types of learning in the day old chick. During the first spring-summer we will turn our attention to the role of the IMHV in memory formation for passive avoidance and sickness conditioned learning. In the second spring-summer, we will focus on the role of the IMHV in memory formation for an aversive, non-pecking task. During the third, spring-summer, we will investigate the effects of IMHV lesions on memory formation for an appetitive, non-pecking task.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Teresa Barber


Jennifer Davis Meis (2002)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Teresa Barber


Allyson Meloni (2004)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Allyson Meloni (2004)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Elizabeth Kathryn Meschio (2013)

Attributions in Sports

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: James Skelton


Ashley Anne Morse (2007)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Matthew Aaron Oaks (2003)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Teresa Barber


Matthew Aaron Oaks (2003)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Teresa Barber


Matthew Aaron Oaks (2003)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Spring 2002
Professor: Teresa Barber


Michelle Knowles Osterman (2004)

Primacy of gender (not of affect) in unconscious processing of language

"Primacy of affect" is the notion that when a word is processed, the very first information that is analyzed about it is its affective valence--the unpleasantness of its referent. Advocates of affective primacy have argued that affective processing occurs rapidly, automatically, and unconsciously, prior to conscious word recognition. But recent empirical findings have challenged at least one tenet of affective primacy: that it occurs unconsciously. These findings have been interpreted more generally as challenging a widely-held view that some aspects of language processing are handled by unconscious systems in the brain. (The argument is that if affect is not processed unconsciously, no other aspects of language are likely to be.) The proposed research examines the possibility that another aspect of language, gender, for which there is compelling evidence of rapid and obligatory processing, may routinely undergo unconscious processing even if affect does not.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Richard Abrams


Michelle Knowles Osterman (2004)

Meta Analytic review of psychological literature on homesickness

A Dana Research Assistant is requested for the Spring 2003 semester to assist in the completion of a meta-analytic review of the psychological literature on homesickness. Meta-analytic reviews undertake statistical analyses of the strength of a phenomenon, its' variability, and the nature and relative strength of moderator variables affecting that phenomenon. In the current project meta-analysis is being employed to assess the relative contributions age, nature of separation, duration of separation, distance from home, and perceived distance from home have on the degree of homesickness experienced. In contrast to purely narrative literature reviews, the statistical techniques employed in meta-analysis will allow for the quantification of an integration of diverse results to better understand the factors that contribute to homesickness.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Gregory Smith


Sara Stokes Patterson (2014)

NSF-PFI/ITN: Developing a technique for characterizing pain-related SEP waveforms

The overall goals of this pain research program are to develop a method of pain measurement that removes the subjectivity inherent in other assessment tools and to build a device that can be used in clinical settings to objectively assess pain. The general focus of this research is to reveal the functional aspects of the physiological mechanisms in the brain that underpin the subjective experience of pain. Based on several pilot studies, it seems reasonable to assume that these goals may eventually be reached by developing a methodology and device to measure brain activity related to pain. This is a multi-step process that requires proof of concept at several stages along the way. In the first part of this project, student researchers will assist the principle investigator in collecting a wide variety of somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) responses related to pain. For the second part of this project, the recorded SEP waveforms will be put through a number of tests in an attempt to find a systematic way to quantify the various waveform components. The goal of this particular part of the project will be to develop a reliable method for breaking down SEP waveforms into components that can be used as measurements of pain and pain intensity.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Jonathan Page


Loren Juliette Tyson Pease (2013)

Collaborative Research in Gender and Sexuality

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor:


Laurel Marie Peterson (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2005
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Laurel Marie Peterson (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Laurel Marie Peterson (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Year 2004
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Laurel Marie Peterson (2006)

Collaboration to Reduce Disparities in Hypertension

Dickinson, The University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney College entered into a collaborative project to study cardiovascular disease (hypertension). The objective of the study was to assist in the elimination or reduction of disparities in health status, outcome, prevention or treatment in minority communities. The project studied the effectiveness of efforts to reduce and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, understand their mediating factors, and develop multidisciplinary strategies and interventions to reduce them. The project expanded research skills and understanding of intervention strategies among emerging, new, and established investigators at Cheyney, Dickinson, and Penn. The goals were to promote the development of junior investigators at all levels of education (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral); develop health disparities research capacity at all institutions; and increase the competitiveness of these institutions for future federal funding in health disparities and mediation research.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Brianne Joan Petrie (2002)

RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old ChicksThought to Control Learning and Memory

Funding from the NSF would support an in-depth study of the role of a forebrain structure thought to control learning and memory in the day-old chick. This three-year grant will provide support for myself and two student researchers for 12 hours a week during the Spring Semester, and 8 weeks each summer (2000-2002). Experiments are designed to investigate the functional role of this forebrain area (the IMHV) in greater detail, to allow us to understand the specific role of the IMHV in pecking, non-pecking, aversive and appetitive types of learning in the day old chick. During the first spring-summer we will turn our attention to the role of the IMHV in memory formation for passive avoidance and sickness conditioned learning. In the second spring-summer, we will focus on the role of the IMHV in memory formation for an aversive, non-pecking task. During the third, spring-summer, we will investigate the effects of IMHV lesions on memory formation for an appetitive, non-pecking task.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Teresa Barber


Brianne Joan Petrie (2002)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Teresa Barber


Mihir Nath Pyakuryal (2019)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Mihir Nath Pyakuryal (2019)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Mihir Nath Pyakuryal (2019)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Fall 2018
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Shivani Neha Rishi (2016)

Research Assistant - Maryland ADHD Program at the University of Maryland

The Maryland ADHD Program will be conducting clinical research throughout the summer in order to improve the assessment and treatment of ADHD.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Monique Marie Ritchey (1998)

Function of the Intermediate Medial Hyperstriatum Ventrale in Memory Formation for Shape and Size Discrimination Learning in the Day-Old Chick

Function of the Intermediate Medial Hyperstriatum Ventrale in Memory Formation for Shape and Size Discrimination Learning in the Day-Old Chick

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Teresa Barber


Jamie Layman Rizza (2003)

Solo Status as a Moderator of Stereotype Threat in the College Environment

The following application is for a New Dana Student Research Assistantship with Jamie Layman, a junior in psychology. The research project proposed involves an archival investigation of two established effects in the stereotypes literature labeled stereotype threat and the solo (or token) effect. Both involve aspects of stereotypes and the salience of stereotypes within particular environments. Stereotype threat is a phenomenon in which the knowledge of one's stereotype may adversely influence one's performance on stereotype relevant tasks. The second psychological phenomenon relevant to stereotypes and scholastic performance tested in this proposal is the solo (or token) effect. This influence on performance occurs in situations where individuals find themselves as solos (or distinct minorities) within their environment.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor:


Aya Salim (2020)

[TBA]

[TBA]

Term Funded:Fall, Spring 2020
Professor: Naila Smith


Emily Anne Seklecki (2013)

Implementing Waste Mitigation Strategies

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: James Skelton


Meredith Alicia Smith (2020)

Preconception and Prenatal Predictors of Cortisol in Preschool-Aged Children

Despite considerable evidence documenting the effects of prenatal maternal stress and emotions on birth and early child outcomes, the biological pathways through which maternal stress affects children are not yet well understood. This study focuses on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis regulatory mechanisms in a sample of approximately 110 mother-child pairs. The aim is to examine effects of maternal stress during the preconception period and in pregnancy on child outcomes at ages 3.5 and 4.5. These analyses will look at the specific outcome of children's circadian regulation of cortisol production using data collected in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), NorthShore Research Institute (Evanston, IL), the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, and the University of Denver. This project may help to identify modifiable risk factors that can be targeted for early prevention of adverse health, neurocognitive, and behavioral outcomes.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Christine Guardino


Emily Margaret Snell (2015)

Examining Environmentally-Relevant Attitudes and Behavior

Examining Environmentally-Relevant Attitudes and Behavior

Term Funded: 2013
Professor: James Skelton


Lia J Sorgen (2018)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Fall 2016
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Nicole Ramotowski Stewart (2001)

RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old ChicksThought to Control Learning and Memory

Funding from the NSF would support an in-depth study of the role of a forebrain structure thought to control learning and memory in the day-old chick. This three-year grant will provide support for myself and two student researchers for 12 hours a week during the Spring Semester, and 8 weeks each summer (2000-2002). Experiments are designed to investigate the functional role of this forebrain area (the IMHV) in greater detail, to allow us to understand the specific role of the IMHV in pecking, non-pecking, aversive and appetitive types of learning in the day old chick. During the first spring-summer we will turn our attention to the role of the IMHV in memory formation for passive avoidance and sickness conditioned learning. In the second spring-summer, we will focus on the role of the IMHV in memory formation for an aversive, non-pecking task. During the third, spring-summer, we will investigate the effects of IMHV lesions on memory formation for an appetitive, non-pecking task.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Teresa Barber


Nicole Ramotowski Stewart (2001)

NSF 9985592 RUI: An Investigation of the Functional Role of a Brain Area in Day-Old Chicks Thought to Control Learning and Memory

The aim of the proposed research was to investigate the specific role of a forebrain structure, the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV) in memory formation in day-old chicks. Previous work determined that many biochemical and electrophysiological changes occur in the IMHV concomitant with memory retention in a one-trial passive avoidance task; a pecking task that requires response inhibition to demonstrate learnin9. Although many changes in the IMHV occur after passive avoidance training, this is a specific, and in many ways, a unique learning paradigm.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Teresa Barber


Tara Michelle Studley (2007)

Research on Parental Influences on College Students

The Dana Assistant will work 8 hours per week during the spring semester on a research program designed to study the impact of parenting styles on college students' homesickness, adjustment to college, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. They will be involved in virtually all aspects of research including distribution and collection of research materials; scoring and coding of measures; data analysis; library research; and the preparation of conference presentations and journal manuscripts. The Dana Assistant should have a good understanding of research methodology, statistical analysis within psychology, use of SPSS in data analysis, and software for developing on-line questionnaires.

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor: Gregory Smith


Jason Bryant Tanenbaum (2007)

Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Emily Elizabeth Thurston (2004)

An investigation of spatial learning in Wistar-Kyoto rats.

The aim of the proposed project is to examine spatial learning in Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats, which have been proposed as an animal model for treatment-resistant depression. The WKY rat is impaired in similar ways to "depressed" individuals in many aversive and escape-oriented tasks (learned helplessness, open field, forced swim, and passive avoidance) and it has been suggested that the impairments shown by the WKY rats are due to increased emotionality and hyperreactivity. However, we have recently raised the possibility that the poor performance of WKY rats may be due to impaired memory. In an aversive task, it is difficult to tease out performance factors such as emotionality and hyperreactivity from spatial memory abilities. Spatial memory is dependent upon intact functioning of the hippocampus, and there is some evidence that the size of the hippocampus in WKY rats is smaller than controls (although this study sample size was small). If this finding is true, it is likely that the WKY rat is impaired in spatial learning.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Teresa Barber


Margaret Rose Tobias (2010)

NIH 1 R15 CA133152-01: Moralization, Risk Perceptions, and Smoking Cessation in the U.S. and denmark

Do smokers truly appreciate the health risks they undertake by smoking? We know little about how people come to believe that they are personally at risk and the role that cultural messages play. One important cultural factor is moralization - the individual and cultural process by which preferences are converted into values. In the proposed research, two studies will be conducted in the U.S. (a smoking-prohibitive culture where smoking is moralized) and Denmark (a smoking-lenient culture where smoking is much less moralized.) Study 1 - a qualitative interview study among U.S. and Danish smokers - will examine whether smokers' perceptions of being targets of moralization are associated with risk perceptions of smoking and willingness to quit.  Study 2 - a longitudinal survey study among representative samples of U.S. and Danish smokers and non-smokers - will examine the extent to which individual moralization predicts risk perceptions of smoking and how these factors among smokers predict willingness to quit. This research will lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs and thereby contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2010 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Tran Bao Tran (2018)

Research in the Department of Psychology

Research in the Department of Psychology

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Naila Smith


Deana Maryann Vitrano (2012)

Developing a new model of human perception and action under danger or threat

The integration of human perception and action is fairly well understood. However, there currently is not a model to describe how these systems work when danger or threat is present. I am developing such a model. Researching with two students in the summer would allow me to finish a current study and conduct another. These two studies are key to developing and testing the new model. One study investigates top-down influences on perception, the other subconscious influences. The students I would be working with have been in my lab for about two years and have a full understanding both of the model and the studies, and are highly proficient at operating the electrophysiological equipment and analyzing data. The students and I are collaborating with other researchers and have assigned roles and authorship for the project. Students will help in all phases of the project, including help in writing the manuscript.

Term Funded:summer 2012
Professor: Jonathan Page


Justina Anna Warnick (2020)

Effect of Voluntary Exercise on Contextual Drug Learning: Assessing the Role of Timing

Drug-associated environmental cues (e.g., drug paraphernalia) are thought to contribute to compulsive drug-taking behavior in people. Exercise is a non-pharmacological treatment for drug addiction. Perhaps exercise's therapeutic efficacy is due to its ability to interfere with drug-associated environmental cues to control drug-taking behavior in people. To evaluate this idea, the present project, using an animal model of drug addiction (drug sensitization), seeks to examine the ability of exercise to interfere with contextual drug learning in mice. Moreover, the timing of exercise relative to contextual drug learning may be critical in determining the efficacy of exercise in controlling drug-taking behavior. Thus, a two-experiment project will be undertaken by which mice will receive 3 weeks of exercise immediately prior to (Experiment 1), or after (Experiment 2), contextual drug learning. The outcome of this project may provide preclinical evidence to account for exercise's efficacy as a non-pharmacological treatment for drug addiction.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Mariah Claire Weigert (2017)

NCI/NIH R15CA194937: The effects of stigmatizing U.S. and Danish smokers

People often stigmatize smokers and many public health messages are stigmatizing. Stigmatization has also been proposed as a public health strategy to decrease smoking prevalence. But does stigmatization actually motivate quitting or does it have the opposite effect? The answer to this question has important implications for health education programs, smoking cessation programs, and public health policy. We know little about how smokers react to stigmatization and the causal consequences. Particularly understudied are reactions to stigma within social contexts such as culture and social status. In the proposed research, guided by the Model of Stigma Induced Identity Threat, two experimental studies in the U.S. and Denmark will examine the effects of stigmatizing smokers among people of various levels of social status. This research will provide valuable insights into the consequences of stigmatization and lay the groundwork for more effective educational interventions and smoking cessation programs. Thus, this research will contribute to reaching the Healthy People 2020 objective of reducing adult cigarette smoking in the U.S. to 12 percent from the 2012 rate of 18 percent.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Marie Helweg-Larsen


Andre O'Neil White (2011)

NIH 1 R15 DA019866-01: Bupropion and Secondary Motivational Effects of Nicotine

A. Specific Aims 1) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently enhances the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of acquisition and expression, Experiments 1 and 2 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently facilitates the acquisition and expression of a nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 2) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary rewarding properties of nicotine during periods of reinstatement and reacquisition, Experiments 3 and 4 will examine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the reinstatement and reacquisition of nicotine-conditioned place preference, respectively. 3) To determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the secondary aversive properties of nicotine during periods of withdrawal, Experiments 5 and 6 will determine if bupropion dose-dependently attenuates the acquisition and expression of a mecamylamine-precipitated conditioned place aversion in nicotine-dependent rats, respectively.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Justin Michael Williams (2013)

