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This past weekend Megan Reynolds traveled to Dallas, Texas to present at the Queer History South Conference. She presented on the topic “The Internal Lavender Menace: Lesbian Feminist Challenges in Southwest Virginia” alongside only one other poster presenter due to complications with the hurricane. Despite this, Megan presented her research and findings to many archivists and public historians from across the south. This research stems from her work this summer as one of the thirteen Summer Scholars, as she looked at the Lesbian Feminist movement in a national view. Lesbian feminism is a strand of feminism that has been a part of the larger women’s movement since the 1970s. This cultural movement emboldened lesbians to concentrate on constructing comradery between women with a focus on rejecting heteronormativity and men. The way lesbian feminists handled race and gender differences, however, ultimately led to the exclusion of bisexual women, transgender women, and queer women of color within movement spaces. This project examined lesbian feminism through the lens of exclusion to show how a movement meant to bring women closer together created a legacy of division within LGBTQ+ communities. Megan discovered that despite how progressive we think we are as a country, we haven’t really moved along as far as we have and bi women, trans women, and queer women of color are still marginalized within lesbian and women-only spaces today.

At this conference, Megan learned that everyone who is there with you at a conference is there for the same reasons and is just as interested in your research as you are. People want to know what your research is about, especially if it is a topic that they relate to and have other connections with.

This past weekend, we had an amazing turnout at the Family Weekend Research Showcase! There were so many wonderful topics that people presented. Congratulations to the first-place winner, Lydia Turner-Little, who presented on the topic of LGBTQ+ Experiences of Religion. For second place, we had a tie between David Adams (Intermittent Fasting Combats Diet-Induced Obesity in Zebrafish) and Alexander Palmer (Neural Dynamics Encode Valence in the Mouse Auditory Cortex).

Kavya Iyer is a recent alum of Roanoke College, having graduated this past spring. This summer, she had the opportunity to work in a research lab as part of the Diversity Summer Internship Program at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Kavya worked specifically in the Population, Family, and Reproductive Health Department where she studied some of the metrics or tools, used to assess the quality of care amongst patients receiving contraceptive family planning counseling services globally. This department aimed to compile all these resources by undertaking a systematic review to understand whether some of the common themes from these metrics aligned with the standardized quality of care frameworks used in the field.

Kavya’s research was presented at both the Leadership Alliance National Conference in Connecticut in late July and in front of other professionals at the School of Public Health in Baltimore. There, she was able to meet students, faculty, and researchers from all backgrounds that conducted amazing research in the sciences and social sciences from a wide variety of incredible schools across the country. Kavya wishes to ease others’ worries about presenting at conferences, as it is intimidating at first but to remember that everyone else in attendance is there to cheer you on. Remember, you are the expert on your study and that’s what matters!

Q: What did you love about Research at Roanoke College?

A: The rigor of the classes and ample opportunities to conduct research really increased my abilities to navigate the complex field of research as a graduate student. The professors at Roanoke are there to make sure you learn, succeed, and have fun, and I can’t thank them enough for it! I’m looking forward to continuing my passion of advocating and learning about pediatric health and development into my graduate school years.

https://www.roanoke.edu/about/news/summer_scholars_2022

Ahmed Abusultan attended the 14th Annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium during the last week of July. His research revolved around understanding how humans develop the coordination patterns we use when walking, focusing on the relationship between the arms and the legs. For his project, he looked at the utilization of trekking poles to simulate having four limbs to walk rather than two. The main question Ahmed focused on was what the chances are of having the same coordination pattern when walking without trekking poles versus with the trekking poles. The results came out to be that there is a 1/12th chance of having the same coordination pattern after not receiving instruction. This research serves biomechanical engineers in their work to construct more coordinated artificial limbs or robotics with similar functions. Physical therapists can also use this research to assist those who have lost their ability to walk and are relearning how to be mobile again.

James is currently assisting Dr. Ball with her project that focuses on the partners of formerly incarcerated people. There is very little research in this area, so James and Dr. Ball are conducting in-depth interviews with the partners of former prisoners in order to chronicle their experiences. They have completed almost sixty interviews with people across many different classes, cultures, and regions. At this point in his project, James has worked on compiling an annotated bibliography, responding to inquiries, conducting and transcribing interviews, and entering their data into spreadsheets.

The future of this project will consist of more interviews, more transcribing, and James will begin coding the data collected. Eventually, they hope to publish multiple articles about their findings. James hopes to present at a Criminal Justice conference in the future!

