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GAZETTE & AUGUST CALENDAR

August 3, 2009

The Gazette & Weekly Calendar is published on the first Monday of the month during the summer months.   The deadline for each edition is 5 p.m. on the Wednesday before distribution. Please submit news and announcements in writing to the Communications Office, Bomberger 104, or e-mail to gazette@ursinus.edu.  For back issues of Gazette, see Gazette Archive. 

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Symposium Wraps Up Summer Fellows
Ursinus College’s Summer Fellows Research Symposium was held on July 24 with all participating students presenting summaries of their completed work.  The event marked the end of the annual program that allows students to work one- on- one with a faculty member.  With fewer distractions than during the busy academic year, the students and their mentors are able to do extended research.  Information on five of the varied research projects follows.
 
With Math Professor Leah Berman, Angela Berardinelli and Nadine Burtt, researched discrete geometry, the geometry of objects that have pieces or corners or edges, such as cubes.  The students studied different aspects of a class of configurations called celestial 4-configurations. Although celestial 4-configurations are probably the most well understood class of 4-configurations, there is still a lot that we don't understand about them,” according to Berman.

Berardinelli programmed a computer to produce an accurate list of data of which celestial 4-configurations exist. The most exciting thing about academic research, she said, is the idea of exploration. “Especially in a field as old as mathematics, a lot of people assume that there is no progress to be made, but there are so many open questions for which no one has an answer.”  The project gave Berardinelli the opportunity to blend her strong background in algorithmic computer science thinking and pure mathematics.

Burtt experimented with certain subclasses of celestial 4-configurations to determine hidden structure.  “I liked the accessibility of my project,” said Burtt. “Often, when someone starts talking about math, the brain has a tendency to turn off and stop listening after the first sentence. Everything that I’ve been doing, however, lends itself to the visual nature of geometry. You don’t merely talk about configurations. You draw them. Then, suddenly, everything makes sense.”

Abbie Cichowski is fascinated by the therapeutic power of self-narrative, storytelling and performance. After her theater class listened to a podcast of prison inmates rehearsing to perform Shakespeare’s Macbeth, she was moved to create a personal narrative and performance piece documenting a complex personal relationship.

Her Summer Fellows project, Breaking the Silence: A Father-Daughter Examination at the Crossroads of Performance Studies, Personal Narrative, and Autoethnography, integrates scholarly inquiry and personal reflection. With Media and Communications Studies faculty Dr. Louise Woodstock as her primary advisor, as well as theater faculty Dr. Beverly Redman, secondary mentor, the inter-disciplinary creative project draws upon knowledge gained from both Cichowski’s Theater, and Media & Communication Studies majors.  She plans to expand the research for an Honors Project next semester, and is interested in becoming involved in a project Dr. Redman is undertaking at Graterford Prison during the spring semester. “I hope this will allow me to turn my research into practice,” she said.

Elizabeth Cannon was inspired studying in Cape Town through the Council on International Educational Exchange Cape Town Service-Learning program, and by her participation in the Debate for Democracy Project Pericles conference in New York, to study how Ursinus can better incorporate the idea of “participatory citizenship.” Her project will inventory the state of civic engagement at Ursinus, create a web-based “living” document, and make it easier for civic-minded students at Ursinus, and hopefully encourage more of them. Cannon, who designed her own major, Social Ecology, says that she wants to emphasize social awareness and participatory democracy for students who want to take on increasingly active roles.  Cannon’s mentor was Dr. Christian Rice, assistant professor of philosophy and religion.
 
Roger Lee looked at the artistic collaborative process between visual artists and choreographers. Lee, a visual artist and dancer himself, focused on partnerships such as Merce Cunningham/Robert Rauschenberg and Martha Graham/Isamu Noguchi, and looked at others such as Ming Shen Ku and Bebe Miller. Mentored by Associate  Professors Chris Aiken and Cathy Young, he created his own new work serving as set and costume designer, choreographer and dancer.  Lee has taken art classes since age five and was choreographing his own works by age 12.

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