Effects of Curcuminoids on learning and memory in Day-Old Chicks

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in this country. It is a progressive, incurable disorder, whose hallmark symptoms are impaired memory and cognition (Lleó, Greenberg, & Growdon, 2006). In Alzheimer's disease, there is a dramatic reduction in the levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (Whitehouse, Price, Clark, Coyle, & De- Long, 1981). Many studies have determined that acetylcholine is important for memory formation. Memory is associated with increased levels of acetylcholine, and agents that reduce acetylcholine are associated with memory impairment (Rusted & Warburton, 1988; Watts, Stevens & Robinson, 1981). In our laboratory, we explore memory through the use of a paradigm called taste avoidance learning in the day-old chick. In this task, a chick pecks a bead coated with an aversive-tasting liquid, such as methylanthranilate (MeA), and consequently expresses a well defined ''disgust" response. Because the chick associates the bead with the bad taste, it will avoid pecking similar looking beads at test (Lee-Teng & Sherman, 1966). Training, which can occur with only a single 30 sec presentation of the MeA-covered bead, results in reliable memory retention lasting at least 24 hours, accompanied by well-known discrete biochemical and physiological consequences (see Rose, 2004). Learning of the taste-avoidance task requires activity in the cholinergic system. When chicks are trained on the task, measures of acetylcholine activity increase (Rose, Gibbs, & Hambley; 1980; Mezey, Székely, Bourne, Kabai, & Csillag, 1999; Bullock, Csillag, & Rose, 1987). Inhibition of acetylcholine release produces significant amnesia in the taste-avoidance task (Patterson, Lipton, Bennett, & Rosenzweig, 1990; Zhao, Feng, Bennett, & Ng, 1997). We inhibit acetylcholine by giving the drug scopolamine. I both humans and non-human animals, memory under the influence of scopolamine is very similar to that seen in Alzheimer's disease, in which memory is strong for a few minutes, but the conversion of memory from short-term to long-term memory does not take place, and a few hours after learning, amnesia is present (see Barber & Haggarty, 2010). Given the relationship between acetylcholine, memory, and Alzheimer's disease, it's not surprising to find that the most common treatment for memory loss in Alzheimer's disease are drugs that increase acetylcholine activity. Donepezil (Aricept®) helps memories by increasing the amount of acetylcholine available at the synapse, and is an effective treatment for early to mild Alzheimer's. However, the effects of donepezil are transitory, and eventually the drug treatment is ineffective and memory impairments become increasingly impairing (Perl, 2000). We fear contracting Alzheimer's disease, particularly because the only known risk factor is age (Alzheimer's.org). We fear losing our minds, our memories, and our ability to remain healthy as we age. It's therefore not surprising to find that many people use herbal remedies and food supplements that purport to increase memory abilities. Search the Internet for "supplements", "improve", and "memory", and you will get 13,100,000 results (google.com). Do any of these supplements actually work? Is there scientific evidence that supports the use of these supplements? Most of the evidence for their effectiveness of supplements is based on testimonial evidence. Very few of these agents have been tested in the laboratory, mostly because few models of memory impairment exist.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Teresa Barber


Barbara Wisniewska-Arora (2000)

Determining the Characteristics of Word Lists that Produce False Memories

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1999
Professor: Walter Chromiak


Barbara Wisniewska-Arora (2000)

Determining the Characteristics of False Memories

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1998
Professor: Walter Chromiak


Ashley Elizabeth Young (2007)

Corticosterone Levels in Chicks Given Social Isolation

Memory formation is subject to stress. Too little stress and not enough memory forms, but too much and memory is impaired. Studying memory formation under different levels of stress is important because it helps us understand how normal memories are formed and also allows us to find ways to improve memories when they are impaired. We can manipulate stress levels, for example, by giving social isolation. However, it is important to understand how this manipulation changes the levels of hormones of stress in the body. These studies will examine the levels of corticosterone (one of the hormones released during stress) in both control animals and animals given isolation stress. Understanding these hormonal changes will help us predict the effects of stress on memories, and, more importantly, allow us to predict how a little stress might improve memory.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Teresa Barber


Ashley Serwah Young (2014)

NSF 085670 STEP Program at Dickinson College

Through this program, Dickinson intends to recruit and matriculate a "science posse" cohort in each of three years beginning in the fall of 2009. The science posse program will have three major components: 1) a four-week summer pre-matriculation program in which students will participate in lab research and a series of enrichment workshops in chemistry and mathematics; 2) a second eight-week summer of research with Dickinson faculty members using our successful model of student/faculty research; and 3) a capstone eight-week summer research experience at off-campus laboratories in major research universities. The program will provide a strong mentoring experience for underrepresented students to support their pursuit of a science major. The successful implementation of this plan will result in the establishment of a cohort of science major role models for future students among our underrepresented minority groups. Results of the program will be disseminated widely within the broader scientific education community so that they may serve as a model for other institutions.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Wuji Zeng (2012)

NASA GCCE Grant: Estimated Savings from Smart Power Strips

Estimated Savings from Smart Power Strips

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: James Skelton


Isaac James Zentner (2005)

Depression and nicotine dependence

Epidemiological and clinical studies have found a relationship between psychiatric illness and substance abuse. In particular, the prevalence rate of smoking is considerably higher in depressed individuals (46%) compared to the general population (26%). However, the reason for the high comorbidity of depression and smoking is unclear. To begin to understand the behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms that account for the comorbidity of depression and smoking, the present proposal, using an animal model of depression (Wistar Kyoto rats), will determine if Wistar Kyoto rats as assessed using the conditioned place preference paradigm. Because the sensitizing and rewarding properties of nicotine are thought to contribute to the addictive potential of nicotine, the finding of strain differences in the sensitizing and rewarding properties of nicotine may shed light on the nature of the relationship between depression and smoking.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Anthony Rauhut


Religion

Joseph Gilbert Bautista (2020)

Novel Saints: Novel, Hagiography and Romance from the 4th to the 12th Century

I will be assisting Dr. Schadler's research project, examining the interim period between the fourth and twelfth centuries from which no novels are said to have been preserved, and identify a so-called 're-emergence' of the genre in Byzantium. However, building on recent research that studies hagiography as literature, this conference of the ERC project Novel Saints aims to challenge this view by studying hagiography as a continuation of novelistic literature during the so-called 'dark age' of the novel. A number of hagiographical texts are known to have influenced medieval literature. Dr. Schadler's work aims to examine a persistant tradition of ancient novelistic writing within hagiographical texts and medieval romances in the West, Persia and Byzantium.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Peter Schadler


Pentti Hanlon (2019)

Dharma Rain Second Edition

Dharma Rain Second Edition

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Daniel Cozort


Pentti Hanlon (2019)

Dharma Rain Second Edition

Dharma Rain Second Edition

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Daniel Cozort


Heather C Locke (1995)

Women and Religion: Trends in Publishing, 1974-1994

Women and Religion: Trends in Publishing, 1974-1994

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Mara Donaldson


Catherine Gabriella Martin (2020)

Spiritual Economies: Resources, Labor, and Exchange in Glastonbury and Sedona

Current data indicates that a growing number of individuals in the English-speaking world are identifying as "spiritual, but not religious" (SBNR). Using ethnographic data collected at two important sites of spiritual pilgrimage and tourism--Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona--this project argues that seekers at those places produce spirituality as much as they consume it. Using the lens of economy, the scholar examines how seekers conceptualize the (super-) natural resources at these sites, the laborious practices they perform to transform these resources, and the valuation and exchange of the resultant products. In so doing, the project complicates prevailing notions, both among scholars and the public, that contemporary unaffiliated spirituality is predominantly an individualistic consumer process.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Jodie Vann


Ryan Adam Meyers (2002)

Dana Research Internship (Pre-R&D)

Dana Research Internship (Pre-R&D)

Term Funded:Year 2000
Professor: Daniel Cozort


Elizabeth Lansdell Nash (1995)

Transcription and Edition of an Early Shaker Manuscript

Transcription and Edition of an Early Shaker Manuscript

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Margaret Garrett


Rebecca Nicole Stanger (2009)

A Museum Exhibit on the History of the Jewish Deli

To prepare for an NEH-funded exhibit on Jewish foodways at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Dickinson student will catalog hundreds of items of deli and kosher provisions company memorabilia-neon signs, clocks, photos, menus, postcards, advertising material, and other ephemera. The student will do research to find out which decade each item derives from, based on typeface, food prices, telephone directory information, and other clues. The student will then photograph and enter each item into a special database used by museum professionals. By attending meetings with museum staff and scholars who are consulting on the exhibit, the student will also help to think conceptually about how to organize the exhibit, and help develop the "story" that the exhibit will tell about the Jewish deli, and, by extension, about the history of Jewish life in America during the past century. The deli part of the exhibit will eventually be turned into a stand-alone exhibit that will be lent to museums throughout the country.

Term Funded:Year 2009
Professor: Edward Merwin


Lara Mary Wulff (1994)

Gender and Autobiography: Life and Work of Dorothy Day and Annie Dillard

Gender and Autobiography: Life and Work of Dorothy Day and Annie Dillard

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Mara Donaldson


Russia

Matthew Lucas Foote ()

Russian and Soviet Volcanology: Boris Piip

Term Funded: 2023
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Russian

Kirsten Leigh Brents (2015)

Russian Philosophy Journals: 1988-1999

During summer 2013 I will begin work on a project investigating the content of Russian philosophical journals from 1988-1999. Most generally, I am interested in the extent to which the subject matter of the journal articles and the editorial methodologies of the journals do or do not conform to Russian philosophical periodicals of the Putin era (the 2000s). I have chosen the period 1988-1999 because 1988 is the point at which the discipline of philosophy sees a dramatic increase in freedom of publishing and about 10 self-published, small print run journals appear; by 2000, Vladimir Putin has been elected to his first term as President and academic politics change along with this transition.

Term Funded:Spring 2013
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Margaret Ann Browndorf (2008)

Editorial Assistant for Sirena: Poetry, Art, Criticism

The editorial board of Sirena, Dickinson's international journal of poetry, art and criticism, is seeking student assistance for a variety of tasks involved in the compiling and producing of the journal. Specifically, the student would be responsible for helping organize submissions, monitor and maintain general correspondence with both contributors and Johns Hopkins University Press, locating and contacting potential translators, preparing pages for layout, and copy-editing and proofreading the final copy before it is sent to press. In general, the assistantship will give the student broad exposure to the publishing industry. Literary publishing requires both critical acuity of creative writing and strong business skills, and this position will make the most of those abilities the student has developed through his or her courses and work experience for one of these aspects of the publishing field, while simultaneously giving him or her insight into the other.

Term Funded:Spring 2008
Professor: Christopher Lemelin


Simon Gaetano Ciccarillo (2016)

The End of Russian Philosophy

The End of Russian Philosophy

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Austen Ellsworth Dowell (2017)

The intersection of Chekhov and Shakespearean themes, as found in the pieces Swan Song and King Lear

This project was originally conceived last semester, under the tutelage of Professor Margarita Odesskaya and with the support of Director of the Dickinson-in-Moscow program Irina Fillipova. As it stood the project was originally meant to be a one-time thesis paper, but has developed into its current form as opportunities for further study have become available. This project is divided into three phases, and will be ongoing until the end of my time at Dickinson. The first phase was carried out in the previous semester in Moscow, where with the help of Russian professors I developed, researched, and wrote a small thesis paper on the subject of the intersection of Chekhov and Shakespearean themes, as found in the pieces Swan Song and King Lear. The second, current phase, with the aid of this grant, will take shape as my participation in the International Scientific Conference "Sakhalin Island," where I will discuss Chekhov's writings with Russian and international experts, while awaiting the publication of my thesis in the Yalta periodical. Networking and exchange of ideas will strengthen and enlarge my understanding of my chosen field of study.

Term Funded:Fall 2015
Professor: Elena Duzs


William Robert Irving (2019)

V.A. Petrushevsky: A Digital Archive

The V.A. Petrushevsky project is a collaboration between Dickinson (specifically, DeBlasio's RUSS 334: Workshop in Translation course) and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kliuchi Observatory. Petrushevsky was Russia's first volcanologist, serving at the Dutch Volcanological Services from 1921-1950. Dickinson hosts and translates V.A. Petrushevsky's personal archives, which include photographs, diaries, poems, and scientific papers. Students assist with the website work, background research, and translation of materials from Russian to English. The eventual goal is to translate the entire collection into English and post everything online in both languages so that the archive will be available to those interested in learning about Petrushevsky's life and work.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


William Robert Irving (2019)

V.A. Petrushevsky: A Digital Archive

The V.A. Petrushevsky project is a collaboration between Dickinson (specifically, DeBlasio's RUSS 334: Workshop in Translation course) and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kliuchi Observatory. Petrushevsky was Russia's first volcanologist, serving at the Dutch Volcanological Services from 1921-1950. Dickinson hosts and translates V.A. Petrushevsky's personal archives, which include photographs, diaries, poems, and scientific papers. Students assist with the website work, background research, and translation of materials from Russian to English. The eventual goal is to translate the entire collection into English and post everything online in both languages so that the archive will be available to those interested in learning about Petrushevsky's life and work.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Anastasiia Viktorovna Khlopina (2018)

V.A. Petrushevsky: A Digital Archive

The V.A. Petrushevsky project is a collaboration between Dickinson (specifically, DeBlasio's RUSS 334: Workshop in Translation course) and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kliuchi Observatory. Petrushevsky was Russia's first volcanologist and a Renaissance man in his own right. Dickinson has recently been granted the rights to host and publish V.A. Petrushevsky's personal archives, which include photographs, diaries, poems, and scientific papers. DeBlasio and her students will be working in spring 2017 to translate much of the collection to English. The eventual goal is to translate the entire collection and post everything online in both languages so that the archive will be available to those interested in learning about Petrushevsky's life and work.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Anne Olivia Mothershead (2020)

V.A. Petrushevsky: A Digital Archive

The V.A. Petrushevsky project is a collaboration between Dickinson (specifically, DeBlasio's RUSS 334: Workshop in Translation course) and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kliuchi Observatory. Petrushevsky was Russia's first volcanologist and a Renaissance man in his own right. Dickinson has recently been granted the rights to host and publish V.A. Petrushevsky's personal archives, which include photographs, diaries, poems, and scientific papers. DeBlasio and her students will be working in spring 2017 to translate much of the collection to English. The eventual goal is to translate the entire collection and post everything online in both languages so that the archive will be available to those interested in learning about Petrushevsky's life and work.

