By the time the last final exam of spring semester is over, many college students are packed up and ready to escape academia for the beach, a summer job, or the open road. Students in the Sweet Briar Honors Summer Research Program head straight for the lab, library, and classroom.

The program provides fellowships to a select group of students each year to support independent research projects supervised by a faculty member. Nine students were selected for the eight-week program that culminates in a series of lunchtime presentations at Guion Science Center. The presentations are at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays through July 1 in Guion A03 (see link below for schedule). Lunch is provided for program participants, and all others are welcome to bring a lunch and attend the forums.

Students participating this year include Ana Ciric '05, Suzanne Harvey '06, Melinda Wolfrom '05, Stephanie Gleason '04, Farzana Sekander '07, Charlotte Formichella '06, Sasha Levine '05, Carrie Cann '05, and Erica Kennedy '07. Hank Yochum, SBC assistant professor of physics, is serving as this year's program director.

Research topics range from Ciric's investigation of a carbon-dioxide catalyst to Cann's photographic study using pinhole cameras. Wolfrom is examining "Factors that Influence Moral Reasoning Among Adults." Far from longing for a summer escape, she relishes the opportunity to dig deeper into her academic passion.

"It's so great to have my independence and not worry about extraneous classes," she said. "It's great to be working on my own toward a larger culmination of a body of work."

The psychology major first discovered the concept of moral reasoning in a developmental psychology class taught by SBC assistant professor Tim Loboschefski. Wolfrom was particularly intrigued by the connection between philosophy and psychology. "I really liked the idea," she said. "Tim gave me a book by Carol Gilligan and I started reading about that. [My research is] a blend of ethics in philosophy and moral psychology."

Wolfrom's topic takes on large issues but really boils down to a couple of basic questions: "Why do people act moral? Is there any reason?" she said. "We look at all the factors that influence people's motivation. I'm looking primarily at how someone justifies an act they do."

Students with proposals as intriguing as Wolfrom's are sure to attract attention from Sweet Briar's honors selection committee. A variety of factors, however, go into choosing students for research grants, director Yochum said. Classroom grades and the appropriateness of a project for a concentrated time period are both considered.

"A student's GPA comes into play," he said. "Grades a student got in classes are likely to provide some background. And some projects are clearly more well thought out than others. Some are huge projects that you just can't do in the summer. Everybody did a really good job this year. These are really good summer projects."

The program allows students to engage the appropriate mode of research for their discipline and, with a faculty mentor's guidance, carry a project from thesis development to completion. For many students the summer project starts a research endeavor they'll pursue throughout college and beyond, and often influences choice of major, commitment to a senior thesis, and decisions regarding graduate school or a particular career.

While faculty members guide students where needed, they're also preparing presentations for their own ongoing research topics. Honors students receive a research stipend while faculty sponsors earn an honorarium for their work. Among the diverse topics presented by faculty members since May are Robert Granger's "Anti-Cancer Drug Design," Loboschevski's "What We've Overlooked in ADHD Females," and Nicholas Ross on "Popular Piano Music of the Twenties: A Recording Project for the Whalehead Club, N.C."

Some, but not all, of the faculty talks dovetail with projects students are working on. Granger's cancer drug presentation, for example, lays the groundwork for Erica Kennedy's study of DNA binding properties of anti-cancer drugs. "Sometimes the faculty talk will be a primer for the student's talk," Yochum said. "The faculty member will give a broad view of topic, while the student's is more detailed, more narrow in scope. But sometimes a faculty member talks about something completely different."

Chemistry major Ana Ciric initiated the student presentations on June 17 (see photo, above right) and discussed developing a carbon dioxide reduction catalyst as a way to mimic photosynthesis. She credits Granger with leading her into the project, but Ciric quickly made the complex study her own and has made the most of her summer research time.

"I love it," she said. "I can focus on my research and there's no history paper that needs to be done by midnight. [Right now] my whole brain is chemistry, chemistry, chemistry. It's great. Sometimes I'll have to come back on Saturday to work on something. It's all fun if you're ambitious, and I am."

Yochum, who said most of the projects are progressing smoothly, marvels at the dedication and focus of the young scholars. "They're certainly very driven students," he said. "They know they have friends spending the summer at the beach and they're choosing to spend 40 hours or more in a windowless lab moving around little beakers.

"They realize that this is more valuable than the fun they'd have at the beach," he said.
"I think they have fun doing this."

For a presentation schedule and additional information on the 2004 summer research projects, please visit honors summer research.

By Shannon Wells, SBC staff writer