July 23, 2001
Contact: Sally Widman, 610/409-3300 [email protected]
SUMMER OF EXPLORATION FOR 53 URSINUS STUDENTS
COLLEGEVILLE, Pa.--Residents of this suburban community know Amanda Helwig as leader of an effort to save the Collegeville Dam. They don't hear so much about her "day job" as a college student. But Ursinus senior Helwig is serious about her academics. This summer, she is one of 53 students who have received stipends to do research at the college.
This Friday, July 27, from 9 to 11 a.m., she and the other Ursinus Summer Fellows will report on their work during brief presentations in Pfahler Hall, which are open to the media and the public. The students have explored a broad range of topics, from hate speech to high performance liquid chromatographics to World Trade Organization environmental policies to the writings of John Updike's mother. While their summer research program will end this week, many of these students will continue their work as senior honors projects this coming academic year.
In many ways, Helwig epitomizes the liberal arts experience. Scratch the surface of the community organizer, and you find a biology major/art minor/dean's list student with a talent for scientific illustration. Where else but at a liberal arts college could she pursue her science and art within the same academic program, and still have time--among other things--to lead a community lobbying effort?
Helwig's project, "Embryological Development of the Killifish Rivulus marmoratus," has allowed her to study in minute detail the fish's 40 stages of development from egg to adult, to photograph those stages, and then to draw illustrations from the photographs. She will continue the project this coming year under the guidance of her faculty adviser, Biology Professor Robert Dawley.
Another summer fellow with multi-disciplinary interests is junior Leslie Hoffman, a biology major carrying minors in both psychology and religion. Because a liberal arts setting allows for explorations outside one's major, Hoffman decided to study literature this summer after learning of the Hoyer Archive housed in the college library, where she holds a student job. Hoffman's project, "Linda Grace Hoyer Updike: Woman, Author, and Mother," led her to travel to Harvard University earlier this month with her adviser, Library Director Charles Jamison. There, she researched more Hoyer material and interviewed the author's son, John Updike.
Hoffman feels transformed by the breadth of her academic encounters at Ursinus. "In the last year, I have been to Costa Rica to study bats in the rain forest, and interviewed a world famous author. Both have been powerful and life-changing opportunities," she says.
Like Helwig, Hoffman is something of an off-campus activist. Through her home church, St. Thomas United Church of Christ., Bethlehem, Pa., she serves on the Peace and Justice Task Force of the Penn Northeast Conference, and was a delegate last week to the U.C.C. General Synod in Kansas City, Mo.
The interdisciplinary theme runs throughout the entire Summer Fellows list: Jeremy Trucker of Little Silver, N.J., is an English major studying the philosophy of George Orwell. Padcha Tuntha-Obas of Bangkok, Thailand, is a philosophy major with double minors in French and creative writing who has worked on an artist's book of her own poetry. Fresh from a semester in France, French-economics double major Matt Bunczk of Norristown, Pa., is looking at the effects of the recent 35-hour-work week law on French life in general.
Student research topics cover all academic disciplines from the sciences to politics, international relations, literature, the environment,history, psychology, art and communications.
More than one project has involved travel and the increased understanding that comes with it. Four students working with Asst. Biology Prof. Rebecca Kohn have studied neurotransmitters in the microscopic roundworm c. elegans this summer. All accompanied her to the 13th International C. Elegans Conference in Los Angeles in June. Most of the hundreds attending that meeting were professional researchers and academics--only 10 were undergraduates. Yet the Ursinus students were able to present two posters there, mingle with scientists, and see the broad scope of work being done with just this one organism.
About 40 percent of the Ursinus summer researchers are science majors whose funding has come from grants won by their professors. Kohn has a $541,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Associate Professor of Biology Beth Bailey has an $800,000 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Associate Chemistry Prof. Holly Gaede has received $125,000 from the National Institutes of Health.
Other funding for summer stipends has come from the Eden Foundation, the Sylvan Foundation, and The Times Herald. Stipends to students range from $2,500 to $3,500, depending on their source.
Kohn, whose grant, in part, is being used to encourage more women and minorities to pursue careers in science, knows first-hand how such research opportunities can change students' lives by allowing them to pursue subjects in-depth instead of having to wait tables for a summer. Though she earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, she has chosen to teach at Ursinus because of her experience as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, another small liberal arts college. "I was a research fellow in my senior year at Dartmouth and had a fabulous experience, and knew then that I wanted to go to graduate school and become a researcher," she says. "Now I want to give something back to undergraduates, to make sure that my students have the same kinds of experiences."
That sentiment was echoed last week at a presentation by recent Ursinus graduates who are veterans of the summer fellows program. "It took my work to the next level and gave me the confidence to apply to graduate school," said Corey Taylor, who graduated from Ursinusin May. Last summer, he did an in-depth analysis of a chapter of James Joyce's "Ulysses" under the guidance of English Professor Joyce Lionarons. This fall, he will begin studying for his master's degree in modern British literature at the University of Delaware.
Ursinus, founded in 1869, is a highly selective, nationally ranked, independent, coeducational liberal arts college, located on a scenic, wooded 165-acre campus, 28 miles from Center City Philadelphia. Known for quality programs in the liberal arts, it is one of only 8 percent of U.S. Colleges to possess a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. The college's Web site is located at http://www.ursinus.edu.
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