Term Funded:Spring 2018
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Cara Elizabeth Roney (2007)

Dostoevsky and Sexual psychology, Gender Relations, and the Role of Literary Convention

Dostoevsky anticipated and wrote compellingly about the complex issues of sexual psychology, gender relations, and the role of literary convention in the radically changing lives of women in his own time. He captured the practice of patterning one's behavior on literary texts in his great novels; consequently, in order to fully comprehend his views of women and the context in which he wrote, scholars need additional information about Russian society's attitudes toward women's reading practices. In French and English literary history, a substantial amount of research on women's reading has been published; however, this is not the case in Russian literature. Further investigation of this topic helps us to better understand contemporary concepts of gender and psychology, as Dostoevsky takes in the two-dimensional representation of women in Western literature, refines it, and returns it to the West through his own novels, eventually influencing people like Freud and Sartre. Our contemporary understanding of gender psychology was influenced by ideas Dostoevsky encountered in his own cultural milieu.

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Eugenia Amditis


Allison E Stroyan (2018)

Digital Domostroi: Keywords on the Russian Middle Class

Digital Domostroi is an open-source research project (housed at Dickinson College) that both initiates and brings together new interpretative scholarship by multiple authors on the topic of the Russian middle class. The title comes from a set of sixteenth-century household rules call the Domostroi, one of the first explicitly class-oriented documents in the Russian language. To date there has been no in-depth study of the present-day Russian middle class, although the complicated relationship between the Russian state and the idea of a middle class is one of the defining tropes of art, film, advertising, and political discourse in the Putin era. Our project plan seeks not only to create new content from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, but to analyze data using the tools of the digital humanities, thereby presenting a diverse, dynamic, and interdisciplinary portrait of the Russian middle class in its development.

Term Funded:Year 2017
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Allison E Stroyan (2018)

V.A. Petrushevsky: A Digital Archive

The V.A. Petrushevsky project is a collaboration between Dickinson (specifically, DeBlasio's RUSS 334: Workshop in Translation course) and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kliuchi Observatory. Petrushevsky was Russia's first volcanologist and a Renaissance man in his own right. Dickinson has recently been granted the rights to host and publish V.A. Petrushevsky's personal archives, which include photographs, diaries, poems, and scientific papers. DeBlasio and her students will be working in spring 2017 to translate much of the collection to English. The eventual goal is to translate the entire collection and post everything online in both languages so that the archive will be available to those interested in learning about Petrushevsky's life and work.

Term Funded:Fall 2017
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Barrett William Ziegler (2016)

The End of Russian Philosophy

Between 1990 and 1991, a dramatic shift took place in Russian intellectual circles. In the span of one year, 19th c. religious thought became the dominating topic of philosophical inquiry and previously suppressed religious texts were published in the leading academic and literary journals. As part of this shift from Marxist-Leninism to religious Orthodoxy, the communist/dialectical materialist methodology, which had dominated all scholarly discourse until the final months of the Soviet empire, disappeared almost overnight from philosophical exchanges. This was unprecedented, given the nearly 75 years of state-sponsored atheism in the Soviet Union. Yet, in 2001 as the 10-year anniversary of the Soviet Union's dissolution approached, the optimism of the new intellectual freedom of the post-Soviet period began to wane. More specifically, the optimism of the 1990s had given way to widespread criticism of the state of philosophy in Russia, with Russian philosophers and intellectuals either publically denouncing Russian philosophy or denying the existence of the discipline altogether.

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio


Sociology

Noorjahan Akbar (2014)

Metaphor and Meaning in Newly Chronic Illnesses

It isn't often that HIV/AIDS and cystic fibrosis are thought of as similar diseases. One remains a political hot-button topic and is spread through the transfer of bodily fluids, most often during sexual activity or the sharing of needles among illegal drug users. The other is a seemingly a-political disease that affects children and young adults and is transferred genetically. However, dramatic improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases have allowed those with one of them to live long beyond initial expectations. While this is good, celebratory accounts of these changes tend to overlook the health, social, psychological, and economic issues that those who are surviving confront. Oral history interviews have been conducted with more than 50 individuals living with one of these diseases. The Dana intern will transcribe about 10 of these (other transcriptions are complete) and will be using MAXQDA, a qualitative data analysis software, to code them. Particular interest will be given to the kinds of metaphors participants use in describing their lives in order to examine how they give meaning to their lives. Results will contribute to two papers to be submitted for publication - one on HIV/AIDS and its metaphors, the other on cystic fibrosis and its metaphors. Student co-authorship is likely on both. There is a longer-term goal of a book manuscript that compares the political, economic, and social lives of those living with these diseases.

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: J Daniel Schubert


Lashana Dass-Koneswaran (2007)

Nature and the Contested Landscape: The Case of Trinidad

Ecotourism development has become a significant policy goal in many less developed nations. Ecotourism is usually described as tourism that is ecologically benign, culturally appropriate, and economically beneficial to local people. This ideal is rarely fulfilled in practice. For example, what does culturally appropriate mean? This project examines the cultural context of ecotourism in Trinidad, West Indies. The question of cultural impacts is addressed through interviews that examine how the experiences of village residents are organized in relation to both touristic and non-touristic uses of the landscape. By addressing local experiences of the landscape, these interviews capture a range of experiences that are missed when the focus remains on the tourism development process per se. The aim of the research activity proposed for the Dana funding period involves transcribing and analyzing the taped interviews, expanding and updating the relevant literature reviews, and writing two scholarly papers.

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor: Peter Grahame


Hannah Elizabeth Farda (2011)

book proposal and manuscript development for Bittersweet Homecomings: Identity Construction in the Korean Diaspora

While the importance of expressionism as arguably the most significant international artistic movement of the 20th century has been long established, the topic of literary expressionism in Russia is new and under-researched. The first and only significant study came out in Russian only last year; there are no substantial English language publications on literary expressionism in Russia. While the topic is related to my previous study on Mikhail Kuzmin, the newly published study opens additional research possibilities, including 1. The link between literary and artistic expressionism in Russia; 2. Expressionism's relationship to 19th century Russian literary tradition.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Helene Lee


Matthew Ian Ferry (2017)

Carlise Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. This academic year's goals: Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata; collect data from National Archives in Washington, DC

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Paige Marie Hamilton (2017)

Carlise Indian School Digital Resource Center

The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. This summer's goals: • To digitize research material from the National Archives • Make the digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. See the attached project description and progress report for more information about the successful progress of this project to date. Through this proposal, we wish to provide funds for the salary and housing for two undergraduate researcher interns to continue work on the project. We already secured funding for travel expenses for these undergraduate interns and the Friends of the Library Intern to spend two weeks at the National Archives in Washington, DC digitizing material for further processing and upload. We estimate that 34 boxes of material (roughly 15,000 individual pages of content plus 3 boxes of quarterly reports) could be scanned during that time. This adds to a corpus of material of more than 150,000 pages of content digitized to date, serving a global user community that includes both scholars and living descendants of Carlisle students.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Susan Rose


Sarah Anne Hayes (2011)

Sociology Field Research

Sociology Field Research

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor:


Ashley Claire Haywood (2007)

The Montserrat Diaspora in the United States and England

At its peak in the early 1990s, the Caribbean nation of Montserrat had a population of 12,000 people. A series of eruptions of the Soufrière Hills volcano in the next few years had devastating effects on the economy and culture of the island. The population dwindled to about 3,000, jobs were scarce, social bonds were broken, and communities were devastated. In January 2005 professors and students from Dickinson College visited Montserrat to study the sociological and geological effects of this disaster. Video-taped oral history interviews were conducted with 19 residents, and a video recording was made of a lecture of one of the leading intellectuals living on the island. While students who conducted the interviews transcribed what was recorded, no systematic coding of these interviews was performed. The student selected for this Dana Internship will develop such a code, do literature reviews on the disaster (as well as similar disasters, including the devastating tsunami of December 2004), work with the Professor to develop a research agenda for the time that he will spend in England interviewing the diasporic communities living there, perform interviews with members of the Montserratian diaspora currently living in New York, and write an outline of a paper on the effects of disaster-induced separation on romantic relationships.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: J Daniel Schubert


Jamie Yoonjoung Hur (2011)

book proposal and manuscript development for Bittersweet Homecomings: Identity Construction in the Korean Diaspora

While the importance of expressionism as arguably the most significant international artistic movement of the 20th century has been long established, the topic of literary expressionism in Russia is new and under-researched. The first and only significant study came out in Russian only last year; there are no substantial English language publications on literary expressionism in Russia. While the topic is related to my previous study on Mikhail Kuzmin, the newly published study opens additional research possibilities, including 1. The link between literary and artistic expressionism in Russia; 2. Expressionism's relationship to 19th century Russian literary tradition.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Helene Lee


Fiona Emily Keane (2019)

Carlise Indian School Digital Resource Center

The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. This summer's goals: • To digitize research material from the National Archives • Make the digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. See the attached project description and progress report for more information about the successful progress of this project to date. Through this proposal, we wish to provide funds for the salary and housing for two undergraduate researcher interns to continue work on the project. We already secured funding for travel expenses for these undergraduate interns and the Friends of the Library Intern to spend two weeks at the National Archives in Washington, DC digitizing material for further processing and upload. We estimate that 34 boxes of material (roughly 15,000 individual pages of content plus 3 boxes of quarterly reports) could be scanned during that time. This adds to a corpus of material of more than 150,000 pages of content digitized to date, serving a global user community that includes both scholars and living descendants of Carlisle students.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Susan Rose


Jessica Etlinger Klimoff (2016)

Northwest Philadelphia Neighborhoods Study

The Northwest Philadelphia Neighborhood Study involves a shift in my research agenda towards urban sociology. It is a community study that utilizes ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews to examine conflict and cohesion within economically heterogeneous neighborhoods of Germantown. Though many of its residents struggle to get by on minimal resources, there is significant variability in socioeconomic status. In terms of racial composition, the area is over 85 percent Asian American. Though Whites make up around 10 percent of the population, they hold a disproportionate number of leadership positions at the community development corporations, several neighborhood associations, the Historical Society, and other key civic entities. My goal with the Northwest Philadelphia Neighborhood Study is to understand how residents within this heterogeneous area struggle over the area's identity and its future. What are the contested spaces upon which these tensions play out? What are the issues that offer a glimpse into latent frictions? How do various groups activate their resources towards accomplishing their goals? Who wins and who loses?

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Rachel Lauren Kruchten (2016)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This academic year's goals: • Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Susan Rose


Rachel Lauren Kruchten (2016)

Carlise Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. This academic year's goals: Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata; collect data from National Archives in Washington, DC

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Savannah-Grace Anna-Lee Kate Leeman (2014)

Confronting Islamophobia: Longitudinal Trends among Advocacy Organizations

This research describes the changes that have taken place since 1980 among advocacy organizations that work to represent the interests of Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian American communities. These communities face discrimination in the form of hate crimes and polices that single them out for harassment. This project seeks to examine how advocates have developed strategies for confronting this discrimination. To answer this question, we will gather information on advocacy organizations that have been active since 1980, including founding dates, membership size, funding, and mission statements. This information will be put into a database that allows comparisons between organizations and across time, to look for patterns and changes in patterns based on the type of organization and the time frame in which these advocates do their work. By describing these changing patterns of advocacy work, we can offer new insights to sociologists that study social movement advocacy, race, and formal organizations.

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Erik Love


Rebecca E Marquis (1995)

Contemporary Problems and Issues Facing the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Scott Van Jacob


Michele Amanda Metcalf (2016)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This academic year's goals: • Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata. See attached project description.

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Susan Rose


Michele Amanda Metcalf (2016)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This academic year's goals: • Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: James Gerencser


Katherine Eileen Murphy (2005)

A Comparative Study of Trans-Atlantic Migration and Oral Histories of the Oil Compnay Towns of Comodoro Rivadavia

In over 17 years of teaching Qualitative Field Methods, and the last 6 years of coordinating and co-teaching three Mosaics, I have amassed a number of resources for the teaching of fieldwork, including conducting interviews, oral histories, participant observation, and samples of published an student work. While I have developed various syllabi for these courses and programs, it is time to coordinate a Courseinfo/Blackboard site that could serve these endeavors and the next Mosaic which I am scheduled to be teaching during the fall of 2003, focusing on migration, community, family, and work studies. Dana Intern would help coordinate fieldwork resources for the American and International Mosaics, collected and construct a Courseinfo/Blackboard and web site that can serve the Mosaics and other fieldwork courses. In particular I will be working with the student to put together methods and research resources, web sites, printed articles, transcripts, etc. that will serve as a Methods bibliography for past and future Mosaics. This would require a student, working with me and contacting other faculty in order to: review what we already have as resources; to a literature review of other available resources, think about how to summarize and present them in the context of a bibliography; design a Courseinfo page of resources; design and construct a web page. The student will also help to conduct a literature review and annotated bibliography of the literature on Mexican migration, focusing on what would be useful to include for the next Mosaic that will take place in Adams County and Michocan, Mexico.

Term Funded:Fall 2002
Professor: Susan Rose


Margaret Theresa Murphy (2006)

Beyond Expectations: the Lives of Adults Living with Cystic Fibrosis

Until recently, people who had cystic fibrosis (CF) died as children. Recent medical advances have increased life expectancy to the point where today it is almost 33 years. What this means is that the first significant cohort of adults living with CF is now alive. I am involved in an ongoing study of these adults, having conducted a number of interviews in recent years and having had one article accepted for publication. This summer I will conduct additional interviews, transcribe those interviews, conduct data analysis, and write one paper titled "Living on the Cusp of Medical Advancement: The First Generation of Adults With Cystic Fibrosis" for submission to the journal Social Science and Medicine.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: J Daniel Schubert


Oanh-Nhi Nguyen (2013)

Clothesline Project

Gender violence is a human rights and public health issue in both the developed and developing world. Violence against women is a pervasive problem that threatens the health and welfare of women. While acknowledging cultural differences, and striving for greater understanding of both "our" own and others' cultures, it is important to recognize and examine the social pathologies of violence and how they play out in their various forms and intensities within and across cultures. The Global Clothesline Project builds on previous work in an attempt to raise awareness about gender violence and to share strategies that are being used to prevent it. I am applying for a Dana assistant to help me this summer with editing over 50 hours of Clothesline interviews with women conducted in the U.S., Venezuela, the Netherlands, Bosnia, Cameroon - initially into a Clothesline Trailer of 10 minutes duration and then begin work on the Global Clothesline Documentary that will run approximately 53 mintues; to help translate the Cameroonian  interviews done in French and do English sub-titles; and to help film the Clothesline Project and susbequent oral history interviews I will be conducting in May with intertribal (Native American) groups in Sacramento.  Context:  I just had a conference call (2pm March 3, 2011) with an intertribal council in California and have arranged to do the Clothesline Project as part of their two-day training in Sacramento May 17-18th. I need someone to help me film interviews and if Oahn-Nhi were a Dana intern this summer, she could possibly apply for a CSC student research grant to fly out and do this work with me (if of course approved by CSC review committee). A number of things (2 & 3) have also just come up and I would love to be able to employ Oanh-Nhi as an as

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Susan Rose


Margaret Lee O'Brien (2011)

Intimate Racework

I am applying for a Dana Research Assistant for the fall semester so that I may complete my book manuscript, Intimate Racework: The Daily Lives of Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Couples. The book will be published by Oxford University Press and must be delivered to the press by December 1, 2010. Intimate Racework examines how individuals maintain intimate ties across systems of stratification. I use qualitative interviews with forty lesbian, gay and heterosexual Black-White couples to explore how interracial couples conceptualize and negotiate racial difference in their relationship. I challenge the widespread assumption that interracial intimacy represents the ultimate erasure of racial differences. While interracial partners may sometimes be more racially progressive than those who oppose intermarriage, they are not necessarily enlightened subjects who have managed to 'get beyond' race. Instead, for many partners in this study interracial intimacy represents not the end, but the beginning of a sustained process of negotiating racial differences.