Shane Saunders spent the month of June with Dr. Collins, alongside other colleagues, conducting research on the Smooth Coneflower populations at Denhill Preserve. This research is a continuation of a research project Dr. Collins has been working on for almost a decade. Located south of Roanoke College, Denhill Preserve is home to a major population of Smooth Coneflowers. The Smooth Coneflower is an endangered variety of the Coneflower species. The decline of this variety has been due to forest fires and commercial developments threatening their habitats. With this research, Shane and his colleagues aim to seek the core issues that cause the decline of the Smooth Coneflower and promote the preservation of this beautiful and essential species. This preservation process includes counting, marking, and measuring every individual Smooth Coneflower within small plots.

Shane hopes to attend a conference by the end of the year in order to bring awareness to this important species to help it recover in its natural habitats.

This summer, Bobby Hoye has been focusing his research on the science behind solar panels. Working with Dr. Hickox-Young, he is looking at the compound, CsPbBr3, which is one in a new class of materials, called Perovskites. Perovskites, for reference, are semiconductors that transport electrical charges once the light hits them. These materials have only gained popularity within the last twenty years, due to the expansion of research on their increased energy efficiency values, which can be manufactured with relatively low costs for solar panels. Bobby is looking deeper into why CsPbBr3 has its unique properties with the hopes of better understanding its future as the absorption layer in solar panels. He performs calculations of the crystal lattice (arrangement of atoms inside a crystal) and examines structural defects (i.e. missing atoms, extra atoms, etc.) and how these affect the resulting properties with the hope of helping scientists in this field to understand why CsPbBr3 performs so well.

This project is the first part of Bobby’s Honors Distinction Project as well as the first part of his Honors in the Major project for Physics. His next steps are focusing on more calculations and diving into elimination lead (Pb) and replacing it with tin (Sn). This second part of his project will take place during the upcoming Fall and Spring semesters, which will culminate in presenting his work at the American Physical Society (APS) annual conference in Las Vegas during Spring Break.

Selma Sosic, one of our many student summer researchers, says that her favorite part about research here at Roanoke is that research advisors trust their advisees to do field research by themselves. She truly enjoys how much the research advisors value the input and thought processes the student researchers bring to the table. Selma experienced this firsthand when she traveled to Palau with Dr. Chad Morris and one of her partners in the project, Hailey. Selma and Hailey gathered qualitative data via focus groups from several Palauan women over the span of the three weeks they spent there. After each focus group session, they collaborated to pull key themes and ideas from the data they gathered. Selma was then able to write a preliminary report that addressed key motivators, barriers, and key sources of information on breast cancer screening on the island. Her report will be given to the Palauan Ministry of Health and the Non-Communicable Disease Unit to provide them with preliminary ideas regarding screening rates on the island. Once all of the interviews have been transcribed, a final report will be completed and sent to Palau in June of 2023.

This is amazing work and a very interesting project! We can’t wait to learn more!

Ivey Kline is a history major with an interest in American history and archival research.  She has worked for the Roanoke College Archives and the Center for Studying Structures of Race for three years and spent the summer of 2021 carrying out extensive archival research.  At the Center, she helped create and launch the Genealogy of Slavery Project, a project dedicated to uncovering information about the enslaved people in Roanoke County who built Roanoke College.  Additionally, she processed collections for the Maurice Berger Memorial Archive and Library and interned at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage working on the festival curatorial team for the 2022 and 2023 Folklife Festival.  She is also president of Historical Society.

This summer, Ivey is working with Dr. Jesse Bucher on the project “The Legacy of Georgianna Saunders: Race, Gender, and Black Midwifery in Southwest Virginia, 1914-1940.” Georgianna Saunders is one of the most important and yet unknown figures in Salem, Virginia history. Born in 1866, Saunders was a member of the first generation of African Americans born to previously enslaved parents after the abolition of slavery.  From 1914 to 1940, Georgianna Saunders kept extensive birth records that provide insight into her work as a midwife.  During this Summer Scholars project, Ivey has been analyzing the records Saunders kept in her birth records notebooks and evaluating the segregation of medicine, importance of Black lay midwives, and the demographics of the poor, Black and White women Saunders aided. This project will fill an important scholarly deficit regarding Black midwives since most scholarly work regarding birth work focuses on White midwives or male doctors inventing obstetrics.