Month: July 2016

Pictured above top to bottom: Rebecca Hudon, Taylor Briese

The Summer Scholars program is one of the many ways students can become involved in research on campus. Each year, students apply for a summer scholarship to work with a faculty advisor to complete their own research project. Research projects come from a variety of topics and disciplines from social sciences to fine arts. This year, thirteen students were chosen as 2016 Summer Scholars. Rebecca Hudon and Taylor Briese are two of the students selected.

Rebecca is a rising senior majoring in biology. Her research project is titled “Generating a star (steroidogenic acute regulatory protein) mutant zebrafish to study human steroid deficiencies”. She will be working with her faculty advisor Dr. Chris Lassiter to use the genome-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 to generate a mutant zebrafish line to study human steroid deficiencies.

“I started on this project for a few different reasons. The first reason I picked this project is because it focuses heavily on genetics, which is the field of study I intend on pursuing after I graduate from Roanoke. The second reason is that this project gives me the opportunity to use CRISPR/Cas9, which is a relatively new technique in the field of biology research. Lastly, I liked that the project relates my lab work to the medical field and has potential real world applications”.

Rebecca applied to be a Summer Scholar because of the positive things she heard from past Summer Scholars. Her advisor also encouraged her to apply.

“The biggest challenge that I face with this project is troubleshooting. When you work with a technique that is still relatively new in the sciences, there are so many things that could potentially go wrong. I constantly have to rework steps in order to get my desired outcomes. This can be exhausting, but when it finally works, it is incredibly rewarding”.

Taylor is also a rising senior majoring in history and Spanish with a minor in education. Her project is titled “From Roanoke to East Lansing: Charlie Thornhill and Football’s “Underground Railroad”. The project focuses on Charlie Thornhill, a football player who graduated from Lucy Addison High School and attended Michigan State University. Charlie and the MSU football team faced off against Notre Dame in 1966, ending in a tie.

Taylor’s project focuses on asking questions such as: What was Charlie’s life like in Roanoke? What was segregated football during the early 1960’s like in Roanoke? How did the communities of Lucy Addison and the Roanoke Valley shape him into the person he was both on and off of the football field? Taylor will be working with Dr. Wallace Fuentes to complete her project.

“I started this project last fall during my historical methods class. I fell in love with the project and telling Thornhill’s story as I continued to work on it. Dr. Wallace Fuentes let us choose whatever topic we wanted to do for our methods paper. She wanted us to learn methods through a subject that we love, for me that was Michigan State University football. I started to research the 1965-1966 national championship football teams at Michigan State and I happen to find that there was a player from Roanoke on the team named Charlie Thornhill. Well, from there I threw myself into the project and by the end of the semester I was extremely proud of what I had accomplished but I didn’t want it to be over. I mean, how many times do you feel almost sad about turning in a paper not because of the lack of quality in it but because you have done your best and don’t want it to be over? Fortunately, at the beginning of last semester, Dr. Wallace Fuentes approached me about ways to continue my work on the project because we both thought that there was a great story to be told here. The connections to the Roanoke community and using this project to do some outreach in the local community really intrigued us. So we decided applying for Summer Scholars would allow us to hopefully take this project to the level we wanted to. So far, I am really happy about the progress we have made and I am excited for the future.”

Taylor’s biggest challenge will be dealing with race and segregation that surrounds the project.

“I am relying on a lot of community involvement which can make it a project hard if people are less interested than you are.”

The Summer Scholars program is one of the many ways students can become involved in research on campus. Each year, students apply for a summer scholarship to work with a faculty advisor to complete their own research project. Research projects come from a variety of topics and disciplines from fine arts to chemistry. This year, thirteen students were chosen as 2016 Summer Scholars. Two of them are Brieanah Gouveia and Daniel Osborne.

Brieanah is a rising senior majoring in Art History with concentrations in Legal Studies and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean World. Her project is tilted “Slaves, Foreigners, Barbarians: Class and Ethnicity in Athenian Law and Life” in which she will examine the legal system of ancient Athens and what drove some classes and people to have certain privileges.   Her faculty mentor is Dr. Jason Hawke.

“I will be investigating how Greek custom and perceptions of other classes and foreign ethnicities influenced the development of these distinct status groups within Athens. In addition to law, Greek literature, theater, and pottery will be looked at to determine how Athenian citizens created a collective identity for themselves through political, social, and economic interactions with foreigners.”

Brieannah decided to apply to be a summer scholar because she knew it would provide her the opportunity to gain more research experience and become more involved in the research community on campus.

“Two main occurrences inspired me to pursue this project. The first concerns the Eurocentric construction of history that has dominated academia. Much attention has been given to interpreting the lives of the elite and most “Aryan” figures in the ancient world – sometimes this is forgivingly due to the lack of material remains concerning lower and slave classes. However, only recently has significant attention been given to fleshing out the complexity of social classes and range of different ethnicities that made up classical antiquity.

The second influence is the current US presidential campaign season. Much of the rhetoric that has been voiced concerning who Americans are and what America stands for made me think about citizenship and status throughout history. Debates over xenophobia and proto-racism in ancient Greece emerged as themes that I wanted to pursue.”

Brieanah believes her greatest challenge will be completing the project by the end of the summer.

“I imagine my time management, self-discipline, and speed reading skills will improve immensely by the summer’s end!”

Daniel is also a rising senior who is majoring in History. His project is tilted “A Creative Collection from Brushwood, U.S.A.” in which Daniel will create a collection of pieces set in American Frontier around the twentieth century.   His faculty mentor is Dr. Anita Turpin.

“Set in a fictional frontier town, my creative pieces include short stories, songs, letters, and vignettes, and incorporate characters, such as African American and Mexican cowboys, women in the frontier, and so-called ‘ordinary’ townsfolk, whose narratives have hitherto lacked coverage in popular depictions of the era.”

Daniel decided to peruse this project because of his interest American West and the cliché depictions of it used in modern media.

“Films, books, music, and stories of the American West enthrall both domestic and foreign audiences with their exciting portrayals of saloon gunfights, dusty twilight showdowns on empty streets, and law-evading desperadoes riding off into the sunset. Unfortunately, conventional depictions of the American West have too often trained their focus upon characters who are white male gunslingers and bronco-busters. In presenting such characters, mainstream depictions have overlooked the true diversity of the frontier in terms of race, gender, and occupation. My project aims to advance a historically conscientious view of the American West while preserving the period’s unique, compelling ethos.”

He decided to apply to be a Summer Scholar because he realized he could use his interest in folklore and history with the writing and research skills found in Roanoke College classes.

“My main challenge so far has been maintaining an active creative flow. When I reach a creative hurdle or find myself feeling frustrated, I pause, step away from the writing, and let my thoughts settle elsewhere for a while. Creating a town is hard work – lots of names to remember, faces to paint, places to describe, voices to color, and, perhaps most intimidating of all, wily time frames and tangled dates to bear in mind.”