Term Funded:Fall 2010
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Margaret Lee O'Brien (2011)

Intimate Racework: The Daily Lives of Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Couples

I am applying for a Summer Dana Research Assistant so that I may continue to make progress (the completion of two additional chapters) towards finishing my book manuscript, Intimate Racework: The Daily Lives of Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Couples. The book will be published by Oxford University Press and must be delivered to the press by December 1, 2010. Intimate Racework examines how individuals maintain intimate ties across systems of stratification. I use qualitative interviews with forty lesbian, gay and heterosexual Black-White couples to explore how interracial couples conceptualize and negotiate racial difference in their relationship. I challenge the widespread assumption that interracial intimacy represents the ultimate erasure of racial differences. While interracial partners may sometimes be more racially progressive than those who oppose intermarriage, they are not necessarily enlightened subjects who have managed to 'get beyond' race. Instead, for many partners in this study interracial intimacy represents not the end, but the beginning of a sustained process of negotiating racial differences.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Margaret Lee O'Brien (2011)

Intimate Racework: The Daily Lives of Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Couples

I am applying for a Dana Research Assistant so that I may make significant progress (the completion of two chapters) towards finishing my book manuscript, Intimate Racework: The Daily Lives of Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Couples. The book will be published by Oxford University Press and must be delivered to the press by December 1, 2010. Intimate Racework examines how individuals maintain intimate ties across systems of stratification. I use qualitative interviews with forty lesbian, gay and heterosexual Black-White couples to explore how interracial couples conceptualize and negotiate racial difference in their relationship. I challenge the widespread assumption that interracial intimacy represents the ultimate erasure of racial differences. While interracial partners may be more racially progressive than those who oppose intermarriage, they are not necessarily enlightened subjects who have managed to 'get beyond' race. Instead, for many partners in this study interracial intimacy represents not the end, but the beginning of a sustained process of negotiating racial differences.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Joelle Leiter Paull (2017)

Carlise Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. This academic year's goals: Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata; collect data from National Archives in Washington, DC

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Stephanie Read (2016)

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Project

To develop a comprehensive digital resource for the study of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) by bringing together widely dispersed materials to aid research, and by serving as a virtual home for the ongoing work of an active CIIS community of memory and inquiry. The CIIS is a major site of memory for many Native peoples. The CIIS and the indigenous boarding school movement represent a very active area of research among scholars, teachers, students (both native and non-native), area residents, and descendants across the U.S. and the world. Scholars are working with descsendants of CIIS students who are learning from and contributing to this research. In the last decade, not only have many scholarly and popular books, articles, and documentaries related to the CIIS been produced, but also a number of symposia and community events have been organized. One example is the "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations" Symposium held at Dickinson College in October 2012. This academic year's goals: • Make previously digitized materials accessible via a dedicated website utilizing appropriate content management tools. Intern will edit image files; will evaluate, decipher, interpret and describe file contents; will transcribe select information; and will upload files to online resource and enter appropriate metadata. See attached project description.

Term Funded:Fall 2013
Professor: Malinda Triller-Doran


Alana Fields Richards (2020)

Untethered Ties: Neighborhood Networks in the Era of School Choice

American lives are less grounded in physical place than in previous generations. Mobile phones and applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have reconfigured communication and brought us into immediate contact with unlimited, unknown others. Changing perceptions of children's safety and modern parenting have made it more likely that many kids head off to piano lessons, soccer, or karate practice rather than play outside with friends. Still, a substantial body of literature in urban sociology and economics demonstrates that neighborhoods affect residents in deeply enduring ways. Importantly, neighborhood networks can be rich sources of social capital. Traditionally, schools have served as key institutional brokers of social capital that have contributed to the density of parent neighborhood networks. But with the rise of school choice, urban schools are increasingly untethered from local neighborhoods. Are city neighborhoods still important sites for parent connection and social relationships in the era of school choice? In this project, I gather qualitative narratives and quantitative network data from 90 parents to explore how urban parents value and utilize their neighbors. I examine the meanings, experiences, and structure of parent neighborhood networks, and consider how these networks are shaped by where their child goes to school.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Jasmin Sanchez-Lopez (2003)

A Comparative Study of Trans-Atlantic Migration and Oral Histories of the Oil Company Towns of Comodoro Rivadavia

In over 17 years of teaching Qualitative Field Methods, and the last 6 years of coordinating and co-teaching three Mosaics, I have amassed a number of resources for the teaching of fieldwork, including conducting interviews, oral histories, participant observation, and samples of published an student work. While I have developed various syllabi for these courses and programs, it is time to coordinate a Courseinfo/Blackboard site that could serve these endeavors and the next Mosaic which I am scheduled to be teaching during the fall of 2003, focusing on migration, community, family, and work studies. Dana Intern would help coordinate fieldwork resources for the American and International Mosaics, collected and construct a Courseinfo/Blackboard and web site that can serve the Mosaics and other fieldwork courses. In particular I will be working with the student to put together methods and research resources, web sites, printed articles, transcripts, etc. that will serve as a Methods bibliography for past and future Mosaics. This would require a student, working with me and contacting other faculty in order to: review what we already have as resources; to a literature review of other available resources, think about how to summarize and present them in the context of a bibliography; design a Courseinfo page of resources; design and construct a web page. The student will also help to conduct a literature review and annotated bibliography of the literature on Mexican migration, focusing on what would be useful to include for the next Mosaic that will take place in Adams County and Michocan, Mexico.

Term Funded:Spring 2003
Professor: Susan Rose


Robert Shaw (2005)

A Comparative Study of Community Transformation: Circular Mexican Migration and Collective Remittances

This comparative study of community transformation in York Springs, Pennsylvania and the three communities of San Francisco Peribán, Paraztaco, and Peribán de Ramos will examine the effects of migration on various communities both in the United States and in México, and the impact of individual and collective remittances on both the sending and receiving communities. In particular, we are interested in exploring the development of migrant cooperatives in San Francisco Peribán and their lack in Peribán de Ramos. Throughout México, money earned by migrants is primarily sent to family members as supplemental income; however, there are several examples of collective remittances being sent to communities in Jalisco, Michoacán and Zacatecas. They are used to support community building projects, such as schools, churches, and stadiums. From the standpoint of community well-being and growth, collective remittances have tremendous potential. The migrant cooperative in San Francisco Peribán, supported by migrant workers in the United States, provides a valuable opportunity to examine the history and structure of a migrant organization and the effects of public projects funded by migrant organizations in rural México.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Susan Rose


Catherine Rose Turvey (2015)

Something Fishy: Social Impacts of the Salmon Industry in Chiloe, Chile

Since the introduction of the salmon industry in the 1970s, the archipelago of Chiloe, Chile has experienced rapid industrial growth. Expanding agriculture may generate jobs, but has also challenged the environment, culture, and the livelihood of Chilote natives. Catherine's research explored local perspectives on the costs and benefits of the industry and how these have been distributed amongst different sub-populations.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor:


Gabriela Uassouf (2010)

Women in the Boliverian Revolution

Since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (BRV) has undergone a revolutionary process that consists of redistributing wealth, resources and rights. Based on the concept of participatory democracy, the BVR tends both rhetorically and practically to the social and political inclusion of historically marginalized sectors of Venezuelan society, including women. It has especially promoted the social inclusion of women from the most impoverished sectors. Today, the BRV Constitution is known worldwide as the non-sexist Magna Carta, thanks to its consistent usage of both feminine and masculine adjectives, and to articles such as 88, which recognizes housework as an economically productive activity and promises to provide 80% of the minimum wage to housewives in the form of a pension. Venezuelan BANMUJER is today the only state-owned microcredit bank devoted to the promotion of women's economic development and independence. Likewise, the Bolivarian Revolution has incorporated significant numbers of women in the political sphere and as social activists. Through interviews with politicians, academics, activists, members of cooperatives, and farmers, this research will examine some of the goals and achievements to date of the Bolivarian Revolution with regard to women. In addition, cross-generational oral history interviews will be conducted this summer (May-June 2007) with Venezuelan women, focusing on their life course: childhood experiences and conditions, schooling, work, marriage and family, health, gender relations, and social and political activism.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Susan Rose


Madeleine Elouise Vance (2019)

Legacies of Elite Single-Sex Education on Transition from Girlhood to Adulthood

This qualitative research project focuses on interviews with 20 graduates of an all-girls school in Los Angeles for at least four years of their middle and high school education in the early to mid-1990s. While proponents of single sex education for women point to better academic performance outcomes, higher levels of ambition, self-confidence, higher rates of college matriculation especially at high status schools, and increased interest in fields such as STEM that have traditionally been heavily male, there is little research that looks beyond these academic and psychological measures at the high school level. While in the key life stage of adolescence, the all-girls environment might encourage the development of certain positive attitudes and behaviors especially among high-achieving students, what happens when these girls graduate and enter the "real" world? Of particular concern is the fact that despite all the gains women have made in higher education and employment in the past few decades, researchers have found that college educated, professional women often "opt out" of the workforce at high rates as a common solution to balancing the demands of work and family responsibilities, especially once young children enter the picture. This gained particular attention with Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In published in 2013. The main set of research questions are as follows: In what ways do the graduates from this elite all-girls school- many of whom have degrees from some of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country - challenge Sandberg's framework? What resources do graduates use to negotiate their choices at work and home in the context of increased educational and occupational prospects on one hand and persistent gender ideologies and institutional barriers at work that constrain these very opportunities. What are the legacies of single-sex schooling on alumnae over 20 years later as they negotiate key markers of adulthood within their personal and professional lives? How do their experiences shed light on the ways their perceptions of being "successful" girls transition to being "successful" women?

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Helene Lee


Laura Katherine Whitaker ()

Spencer Foundation: Untethered Ties: Parents' Neighborhood Networks in the Era of School Choice

Spencer Foundation: Untethered Ties: Parents' Neighborhood Networks in the Era of School Choice

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Amy Steinbugler


Spanish & Portuguese Studies

Sarah Elizabeth Ackley (2007)

Enhancing the Learners' Attention: An Online Study of Textual Enhancement

Second language acquisition scholars agree that while input is an essential ingredient of successful acquisition, exposure to input alone in not sufficient. There is a general consensus that in order for input to be usable for acquisition, learners must minimally pay attention to the input. This position has prompted researchers to investigate whether language learners' attention to input may be manipulated to draw attention to target items, and thus increase that learners internalize the target items. This study investigates whether (a) increasing the perceptual salience of target input via textual enhancement (bolding target forms), and (b) manipulating the level of input in which forms were presented (in simple sentences or in a paragraph) would have an impact on how French learners process target forms in written input (prepositions used with geographical locations). Written input will be delivered via the Eyelink II Eyetracking System. Acquisition of target forms will be measured using a fill-in-the-blank production task. Additionally, to measure learners' processing of target forms, we will use participants' fixation and refixation durations, probability of fixation, and other online measures to determine whether the attempted manipulation was successful in attracting attention. The relationship between this cognitive processing time and the post-stimulus task scores will show whether or not learners are making the form-meaning connections under investigation. Knowledge obtained from this study may be used to inform the creation of pedagogical materials.

Term Funded:Spring 2007
Professor: Mark Overstreet


Sarah Elizabeth Ackley (2007)

Three Projects Analysis

This summer Dana Research Assistantship will support work on three projects. First, it will support the completion of the project entitled Processing Lexical and Grammatical Aspect During L2 Reading in Spanish. This project began in Spring 2006, but, due to scheduling of data collection, will not be able to be completed during Spring semester with the budgeted funds. That project has been accepted for presentation at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese June, 2006 meeting. The second project is entitled Aspect from an input processing perspective: Evidence for the Aspect Hypothesis, which has been accepted for presentation at the American Association for Applied Linguistics July, 2006 meeting. The third project is data analysis of an internal Spanish department survey that is being used for evaluation of the current curriculum.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Mark Overstreet


Sarah Elizabeth Ackley (2007)

Processing Lexical and Grammatical Aspect During L2 Reading in Spanish

The Aspect Hypothesis predicts that lexical aspect will influence learners' development of grammatical aspect use. Therefore, beginning learners will produce a lexically imperfective verb (e.g., a state verb) only in the Spanish imperfect. They will not produce it in the preterit until they achieve a higher proficiency. However, the study of how learners process lexical and grammatical aspect during reading has not been studied sufficiently to determine whether there is a similar effect during input processing. The present study utilizes a text that has verbs in two conditions: lexical=grammatical, lexical!=grammatical aspect. One week after completing a standardized pretest, participants will read the study text and complete two post-reading tasks: a free recall to measure global comprehension, and a form recognition task to measure form memory. It is predicted that there will be a correlation between reading comprehension score and correct identification of verb form and correct recall of verbal aspect.

Term Funded:Spring 2006
Professor: Mark Overstreet


Kristin Fentress Beach (2009)

Christopher Columbus in the Americas

I am writing a book, Christopher Columbus in the Americas, about how early nationalists in Anglo- and Spanish America appropriate Columbus for their own purposes. The book traces representations of Columbus throughout the centuries, beginning with Columbus's own representations of himself. I am requesting a Dana Research Assistant to help me research an 18th-century poem about Columbus written in French, a language in which I am not proficient. This book-length poem (it is approximately 170 pages), entitled La Colombiade by Anne-Marie Du Boccage, has not been translated and is a self-professed imitation of the style of Milton. I would like a Research Assistant to translate the poem and, if time allows, to also research the secondary bibliography in French related to the author and the poem. This poem is important for my work because it is considered an antecedent of the later "Columbiads," literary works by Paul Freneau and Joel Barlow about Columbus, both of which I cover in my book.

Term Funded:Spring 2009
Professor: Elise Bartosik-Velez


Christopher Joseph Brokus (2015)

English translation of Michel Rolph Trouillot's "Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti"

I am requesting a Dana research assistant to help polish (and footnote) the final drafts of a translation project underway. With co-translator Benjamin Hebblethwaite (UFL) and consultant Jacques Pierre (Duke), I am completing an original English translation of renowned anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot's (1977) Haitian Creole text, Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (Burning Issues in Haitian History). The unavailability in English of Trouillot's early masterpiece represents a major gap in Haitian studies and scholarship on the author's influential intellectual legacy. Ti dife boule,a Marxist critique of colonial history, is articulated through the lens of Haitian history and makes an important contribution to New World historiography. Trouillot's first book illuminates Haiti's revolutionary past in order to examine and critique Haiti's present situation. Instead of following the epic tradition of glorifying Haitian Revolutionary heroes, Trouillot analyzes the role of the Haitian slave masses in the revolution, the historical foundation of the modern Haitian state, and he draws on elements of popular and peasant culture (the Creole language and Vodou religion) to critique the monopoly of power and cultural alienation of the Haitian elite.

Term Funded:Spring 2015
Professor: Mariana Past


Morgan Michelle Cheatham (2012)

Semana Poética 10

The purpose of this Dana Research application is to hire a student with the necessary skills to assist in the preparation of the Semana Poética (Week of Poetry) that our department organizes every year. The upcoming event will be international and multilingual involving the following departments: Spanish and Portuguese, Russian, German, French and Italian, English, Judaic Studies, Middle East Studies and East Asian Studies. Each department will sponsor at least one poet in their respective language(s). We expect to have 10 poets representing different languages and regions of the world. The amount of work, thus, will be substantial. Therefore, I am requesting the assistance of a student to aid in the completion of several necessary tasks. For example, this student will help in editing, proofreading, paginating, designing posters and brochures and as well as assisting the academic coordinator with general clerical duties.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Angela DeLutis-Eichenberger


Thomas Bradley Elrod (2008)

Medieval Spanish Manuscript Project (MSMs)

The Dickinson College Medieval Manuscript Project (MSMs) is a long-term research project devoted primarily to pre-modern manuscripts and incunabula from the Iberian Peninsula and to the electronic encoding of those texts whose goal is to create a repository accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, and scholars. The project plans to support research on medieval manuscripts, text encoding, and the role of electronic texts in teaching and scholarship. Originally planned as a DEILA project, the MSMs will be published under the Digital Scholarship Project at Dickinson College. Essentially in its pilot stage, the project has matured enough to be implemented. Most projects of this type require teams of researchers for timely accomplishment, and currently, I have a student who is sufficiently trained, and who is presently continuing this training, with whom I can form a research eam that would make the substantial progress required to meet our goal. My request for student-faculty support, therefore, is to meet the goal of having the MSMs' first manuscript published online by the Fall semester.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Abraham Quintanar


Danielle Elizabeth Erickson (2014)

Processing Instruction: Explicit Information and Structured Input

My research investigation consists of testing different aspects of a methodology called Processing Instruction. There are two main components of Processing Instruction: Explicit Information and Structured Input. Structured Input is comprised of two types of input activities: referential activities and affective activities. The focus of this investigation is to tease apart the various components of this methodology in an attempt to determine the causative component and/or order of components that provoke learner gains.

Term Funded:Fall 2012
Professor: Erin Diaz


Erlyn Guadalupe Garcia (2020)

Representation of Mexican Female Drug Traffickers

Castellanos' second book project researches the representation of female drug traffickers in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. Media and literature portray women involved in drug trafficking as fascinating yet evil women and, in doing so, I argue they perpetuate traditional gender discourses. For this project, I have already conducted research on Brazilian female drug traffickers, and I am currently analyzing characters of female drug traffickers in Mexican literary texts. A Dana Research Assistant will contribute to develop this project by finding, collecting, and cataloguing newspapers clips about female drug traffickers in major Mexican newspapers and magazines published between 2000 and 2018. The Dana Research Assistant will use the MAXQDA qualitative content analysis software to import the articles' contents, and help me code them and initiate the analysis of how Mexican women in drug trafficking are represented in media.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Carolina Castellanos


Erlyn Guadalupe Garcia (2020)

Representation of Mexican Female Drug Traffickers

Castellanos' second book project researches the representation of female drug traffickers in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. Media and literature portray women involved in drug trafficking as fascinating yet evil women and, in doing so, I argue they perpetuate traditional gender discourses. For this project, I have already conducted research on Brazilian female drug traffickers, and I am currently analyzing characters of female drug traffickers in Mexican literary texts. A Dana Research Assistant will contribute to develop this project by finding, collecting, and cataloguing newspapers clips about female drug traffickers in major Mexican newspapers and magazines published between 2000 and 2018. The Dana Research Assistant will use the MAXQDA qualitative content analysis software to import the articles' contents, and help me code them and initiate the analysis of how Mexican women in drug trafficking are represented in media.

Term Funded:Fall 2020
Professor: Carolina Castellanos


Samantha Holden (2018)

Andanzas de un mensajero fiero y pendenciero, por Rafael Pérez Estrada

Samantha helped Prof. Mark Aldrich translate text and provided technical support in creating the drupal site.

Term Funded:Fall 2014
Professor: Mark Aldrich


Timothy James Leonard (2007)

Second language acquisition in the study abroad environment: Three case studies on preparedness

Study abroad research has considered a number of variables that affect learners' language development while abroad. One question that has not been studied extensively is that of preparedness: After what level of classroom study in the U.S. are students best prepared to take advantage of the naturalistic language learning setting that study abroad provides? Study abroad models are changing, with short-term programs, like the Málaga summer program, becoming more prevalent. The proposed study will follow three students, who have completed different levels of classroom study at Dickinson, during their five-week experience in Málaga. Each of the three will complete three elicited narrative tasks one prior to study abroad, one mid-way through, and one at the end. The participants' narratives will be transcribed and analyzed to determine what, if any, effect the study abroad experience has had on their productive use of various morphosyntactic elements in Spanish.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Mark Overstreet


Ana Maria Matovic ()

More than Two Flavors: Sexual Diversity in Cuban Youth Cinema

This research project provides insight into Cuba's changing sociopolitical and cultural landscape in the post-Castro era by focusing on how the works of young directors present the topic of sexual diversity. It comes at a time of controversial debate over the island's cultural policy and recent legislation that has begun to facilitate independent film production. It is also nestled between social debates on same-sex marriage that informed the new constitution and a possible referendum in 2021 that would make it legal. The project focuses on the annual Showcase of Young Directors: the Muestra Joven. This event is charged with creative energy and political tension as it brings together sometimes conflicting interests between state officials and artists. Sponsored by ICAIC (the state-run Cuban Film Institute), the event incorporates audiovisual media by students of two central film schools: the state-run School of Audiovisual Communication and the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Ba&#xf1;os. While many film audiences may be familiar with how U.S-Cuban relations have played out through the topic of sexuality on the big screen in the Oscar-nominated films Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) (1993) and Antes que anochezca (Before Night Falls) (2001), fewer are likely to have an up-to-date sense of how Cuban cinema addresses the topic of sexual diversity.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Margaret Frohlich


Leslie Mendoza (2011)

Spanish Society and Culture

Spanish Society and Culture

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Mary Katherine Naydan (2015)

Warrior Women. Female Masculinities in Latin American Literature.

Because I wrote my dissertation in Spanish I have been translating into English in order for it to be published by a U.S. academic publisher. My manuscript analyzes the gender representation of warrior woman characters in three well-known Regionalist novels published in the first part of the 20th century in Latin America. The main female characters of these novels implement masculinities in the sense that they retain power, give orders, use weapons, fight, and dress in masculine clothing. Drawing on feminist, queer theory, and masculinities studies, I argue that this performance becomes a strategy of self-empowerment and an identity through which these characters question hegemonic discourses on gender, social class, and race. I request a Dana Assistantship for help copy-editing the manuscript, because I am not an English native speaker. The assistant will also help me to research recent publications and to prepare a book proposal for a publishing house.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Carolina Castellanos


Ursala Neuwirth (2011)

Christopher Columbus in the Americas: New Nations and a Translatlantic Discourse of Empire

I am writing a book, Christopher Columbus in the Americas, about how early nationalists in Anglo- and Spanish America appropriate Columbus for their own purposes. I have written a draft of the introduction and every chapter, except the epilogue. At the end of June, I am moving to Malaga, Spain to direct Dickinson's study abroad program there for two years. Since it is not feasible to bring with me all of the books I have been working with, nor will I have access to interlibrary loan books, I am requesting a Dana Research Assistant to help me make final revisions and polish the manuscript while I am in Málaga.

Term Funded:Year 2011
Professor: Elise Bartosik-Velez


Aidan Brown O'Shea (2011)

Spanish Society and Culture Malaga

Spanish Society and Culture Malaga

Term Funded:Fall 2009
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Robert Kuschke Reeves (2002)

Portuguese Immigrant Letters

This collaborative, faculty-student research will collect and analyze immigrant letters found in the passport applications of the District of Faro, Portugal, during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. This is a very rare personal document in the context of Southern European migration and particularly so for the case of Portugal. These personal letters provide a small but unique window into a variety of issues regarding the daily life of migrants, their projects, the decision-making process, gender relations in the Algrave, family migration,etc.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Marcelo Borges


Brian Alan Reiger (2015)

Semana Poética

Our next Semana Poética, which will take place in October 2012, will continue to follow the same format as in previous years. It will be an international and multilingual event co-sponsored by the departments of English, German, French and Italian, Russian, Judaic Studies, Middle East Studies and East Asian Studies. Because of the success of the 10th Annual Semana Poética, other departments that have not yet participated in our event have expressed an interest in sponsoring a poet (for example, Africana Studies). As each department will sponsor at least one poet, in total we believe that approximately ten poets will participate in the festival. We also anticipate the continued involvement of the Music department, which last year provided us with musical pieces played by students and one faculty member to enhance the opening and closing night ceremonies. Semana Poética will continue to provide students with an additional language-learning tool, while reinforcing the college's commitment as a liberal arts institution towards global learning. Likewise, it will promote student/faculty participation, foster faculty collaboration among different departments, and strengthen Dickinson College/Carlisle community relationships. As a forum where national and international writers can share their ideas and imagery in Carlisle, the Semana Poética XI will continue to attract public attention and interest and thus heighten visibility for Dickinson College itself. Many of the poets will leave Dickinson with a greater understanding of our school and be able to share their experiences with others.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Angela DeLutis-Eichenberger


Steven Rodriguez (2014)

Processing Instruction: Explicit Information and Structured Input

My research investigation consists of testing different aspects of a methodology called Processing Instruction. There are two main components of Processing Instruction: Explicit Information and Structured Input. Structured Input is comprised of two types of input activities: referential activities and affective activities. The focus of this investigation is to tease apart the various components of this methodology in an attempt to determine the causative component and/or order of components that provoke learner gains. The targeted grammatical feature chosen for this investigation was the subjunctive/indicative distinction after the Spanish cuando, 'when'. The acquisitional challenges with this particular feature result both from the mood alternation that is prescriptively allowed as well as identified Input Processing principles

Term Funded:Spring 2012
Professor: Erin Diaz


Domenica Estefania Romo (2020)

Latin American Soccer Fiction Archive

This project aims to create the Latin American Soccer Fiction Archive, a publicaly accessible, searchable database of works from the emerging corpus of soccer fiction (short stories or novels featuring soccer as a dominant theme or plot driver). This project will serve as an invaluable tool to scholars, teachers and students of soccer studies around the world.

Term Funded:year 2017
Professor: Shawn Stein


Eric John Seymour (2012)

Semana Poética 9

The purpose of this Dana Research application is to hire a student with the necessary skills to assist me in the preparation of the 9th Semana Poética (week of poetry), that our department organizes every year. The upcoming event will be international and multilingual, involving the following departments: Spanish and Portuguese, Russian, German, French and Italian, English, and East Asian Studies. Each department will sponsor at least one poet in their respective language(s). We expect to have 10 poets from different langaues and areas of the world. The amount of work, thus, will be substantially larger than usual, and I would like to count on the help of a student assisting me in some of the needed tasks. This student will help in editing, proofreading, paginating, designing posters and brochures, as well as assisting Liz Zizzi in flight booking, lodging reservations, and general clerical duties.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Jorge Sagastume


Melissa Ann Sheaffer (2006)

Medieval Spanish Manuscript Project (MSMs)

The Dickinson College Medieval Spanish Manuscript Project (MSMs) is a long-term research project devoted primarily to pre-modern manuscripts and incunabula from the Iberian Peninsula and to the electronic encoding of those texts. Our goal is to make these archived writings accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, scholars, and the general reader. The project plans to support research on medieval manuscripts, text encoding, and the role of electronic texts in teaching and scholarship. MSMs will be published on DEILA, though ARTFL (University of Chicago) has shown interest in its development and in its publication for development purposes. The MSMs goal is to have its first manuscript published online by the spring semester.

Term Funded:Fall 2005
Professor: Abraham Quintanar


Kara Knackstedt Smith (2021)

How Empire Came to the Americas

My Dana research assistant will help me conduct research for How Empire Came to the Americas, a book I am writing about how people in the Western world have thought about empire, and how those ideas eventually played out in both British and Spanish America during the Age of Revolution. It studies the centuries-old notion of translatio imperii ("transfer of empire" in Latin), a popular historical belief that empire moves westward, stopping at times to flourish in certain places (Rome, for example) and then moving on to a different home to the west. The book analyzes how the translatio imperii trope developed in the Spanish and British intellectual traditions during the period of European conquests in the Americas and in the Americas themselves. My Dana research assistant will assist me in researching a variety of materials, including transcripts from an inquisition trial in sixteenth-century Lima.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Elise Bartosik-Velez


Brynn Lauren Steblay (2011)

Spanish Society and Culture

Spanish Society and Culture

Term Funded:Fall 2009
Professor:


Monica Ann Thapa (2017)

Latin American Soccer Fiction Archive

This project aims to create the Latin American Soccer Fiction Archive, a publicaly accessible, searchable database of works from the emerging corpus of soccer fiction (short stories or novels featuring soccer as a dominant theme or plot driver). This project will serve as an invaluable tool to scholars, teachers and students of soccer studies around the world.

Term Funded:year 2017
Professor: Shawn Stein


Rachel Anne Warren (2009)

Semana Poética VII

The purpose of this Dana Research application is to hire a student with the necessary skills to assist me in the preparation of the 7th Semana Poética (week of poetry), that our department organizes every year. Different from previous years, this upcoming event will be international and multilingual, involving the following departments: Spanish and Portuguese, Russian, German, French and Italian, English, and East Asian Studies. Each department will sponsor at least one poet in their respective language(s). We expect to have 12 poets from different langaues and areas of the world. The amount of work, thus, will be substantially larger than usual, and I would like to count with the help of a student assisting me in some of the needed tasks. This student will help in editing, proofreading, paginating, designing posters and brochures, as well as assisting Liz Zizzi in flight booking, lodging reservations and general clerical duties.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Jorge Sagastume


Sustainability

Jacqueline Elizabeth Geisler (2017)

Lucid Energy Monitoring Outreach and Kiosk

Lucid Energy Monitoring Outreach and Kiosk

Term Funded:Year 2016
Professor: Kenneth Shultes


Sean H Jones (2017)

Developing Automated, High Efficiency Solar Heating for Bigas Digesters

Developing Automated, High Efficiency Solar Heating for Bigas Digesters

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Matthew Steiman


Emily C Whitaker (2017)

Developing Automated, High Efficiency Solar Heating for Bigas Digesters

Developing Automated, High Efficiency Solar Heating for Bigas Digesters

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Matthew Steiman


Theatre & Dance

Hannah Brooke Ableman ()

Documentation, inventoring, and organization of properties

Properties in the form of small hand items, furniture, set decoration, and other like items represent an investment of time, money, and creativity on the part of our department and our design/tech faculty and support staff but Dickinson currently has no system for organizing, inventoring, and tracking these items either for use in our departmental productions or for faculty to use in their professional production activities. In 2015-16, a Dana Assistant worked with us to create a system for both costumes and properties but did not have the time to get a good start on the amount of work needed to organize and catalogue our properties inventory. A Dana Assistant for this academic year would focus solely on properties in order to get that storage in to the same successful system we managed to create for our costumes with the 2015-16 Dana Assistant.

Term Funded:Year 2020
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Claire Angelilli Antunes (2007)

Costume Storage Database

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and paper work on the designs for Aida by Tim Rice and Elton John at the Media Theatre in Media, PA and potentially for the design of 2 other professional productions yet to be determined. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working on a few craft projects for the production, and keeping production paper work up-to-date and accurate

Term Funded:Year 2007
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Kelly Beachell Gasner (1995)

International Arts Initiative

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Todd Wronski


Sarah Ann Benamati (2018)

Assistant to Executive Artistic Director Pendragon Theatre

The Dana intern would be fully invovled in the running of a theater. Especially for a student interested in theater management and marketing, this internship would provide a host of invaulable skills. The student would work on grant writing and research, preparing and analyzing financial and artistic documents and help with the planning of the summer season and auditions. The student will take the lead on researching the season for our publicity and take ownership of much of our marketing. Other examples of the intern's tasks: writing and editing press releases, compiling and proofing program and brochure content, maintaining social media and press kit, getting rights for the season, assisting with new hire, helping with plans for a new buidling, community outreach, judging young playwrights contest, sounding board for new ideas.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Sarah Ann Benamati (2018)

Stage Manager and Assistant to the EAD Pendragon Theatre

Research and Development funds are requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College students and I for the staging and performances of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and assisting in the running of the theater. The production will open in July and perform at Dewey Mountain Recreational Center in Saranac Lake, NY. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and continue after the rehearsal period to work at the theater stage managing, helping with tours, working backstage on other shows, assisting on administrative projects such as box office, the annual benefit and marketing, and working with me on strategic planning, grants, a new theater master plan and other initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and its inherent pressures and "real world" demands.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Sarah Ann Benamati (2018)

Assistant to the Executive Artistic Director

The Dana intern would be fully involved in the running of a theater. Especially for a student interested in theater management and marketing, this internship would provide a host of invaluable skills. The student would work on grant writing and research, preparing and analyzing financial and artistic documents and help with the planning of the summer season and auditions. The student will take the lead on researching the season for our publicity and take ownership of much of our marketing. Other examples of the intern's tasks: writing and editing press releases, compiling and proofing program and brochure content, maintaining social media and press kit, getting rights for the season, assisting with new hire, helping with plans for a new buildlng, community outreach, judging young playwrights contest, sounding board for new ideas.

Term Funded:Spring 2017
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Sarah Ann Benamati (2018)

Stage Manager and Assistant to the EAD Pendragon Theatre

Research and Development funds are requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College students and I for the staging and performances of Glass Menagerie and assisting in the running of the theater. The production will open in August and perform at Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake, NY. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and continue after the rehearsal period to work at the theater stage managing performances and helping with tours, working backstage on other shows, assisting on administrative projects such as box office, the annual benefit and marketing, and working with me on strategic planning, grants and initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and its inherent pressures and "real world" demands.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Joshua Zachary Bennett (2020)

Stage Manager and Assistant to EAD Pendragon Theatre

Research and Development funds are requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College students and I for the staging and performances of "Sense and Sensibility" and assisting in the running of the theater. The production will open in August at the theater and then tour teh area during the Fall, inclduing we hope Dickinson. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and work at the theater stage managing, helping with tours, working backstage on other shows, assisting on administrative projects such as box office, the annual benefit and marketing, and working with me on strategic planning, grants, a new theater master plan and other initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and its inherent pressures and "real world" demands.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Sarah Nicole Blocher (2018)

Assistant to the Production Manager

As production manager of RMRT for the last 9 years, I oversee all aspects of all of the designs associated with 3 large scale, summer musicals. This assistant, would have a hands on role in supervising 19 technical theatrical employees, generating scheduling, balancing a $100k budget, facilitating all design needs and acting as a liason between the directors and designers. RMRT employs professional designers and technicians from all over the country. This position would allow a student to take on a supervisory and managerial role in overseeing all operations associated with all technical apsects of the theatre.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Kent Barrett


Sarah Nicole Blocher (2018)

Assistant to the Production Manager

This year, I'm beginning a new position as production manager and designer for Pendragon's 2017 season of 6 shows. The Dana Assistant would act as my assistant in overseeing and helping supervise all technical employees, budgets, calendars, and acting as a liaison between the tech staff and directors. The assistant will also get hands on work in assisting in the design of lighting, scenery and sound for a diverse season of plays, including Fiction, Disgraced, Midsummer, No Exit, James and the Giant Peach, and Death Trap. The student assistant will also get hands on experience in hanging, cabling, and focusing lighting, setting up sound systems, hands on work in scenic construction as well as managerial and supervisory experience, keeping all necessary production related items on time, under budget and of the highest caliber possible. These are all real-world experiences that are invaluable for anyone entering into professional technical theatre right out of college.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Kent Barrett


Kristin Michelle Bodall (2011)

Stage Manager/Dramaturg for "Eurydice" at Pendragon Theater

This is a request for funds to support a student/faculty collaboration that will occur as I undertake the direction of Sarah Ruhl's"Eurydice" this summer at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, NY. As stage manager, the student will organize and attend rehearsals, observe the actors' process, record blocking, find props and execute other rehearsal-oriented activities. "Eurydice" is an especially rich play for the student to be working on. Ruhl re-imagines in a contmeporary setting the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice through the eyes of its heroine as she journeys on a dreamy voyage to the underworld. As the dramaturg, the student will research the original Greek myth, Ruhl's works and the many specific references found in the script as well as provide research for the designers and composer. He/she will also compile a comprehensive study guide and write program notes. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and insight into the creation of a dramatic work from its initial planning stages through its performances over a period of time.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Kristin Michelle Bodall (2011)

Stage Manager/Dramaturg for Pendragon Theater

This is a request for funds to support a student/faculty collaboration that will occur as I undertake the direction of Bernard Shaw's Candida this summer at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. As stage manager, the student will attend rehearsals, observe the actor's process, record blocking, organize finding props and execute other rehearsal-oriented activities. Candida is an especially rich play for a student to be working on. Written by Shaw in 1895, the play explores the Victorian ideas of love and marriage. As the dramaturg, the student will research Shaw, his plays, the time period and culture as well as many specific details such as costuming and props and write study guides and program notes. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and insight into the creation of a dramatic work from its initial planning stages through its performances over a period of time.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Lauren Elyse Brennan (2013)

Design and construction of costumes for summer repertory season

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for at least 2 of the following productions: Ring of Fire by Richard Maltby, Jr.; Completely Hollywood (abridged) by the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin; Becky's New Car by Steven Dietz; the fall touring show will be Breaking Up is Hard to Do book by Erik Jackson and Ben H. Winters, music by Neil Sedaka ; and the children's Peanut Butter and Jelly Café show will be The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales based on the book by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, adapted by John Glore. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Lauren Elyse Brennan (2013)

Stage Manager/Assistant Director/Dramaturg for Pendragon Theater

This is a request for funds to support a student Dana as I undertake the direction of "Shipwrecked!" by Donald Margulies this summer at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. This will be the 12th time a Dickinson student will have the opportunity to work with me at Pendragon. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and continue after the rehearsal period to maintain the show and work at the theater on administrative projects ranging from box office to publicity. In the past, the student has served as assistant director, actor, stage manager, dramaturg and fight choreographer. The role is often determined by the needs of the theater and the kind of play. In this case, the student will most likely be assistant director, dramaturg and stage manager.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Catheryn Marie Broady (2016)

Documentation, inventoring, and organization of costumes and properties

Costume and property items represent an investment of time, money, and creativity on the part of our department and our design/tech faculty and support staff but Dickinson currently has no system for inventoring and tracking these items either for use in our departmental productions or for our faculty to use in their professional production activities. A Dana Assistant during the academic year will work with the design/tech faculty to research and document our stock and get that information into a database which will allow us to both inventory and track our period costume and prop items.

Term Funded:Year 2015
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Sara Joy Brookner (2008)

Dickens and Twain: Crossing the Pond

This project constitutes a continuation of research conducted during my sabbatical in 2004-05. During that time I did extensive research related to both Charles Dickens' reading tour of America in 1867 and Mark Twain's lecture tour to London six years later. I have developed a two-person performance piece which explores the "special relationship" between England and the United States through the spoken words and writings of these two titanic talents of the 18th century. This summer, working with a student intern, I hope to pursue two related goals. The first-working in May and June-would be to conduct further research on the presentational aspects of Twain's and Dickens' respective "performances" that would lead in turn to the development of scenery, lighting, sound, program copy and publicity materials appropriate to theatrical presentation of this piece. The second goal would involve the rehearsal and presentation of the play, with myself performing the Twain role and colleagues from the University of East Anglia serving as director and other cast member. Our student intern would serve during this time period as stage manager and board operator for rehearsals and presentation in the UK and at Dickinson.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Todd Wronski


Kaliph Nathaniel Brown (2020)

Design and construction of costumes for summer season

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping, and shop work on costumes for 2 productions: Moon Over Buffalo by Ken Ludwig and Wonderettes: Dream On by Roger Bean . See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching, and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions. Although this is an off campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Kristen A Chirillo (1997)

Director's Collaboration: Jean Cocteau Repertory

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Robert Hupp


Joshua David Clapper (1997)

International Arts Initiative

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Margaret McKowen


Isabel Morgan Cooke (2020)

Stage Manager and Assistant Pendragon Theatre

Research and Development funds requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College student and I for the staging and performances of "Next to Normal" and assisting in in other aspects of the 40th anniversary season. The production will open in early July at the theater and run until the end of the month, including a tour. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and work at the theater stage managing, helping with tours, working backstage on other shows, assisting on administrative projects such as box office, the annual benefit and marketing, and working on strategic planning, grants, a new theater master plan and other initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and its inherent pressures and "real world" demands.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Natalie Ann Diener (2005)

Student Assistant Director/Stage Manager at Pendragon

R&D funds are requested to create a director/assistant director and stage manager collaboration for the staging of Shaw's "Arms and the Man." The production will open in July and perform in repertory through August at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, NY. In 2002 and 2001, a Dickinson student was part of my Pendragon experience and I would like to continue the Dickinson College-Pendragon connection as made possible by student/faculty research funding this summer. This proposal follows the model of my previous student/faculty theater collaborations-most recently my direction of the "Dance of Death" at the Jean Cocteau Repertory in NYC. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater with its inherent challenges and demands as she/he works on the show from planning to performance. The student will also have the rare opportuntiy to work with a company of actors performing plays in true repertory.

Term Funded:Summer 2003
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Kerry Epstein Hayes (1996)

International Arts Initiative

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1994
Professor: Robert Hupp


Matthew Augustus Fahnestock (2002)

Oleanna in Edinburgh: Theatre Performance in Scotland and Carlisle

Karen Lordi, Todd Wronski and Jim Lartin-Drake propose a joint student-faculty research project in theatre for the summer of 2000. Working with student assistants in each of three area (directing, acting, design/technical), our six-person group will rehearse and present David Mamet's play Oleanna at the Edinburgh International/Fringe Festival this August, followed by a "home" performance in Carlisle at the beginning of the academic year. Karen Lordi will serve as director/producer, Todd Wronski will act, and Jim Lartin-Drake will serve as production designer. Student assistants will serve as: stage manager-assistant director, acting (major female role), and technical/designer assistant and board operator.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: James Drake


Noah Robert Fusco (2018)

Design and Construction of Costumes for new play

A student assistant would help me to research, shop, and build costumes for the premiere production of a musical comedy called Cinderellish with book by Arnold Margolin and music by Weslie Brown. The student's duties for this would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching several clothing time periods, assisting with the shopping for the production, working in the shop on cutting, stitching, and craft work during the first 5 weeks of their work and then being responsible for the running of the production during the course of its run from 20 July - 6 August. The theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2016
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Sarah Jane Gafgen (2007)

The design and execution of costumes for three productions at the Greenbrier Valley Theatre

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for The Sugar Bean Sister by Nathan Sanders, The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey, and Noises Off by Michael Frayn. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the production, and, potentially, participate in the running of the production. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Ilyssa Gold (2019)

Assist with design, build, and run of A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine

A student would assist with the construction and the running of the musical comedy A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. The student assistant would work with me in a professional costume shop to create, alter, and modify costumes, would assist with shopping for the production, would help with research for the production, and would run the show during its June performance calendar.While the show is in performance, this student would also have the opportunity to assist me with the re-design and construction of a puppet for the 'Ghost of Christmas Future' for Greenbrier Valley Theatre's production of A Christmas Carol.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Ilyssa Gold (2019)

Design, construction, and maintenance for Into the Woods and Nunsense

I will be designing two productions, Into the Woods and Nunsense, for Greenbrier Valley Theatre in Lewisburg, WV this summer. A Dana Assistant will help me with research, costume and craft construction, and running the production of Into the Woods once it opens and will help with construction and mounting of Nunsense. Greenbrier Valley Theatre is a professional theatre that operates under an Equity Letter of Agreement so the student who assists with this will have a professional theatre credit to list on their curriculum vita and will make professional theatre contacts during their summer experience.

Term Funded:Summer 2019
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Heather Sharon Greeley (2002)

Oleanna in Edinburgh: Theatre Performance in Scotland and Carlisle

Karen Lordi, Todd Wronski and Jim Lartin-Drake propose a joint student-faculty research project in theatre for the summer of 2000. Working with student assistants in each of three area (directing, acting, design/technical), our six-person group will rehearse and present David Mamet's play Oleanna at the Edinburgh International/Fringe Festival this August, followed by a "home" performance in Carlisle at the beginning of the academic year. Karen Lordi will serve as director/producer, Todd Wronski will act, and Jim Lartin-Drake will serve as production designer. Student assistants will serve as: stage manager-assistant director, acting (major female role), and technical/designer assistant and board operator.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Elizabeth Perkins Holland (2013)

Mark Twain Abroad

This project will involve the final drafting of a dramatic script as well as its rehearsal and, ultimately, its presentation at perhaps the most prominent theatre festival in the English-speaking world. The play will be compiled and edited from the writings, interviews, speeches and dictations of Mark Twain focusing on his international travels and observations. Through the spring of 2011, I will be researching and identifying appropriate material from Twain and beginning the editing process. In May and early June, a student and I would conduct a process of shaping this material into a performable script. During that time, we will also begin working on public relations materials preparatory to the August performance in Edinburgh. Web-based promotional material will be developed, as well as materials for more traditional media (radio and print press.) The final component will be the rehearsal and presentation of the piece under the direction of British director Anthony Frost. Rehearsals will be conducted in Norwich, England before we transfer to our theatre in Edinburgh for final technical rehearsals and performance.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Todd Wronski


Abeo Jackson (2007)

Design and Execution of costumes for 3 productions

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for Something's Afoot by James McDonald, et.al., Sly Fox by Larry Gelbert, and Lying in State by David C. Hyer. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and, potentially, participating in the running of the productions initially. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Abeo Jackson (2007)

Research, rendering and design of "Sing Down the Moon"

Student and I will research regional folk-art, render, and realize the children's production Sing Down the Moon.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Ellen Margaret Joffred (2007)

Dramaturg and Assistant Director for "Angels in America: Perestroika" and Andre Gregory's "Bone Songs" at Pendragon Theater.

R&D funds are requested to create an assistant director/dramaturg collaboration between student Ellen Joffred and I for the staging and performances of "Angels in America Part II: Perestroika." The production will open in early July and perform in repertory through August at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, NY. This project will continue the work Ellen did as dramaturg last summer for Part I. Ellen will prepare a study guide, research notes, program and other materials relevant to the production. She will also serve as assistant director/dramaturg on the world premiere of "Bone Songs" in August. . Since 2001, a Dickinsonian was part of the Pendragon ensemble and I would like to continue to foster this tradition. In addition, this year we are a hosting a tour of the production to campus. The student will have a vital role in presenting the work to the Dickinson community in September.

Term Funded:Summer 2006
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Ellen Margaret Joffred (2007)

Stage Manager for Pendragon's "Angels in America"

R&D student/faculty research funds are requested to create a director/stage manager collaboration for the staging and performances of the play "Angels in America." The production will open in July and perform in repertory through August at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. This collaboration has practically become a summer tradition. The first student accompanied me in 1996 and since then I have used the student/faculty research support for five other Pendragon summer projects as well as two January productions in NYC. This proposal is particularly geared to a student interest in stage managing/directing/tech and the challenges presented by working on and maintaining a show. The student will continue with the production from rehearsal into the performance run, taking over essentially the director's responsibilities. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater with its inherent challenges and demands, Insight will be gained into the creation of a dramatic production from its initial planning stages through its performances over a period of weeks.

Term Funded:Summer 2005
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Holly Clare Kelly (2015)

US Performance: Mark Twain Abroad

In 2011, I presented my one person performance piece Mark Twain Abroad in Edinburgh Scotland. Because of my position as director of Dickinson's Humanities Program in England, I was unable to perform the piece back here on campus and in the U.S. Through my proposed project, I will revive this production, design and rehearse it for a new space and a different audience, and develop resources (web pages and digital visual recording) related to the piece as part of a plan to further increase the visibility of the play and bring it to the attention of potential producers. The student assistant would oversee all preliminary rehearsal activity, the preparation of a production web-site, and the adaptation of all costume, lighting and scenic elements in consideration of the new space. During the final (third) week of activity, the student assistant would serve as assistant director/stage manager alongside British director Tony Frost (director of theatre at the University of East Anglia.) The student assistant would run lights and sound for the perfomance and be responsible for smooth functioning of all production elements.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Todd Wronski


Meghan Lantzy (2001)

Oleanna in Edinburgh: Theatre Performance in Scotland and Carlisle

Karen Lordi, Todd Wronski and Jim Lartin-Drake propose a joint student-faculty research project in theatre for the summer of 2000. Working with student assistants in each of three area (directing, acting, design/technical), our six-person group will rehearse and present David Mamet's play Oleanna at the Edinburgh International/Fringe Festival this August, followed by a "home" performance in Carlisle at the beginning of the academic year. Karen Lordi will serve as director/producer, Todd Wronski will act, and Jim Lartin-Drake will serve as production designer. Student assistants will serve as: stage manager-assistant director, acting (major female role), and technical/designer assistant and board operator.

Term Funded:Summer 2000
Professor: Todd Wronski


Tiffany Lynn Lewis (2004)

Student Assistant at Pendragon Theater, Director/Stage Manager

R&D student/faculty research funds are requested to create a director/assistant director and stage manager collaboration for the staging and performances of Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead." The production will open in July and perform in repertory through August at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. In 1996, Dickinson student Sophia Bushong was part of the Pendragon ensemble and I would like to re-establish the Dickinson connection with the theater this summer. This proposal follows the model of previous student/faculty theater collaborations-most recently my direction of "Edward II" at the Cocteau rep in New York City (January 2000). This proposal expands the student's role to include stage managing and continuing to work at the theater after the rehearsal process is completed. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater with its inherent challenges and demands. Insight will be gained into the creation of a professional dramatic production from its initial planning stages through its performances over a period of time.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Yuan Lin (2016)

Design and construction of costumes for summer season

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping, and shop work on costumes for all or most of the following productions: Chicago by Kander, Ebb, and Fosse; Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon; and Beehive created by Larry Gallagher. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching, and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions. Although this is an off campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Dana Rachel Lopatin (2015)

Design and construction of costumes for summer season

A student assistant helped Prof. Harper McCombs with the research, shopping, and shop work on costumes for all or most of the following productions: Man of La Mancha, book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh; Lucky Stiff by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty; and Stand by your Man by Mark St. Germain. The student's duties included researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Erin Colleen Lowe ()

Kurt Vonnegut on Stage

I am in the process of developing a one-person performance piece based on the life and writings of American author Kurt Vonnegut. This activity is in anticipation of the upcoming centenary of Vonnegut's birth in 2022, which I am anticipating may bring intensified interest in this remarkable literary figure. I have received permission from the Vonnegut estate to use Vonnegut's writing in the development of the script for this performance. As I have done in the past with similar projects (William Saroyan, Mark Twain) I will be assembling the performance using exclusively Vonnegut's own spoken, written or recorded words.

Term Funded:Spring 2020
Professor: Todd Wronski


Jeremy Adam Lupowitz (2015)

Assistant to the Artistic Director at Pendragon Theatre

Research and Development funds are requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College student and I for the staging and performances of A Streetcar Named Desire and assisting in the running of the theater. The production will open in July and perform in repertory through August at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production of A Streetcar Named Desire and continue after the rehearsal period to work at the theater stage managing performances, working backstage, assisting on administrative projects such as box office and public relations, and working with me on long range season planning and initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater with its inherent pressures and "real world" demands. The students' roles will include stage manager, dramaturg and assistant to the artistic director.

Term Funded:Summer 2013
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Jeremy Adam Lupowitz (2015)

Assistant to Executive Artistic Director Pendragon Theatre

The Dana intern would be fully invovled in the running of a theater. Especially for a student interested in theater management and marketing, this internship would provide a host of invaulable skills. The student would work on grant writing and research, preparing and analyzing financial and artistic documents and help with the planning of the summer season and auditions. The student will take the lead on researching the season for our publicity and take ownership of much of our marketing. Other examples of the intern's tasks: writing and editing press releases, compiling and proofing program and brochure content, maintaining social media and press kit, getting rights for the season, assisting with new hire, helping with plans for a new buidling, community outreach, judging young playwrights contest, sounding board for new ideas. Such training will be extremely advantageous to a student like Jeremy who is considering a career in arts management and marketing.

Term Funded:Year 2014
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Dalton Jon Maltz (2016)

Stage Manager and Assistant to the EAD Pendragon Theatre

Research and Development funds are requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College students and I for the staging and performances of Tintypes and assisting in the running of the theater. The production will open in July and perform at Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake, NY. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and continue after the rehearsal period to work at the theater stage managing performances and helping with tours, working backstage on other shows, assisting on administrative projects such as box office, the annual benefit and marketing, and working with me on strategic planning, grants and initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and its inherent pressures and "real world" demands.

Term Funded:Summer 2015
Professor: Karen Kirkham


David Rutledge McCallum (1999)

Director's Collaboration: Jean Cocteau Repertory

A three-week collaboration between Professor Robert Hupp, the student, and the members of the professional theatre troups, The Jean Cocteau Repertory, will result in a professional production in which the student will play an integral role. The experience will help the student understand the background research required when preparing a production. Directorial decisions require a knowledge of the historical and social context of the work to be presented, as well as research into settings, costuming and other technical details that frame the production.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Robert Hupp


Paige Alicia Meredith (2009)

Design and construction of costumes for 3 productions

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for The Last Days of Route 66 by Ron Wilson, The Underpants a farce by Steve Martin, and a third show that is awaiting contract negotiations. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and, potentially, participating in the running of the productions initially. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Paige Alicia Meredith (2009)

Design and construction of costumes for 3 productions

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for I'll Never be Hungry Again by Catherine Bush, Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson, and Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and, potentially, participating in the running of the productions initially. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2007
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Amelia Joan Merrill (2019)

Assistant to the Executive Artistic Director, Pendragon Theater

The Dana intern would be fully invovled in the running of a theater. Especially for a student interested in theater management and marketing, this internship would provide a host of invaulable skills. The student would work on grant writing and research, preparing and analyzing financial and artistic documents and help with the planning of the summer season and auditions. The student will take the lead on researching the season for our publicity and take ownership of much of our marketing. Other examples of the intern's tasks: writing and editing press releases, compiling and proofing program and brochure content, maintaining social media and press kit, getting rights for the season, assisting with new hire, helping with plans for a new buidling, community outreach, judging young playwrights contest, sounding board for new ideas. In addition, This will be the 40th anniversary season of the theater and there will be lots of aditional work with planning special events to mark the event.

Term Funded:Year 2018
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Amelia Joan Merrill (2019)

Assistant to the Executive Artistic Director, Pendragon Theater

The Dana intern would be fully invovled in the running of a theater. Especially for a student interested in theater management and marketing, this internship would provide a host of invaulable skills. The student would work on grant writing and research, preparing and analyzing financial and artistic documents and help with the planning of the summer season and auditions. The student will take the lead on researching the season for our publicity and take ownership of much of our marketing. Other examples of the intern's tasks: writing and editing press releases, compiling and proofing program and brochure content, maintaining social media and press kit, getting rights for the season, assisting with new hire, helping with plans for a new buidling, community outreach, judging young playwrights contest, sounding board for new ideas. In addition, This will be the 40th anniversary season of the theater and there will be lots of aditional work with planning special events to mark the event.

Term Funded:Spring 2019
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Amelia Joan Merrill (2019)

Assistant to the Executive Artistic Director, Pendragon Theater

The Dana intern would be fully involved in the running of a theater. Especially for a student interested in theater management and marketing, this internship would provide a host of invaluable skills. The student would work on grant writing and research, preparing and analyzing financial and artistic documents and help with the planning of the summer season and auditions. The student will take the lead on researching the season for our publicity and take ownership of much of our marketing. Other examples of the intern's tasks: writing and editing press releases, compiling and proofing program and brochure content, maintaining social media and press kit, getting rights for the season, assisting with new hire, helping with plans for a new building, community outreach, judging young playwrights contest, sounding board for new ideas. In addition, This will be the 40th anniversary season of the theater and there will be lots of additional work with planning special events to mark the event.

Term Funded:Fall 2019
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Sydney Ruttan Moffat (2014)

Design and construction of costumes for summer repertory season

I am requesting a Dana Research Assistant to help with my work as costume designer for Greenbrier Valley Theatre during their summer season 2012. Dates and shows for the summer have been set, barring any royalty or unforeseen scheduling issues. The shows planned for the coming summer are Floyd Collins a musical by Tina Landau and Adam Guettel which opens 14 June; Duck Hunter Shoots Angel by Mitch Albom which opens 12 July; The Frugal Repast by Ron Hirsen which opens 19 July; and the fall touring musical Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Roger Bean which opens 18 August. As has been the case for several years now, Greenbrier Valley Theatre will supply housing for our student at no cost to Dickinson.

Term Funded:Summer 2012
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Megan Brooke Nussle (2009)

One-person Play on the Life and Writings of William Saroyan

The project will entail the adaptation, rehearsal and presentation of a one-person play based on the life and writings of Armenian-American author William Saroyan. Saroyan was a very significant figure in mid-20th century American literature. His meteoric rise from an impoverished background combined with a long life writing through and after his notable decline in popularity make his a particularly compelling story and character. 2008 marks the centenary of his birth in 1908. To mark this occasion, I will revive the play I developed and performed some years ago, working with my research assistant to adapt it for contemporary audiences (read: making it shorter) and create a special performance for high school audiences. The play will be performed here at the beginning of the 2008-09 academic year and then in California, where it will be presented at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts and at multiple locations in Fresno, both for the general public and for selected school groups.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Todd Wronski


Carolyn Nathalie Oppenheim (1994)

Director's Collaboration: Jean Cocteau Repertory

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1993
Professor: Robert Hupp


Edward Jefferson Peck (1997)

Director's Collaboration: Jean Cocteau Repertory

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1997
Professor: Robert Hupp


Tiffany Louise Pena (2010)

Design and construction of costumes for 3 productions

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock by Catherine Trieschmann, All the Great Books by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, and Sherlock Holmes, The Final Adventure by Steven Dietz. An assistant would also have wardrobe duties in relation to The Greenbrier Ghost and may design If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2009
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Norah Elizabeth Roderick (2005)

Stage Manager for Pendragon's "Little Shop of Horrors"

R&D student/faculty research funds are requested to create a director/stage manager collaboration for the staging and performances of the musical "Little Shop of Horrors." The production will open in July and perform in repertory through August at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. This collaboration has practically become a summer tradition. The first student accompanied me in 1996 and since then I have used the student/faculty research support for four other Pendragon summer projects as well as two January productions in NYC. This proposal is particularly geared to a student interest in stage managing and the challenges presented by working on and maintaining a musical. The student will continue with the show from rehearsal into the performance run, taking over essentially the director's responsibilities. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater with its inherent challenges and demands. Insight will be gained into the creation of a dramatic production from its initial planning stages through its performances over a period of time.

Term Funded:Summer 2004
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Hillary Ann Rosen (2013)

LED Lighting Techonology Applied to Live Performance

LED lighting technology is changing the face of lighting design for live performance. LED technology has just recently crossed the threshold of quality and dependability that will allow theatre artists to embrace these instruments without sacrificing their aesthetic standards or practical requirements. Because so many new technologies and brands have come to the market over the past five years, it is impossible to compare various brands or products without an on-site demonstration that reveals the relative advantages and disadvantages of each technology in its application to live performance. Professor Farrar and Ms Rosen propose to invite up to 9 different vendors and/or manufacturers to Dickinson College in August 2012 to allow a direct comparison of these various products. We will review each fixture on criteria that pertain to "sustainable qualities" (power consumption, heat generation, and anticipated service requirements) as well as aesthetic and practical considerations that are specific to live performance (light quality, color-mixing options, interface design, and noise-reduction). Lighting Fixtures will then be chosen for use in the Fall 2012 theatre and dance performances. After the performances, these fixtures will be given a "post-mortem" evaluation on the application in live performance and the results will be shared with the Dickinson community as well as other professional and academic performance venues.

Term Funded:summer 2012
Professor: Stewart Farrar


Kathryn Hope Rother (2013)

Stage Manager/Assistant Director/Dramaturg for Pendragon Theater

This is a request for funds to support a student Dana as I undertake the direction of two plays- Sweeney Todd and Dangerous Liaisons- this summer at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. This will be the 11th time a Dickinson student will have the opportunity to work with me at Pendragon.The student will work closely with me, as the director, on all phases of the project. Beginning with text research, design, casting and pre-production planning, the core of the student's experience will be during the rehearsal process in June. The student will be offered a central role in the creation of the dramatic work as it evolves from page to stage. She/he will interact continually with myself as the director, the professional resident design team at Pendragon, the professional acting ensemble and the artistic and management staff at the theater. Through continuing with the show past opening, the student will assume a position of professional responsibility.

Term Funded:Summer 2011
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Erin Caitlin Ryan (2009)

Assistant Director/Dramaturg/StageManager Pendragon Theater

This is a request for funds to support a student Dana as I undertake the direction of a double bill of Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound" and Shaeffer's "Black Comedy" this summer at Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and continue after the rehearsal period to maintain the show and work at the theater on administrative projects ranging from box office to publicity. In the past, the student has served as assistant director, actor, stage manager, dramaturg and fight choreographer. The role is often determined by the needs of the theater and the kind of play. In this case, the student will most likely be assistant director, dramaturg and stage manager.

Term Funded:Summer 2008
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Isabelle Carina Schlick (2015)

Design and Construction of Costumes for Summer Repertory Season

A student assistant will help me with the research, shopping, and shop work on costumes for all or most of the following productions: The Greenbrier Martyr by KC Davis, The Greenbrier Ghost book by Cathey Sawyer, music by Joe Buttram, The Foreigner by Larry Shue, and Smokey Joe's Cafe by Jerry Leiber and MIke Stoller. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions.

Term Funded:summer 2013
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Chakravartin Sokhomsan ()

Valley Traction Design

Barrett is the artistic director for a new, experimental performance art collective in the Cumberland Valley known as Valley Traction. I am hoping to work with a student as an assistant designer. One of the goals for this group is to create gritty, affordable, high quality artistic and performative work locally and sustainably as well as to begin to develop an aesthetic that is rooted in our local collectivism, history, and traditions. The student would help research local culture, develop and execute design ideas related to this research, and also assist in the actual execution of this work through construction of scenic elements, painting, lighting, and/or sound or video implementation.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Kent Barrett


Eric Andrew Stoneberg (1996)

Director's Collaboration: Jean Cocteau Repertory

n/a

Term Funded:Summer 1996
Professor: Robert Hupp


Andrew Michael Takoch (2012)

Design and construction of costumes for 3 productions

A student assistant would help me with the research, shopping and shop work on costumes for Connor McPherson's The Seafarer; Earnest in Love, a musical based on Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest adapted by Anne Croswell and Lee Pockriss; The 39 Steps, adapted by Patrick Barlow, Simon Corble, and Nobby Dimon from the novel by John Buchan. An assistant might also help prepare the fall touring production Hula-Hoop Sha Boop, as well as the summer children's show which has yet to be selected. See attached for more detail, but the student's duties would include, but not necessarily be limited to, researching clothing time period, assisting with shopping, working in the costume shop on cutting, stitching and craft work for the productions and participating in the running of the productions. Although this is an off-campus project, the theatre will provide housing for the student.

Term Funded:Summer 2010
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Kimberly Tracey Meacham (2002)

In My Case an Exception Should be Made: An Audience With Willian Saroyan

My proposed project involves the continuation of my current research on the life and writings of William Saroyan, which I am compling into a one-person performance piece. (William Saroyan was a prominent mid-century Armenian-American writer whose work includes plays, short stories and novels.) This summer, working with a student intern, I hope to realize two related goals. The first--working in May and June--would to conduct further research on Saroyan that would lead to identification, selection and preparation of music, scenery, lobby materials, program copy and publicity approprate to the theatrical presentation of this piece. The second would involve the rehearsal and presentation of the piece, with myself performing Saroyan and the student serving as stage manager, board operator, and general production assistant. The piece would be performed in Edinburgh, Scotland and subsequently back here on campus early in the fall term.

Term Funded:Summer 2001
Professor: Todd Wronski


Glen Philip Wall (2004)

Director/Assistant Director and Stage Manager collaboration for the staging and performances of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" at the Pendragon Theater in Saranac Lake, New York

Pendragon Theater is the only year-round not-for-profit professional theater in the Adirondacks. The theater receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NY State Council on the Arts and several other prominent public and private corporations and foundations. The assistant director/state manager will work closely with me on "Twelfth Night." Beginning with text research, design, casting and pre-production planning, the core of the student's experience will be during the rehearsal process in June/July. The student will be offered a central role in the creation of the dramatic work as it evolves from page to stage. He will interact continually with myself as director, the professional resident design team at Pendragon, the professional acting ensemble and the artistic and management staff at the theater. Through continuing as the stage meager of the show, the student will assume a position of professional responsibility. He will be responsible for organizing and being at every rehearsal, taking blocking and line notes, calling the show, organizing tours and change-overs, maintaining the show through extra rehearsals as well as assisting in the other day-to-day activities involved in the running of the theater.

Term Funded:Summer 2002
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Noam Asa Wegner (2015)

Stage Manager and Assistant to the EAD at Pendragon Theater

Research and Developmet funds are requested to create a collaborative assistant position between a Dickinson College student and I for the staging and performances of Man of La Mancha and assisting in the running of theater. The production will open in July and perform at Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake, NY. The student will be involved in all aspects of the production and continue after the rehearsal period to work at the theater stage managing performances and helping with tours, working backstage on other shows, assisting on administrative projects such as box office, the annual benefit and marketing, and working with me on strategic planning, grants and initiatives. The student will gain experience in a non-profit regional theater and its inherent pressures and "real world" demands.

Term Funded:Summer 2014
Professor: Karen Kirkham


Solomon Aaron Zisser (2020)

Creation and performance of puppet theatre piece

This project will allow for student-faculty collaboration in the creation of a work of visual theatre from the ground up. We will explore the power of puppetry, masks, movement, and environment to tell a story without the use of language since this work will travel to an international festival where language can be a barrier but visual commuincation has power.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


James van Kuilenburg ()

Collaborative Creation and Performance

I plan to collaborate with a student on the creation of a puppet performance from the conceptualization of the piece to the presentation of the work. The hope is that we will be able to work with Karen Kirkham remotely as director in the conception of the work and then again in person for a couple of weeks before presenting the work on campus the weekend prior to Labor Day.

Term Funded:Summer 2021
Professor: Sherry Harper-McCombs


Trout Gallery

Sophia Helen Coates (2018)

Science and Art Educator's Resource Guide

I propose to design, test, and publish an Educator's Resource Guide on the topic of Science and Art. Using photographs of animal locomotion taken in the 1880s by the artist Eadweard Muybridge as a basis, this guide will provide thematic essays, lesson plans, and other curriculum resources for K-12 and undergraduate educators. An exhibition of Muybridge's photographs will take place at The Trout Gallery throughout the summer and early fall of 2017, providing the ideal testing laboratory for components of the Educator's Resource Guide. A Dana Research Assistant will help to test and revise lesson plans, identify K-12 National Standards related to specific lesson plans, and research and write components of The Guide. The Educator's Resource Guide will be published in print and digital form by The Trout Gallery.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Heather Flaherty


Abigail Elizabeth Cottle (2020)

Joyce Tenneson Photography.

In 2009, the artist Joyce Tenneson was voted by American Photo magazine as among the ten most influential women photographers in the history of photography. The recipient of the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award and the Photographer of the Year award from the International Organization of Women in Photography, Tenneson has used her photographic talents to move between photographic genres and tackle a diverse array of subjects. This summer, The Trout Gallery will organize an exhibition of Tenneson's work drawn from the permanent collection and including many new acquisitions. Like Annie Liebovitz, Tenneson's work straddles the genres of classical portraiture and fashion photography. Best known for her intimate portraits, Tenneson has in recent years brought the same techniques she uses in crafting haunting likenesses of humans to her nature photography.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Heather Flaherty


Natura A Sant Foster (2020)

Re-Riding the Rails: From the Southern Plains to the Matanzas Bay.

This summer, I will be researching and preparing materials for a series of public programs and lectures in conjunction with an exhibition opening at The Trout Gallery on June 1st: Re-Riding History: From the Southern Plains to the Matanzas Bay. This exhibition metaphorically retraces the history of seventy-two American Indian peoples who were taken from their homes in Salt Fork, Oklahoma, and forcibly moved by train to St. Augustine, Florida as part of a government-sponsored assimilation initiative.

Term Funded:Summer 2018
Professor: Heather Flaherty


Katherine Kershner Sullivan (2018)

Native Americans and Art Educator's Resource Guide

I propose to design, test, and publish an Educator's Resource Guide on the topic of Native Americans and Art. Using photographs of Native American tribes taken ca. 1900 by the artist Edward Curtis as a basis, this guide will provide thematic essays, lesson plans, and other curriculum resources for K-12 and undergraduate educators. An exhibition of Curtis' photographs will take place at The Trout Gallery throughout the summer and early fall of 2017, providing the ideal testing laboratory for components of the Educator's Resource Guide. A Dana Research Assistant will help to test and revise lesson plans, identify K-12 National Standards related to specific lesson plans, and research and write components of The Guide. The Educator's Resource Guide will be published in print and digital form by The Trout Gallery.

Term Funded:Summer 2017
Professor: Heather Flaherty


Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Chelsea Elizabeth Allen (2011)

Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America

Historical studies of the modern U.S. women's movement are often told from the vantage point of the East Coast, leaving us to believe that what happened in Boston or New York City stands for feminist activism everywhere. Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America challenges this received wisdom about feminism by offering a grassroots perspective on the post-1960 movement for women's equality and liberation. In doing so, it pushes us to reconsider the liberal/radical divide that characterizes this social movement. By tracing the histories of feminist activism in three different locations - Memphis, Tennessee; Columbus, Ohio; and San Francisco, California - Groundswell explores how feminist identity, strategies, and goals are shaped by geographical location. It explores and analyzes people who lived, worked, organized, and fought for feminist change in their day-to-day lives, and it illuminates the different strategies, goals, actions, and outcomes that women in different parts of the country undertook as they pursued women's equality and liberation. In doing so, it seeks to understand the terrain from which feminism surfaces and analyzes the emergence of feminism among everyday activists.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Stephanie Gilmore


Jennifer Frances Chmielewski (2010)

LGBT Campus Climate Focus Groups

In spring 2009, Stephanie Gilmore, Paula Lima, and Megan Yost administered the first LGBT Campus Climate Survey at Dickinson College; in the fall, they presented the results of the survey at the 24 September 2009 Common Hour. At this presentation, several questions emerged about the future of the study, particularly about publishing the results of the survey and conducting focus groups. Yost and Gilmore have already made inroads into publication - they presented an academic conference paper from the results in November 2009 and plan to prepare an article for submission over spring semester.

Term Funded:Spring 2010
Professor: Stephanie Gilmore


Leanna Alyxandria Diggs (2015)

Pregnant Pause: Reproduction, Death, and Media Culture

Pregnant Pause, my book manuscript, uses comparative ethnic studies methodology alongside biopolitical and necropolitical theory to explain the affective dimensions of violence against pregnant women. My book asks, "what affect is activated and circulating through stories of prenatal violence?" I interrogate how grievability is made intelligible by the news media so that audiences are called into national melancholia when pregnant white women are murdered. However, murders of racialized pregnant women are framed as legitimate because these women occupy spaces of social death to begin with, according to white settler colonial epistemology. To accomplish this, Pregnant Pause deploys Foucauldian discourse analysis of four types of news media cases: white pregnant women killed by white men (Laci Peterson, Lori Hacking), white pregnant women killed by men of colour (Megan Touma, Jessie Davis, Maria Lauterbach), pregnant women of colour killed by men of colour (Latoyia Figueroa, Evelyn Hernandez), and fetal life/death narratives (The Unborn Victims of Violence Act). Pregnant Pause moves beyond a critique of the "Missing White Woman Syndrome" a term used to describe media fascination with imperiled white women, to show how race and class infuse national narratives about violence against pregnant women. The University of Nebraska Press expressed early interest in publishing Pregnant Pause as part of their Expanding Frontiers series. A draft manuscript will be ready by late 2015.

Term Funded:Year 2016
Professor: Jennifer Musial


Alexandra Min-Ying North (2013)

LGBT and Women Students Negotiate Sexual Violence on Residential College Campuses

The goal of this study is to explore and analyze how women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) students face and negotiate sexual aggression in their day-to-day lives as college students at residential colleges. I will assess the experiences of these students who have been the victim of various forms of harassment during their time in college. This information will be used for research purposes by Professor Stephanie Gilmore.

Term Funded:Spring 2011
Professor: Stephanie Gilmore


Michele St. Julien (2014)

Pregnant Pause: Reproduction, Death, and Media Culture

Pregnant Pause is my book length study about the differential news coverage afforded to violence against pregnant women. The book focuses on biopolitics and necropolitics (i.e. the management of life and orchestration of death) to articulate why the state, as well as audiences, are differentially invested in the murder of pregnant women. Through centralizing newsworthy dead pregnant figures and fetal subjects, this study attends to hierarchies of grievability by juxtaposing a "national melancholia" (Butler) surrounding the deaths of white pregnant women to a corresponding legitimacy of violence towards pregnant women of colour. To accomplish this, Pregnant Pause deploys Foucauldian discourse analysis of four types of news media cases: white pregnant women killed by white men (Laci Peterson, Lori Hacking), white pregnant women killed by men of colour (Megan Touma, Jessie Davis, Maria Lauterbach), pregnant women of colour killed by men of colour (Latoyia Figueroa, Evelyn Hernandez), and fetal life/death narratives (The Unborn Victims of Violence Act). Pregnant Pause breaks new ground by analyzing how news media accounts of fatal violence against pregnant women is made intelligible through American white settler colonialism that dictates white women's reproduction is valuable whereas women of colour are better dead while pregnant, to augment Sharon Powell's call to action. The University of Nebraska Press expressed early interest in publishing Pregnant Pause.

Term Funded:Spring 2014
Professor: Jennifer Musial


Anna Grace Wagman (2016)

Transnational Activist Circuits of Precarity and Rescue: Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, LGBT Asylum and International Human Rights Narratives

Between 2009 and 2014, Uganda gained international notoriety for its efforts to pass an Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) that enhanced existing criminal sanctions for same-sex sexual behavior, most infamously by proposing the death penalty for instances of "aggravated homosexuality." This project explores international human rights and activist response to this legislation, with an emphasis on four constituencies: US evangelical activists who allegedly promoted the AHA by exporting failing sociolegal narratives of homophobia abroad; Ugandan officials who promote the AHA on the grounds that both homosexuality and western international intervention function as forms of 21st century cultural and economic imperialism; international human rights actors condemning state-sponsored homophobia; and the Ugandan lgbti activists who advocate for sexual minorities' civil protections on the one hand, while trying to circumvent charges of neoimperialism on the other. By examining these constituencies' public narratives, lawsuits, interviews, press releases and policies this project will assess how they leverage narratives of third-world vulnerability, international lgbti rights, social justice and neocolonialism to make their claims.

Term Funded:Spring 2016
Professor: Kathryn Oliviero