From mystery cults and chemical compounds to identical twins and murderous Germanic barbarians, this year’s summer research fellowship projects are as diverse as they are intriguing.
On May 24, the nine students chosen for the 2007 Honors Summer Research Program gave an overview of their projects. Eight weeks from now, each will present a final product to their faculty sponsor.
Some will do their work in the lab, using computer simulations to study molecules and chemical compounds. Laurel Sanders ’08 will study the “reactions of molecules in the excited state,” while Jessica Echols ’08 will study melanin and human pigment.
Through her research, Echols hopes to learn something about melanoma skin cancer, but she is most excited about solving a more cosmetological mystery. “My personal interest is [finding out] why hair grays,” Echols, a licensed cosmetologist, said.
Others will delve into ancient manuscripts and scholarly texts.
Rising junior Audrey Hogan will focus on the Franks, barbarians who lived in what is now France. In particular, she is interested in Frankish “family law,” and whether or not women in that culture were “actual people” or chattel.
Additionally, she thinks the era deserves more attention. Students spend a lot of time studying the Roman Empire, she said. “It’s time to learn about the Dark Ages.”
Through her research, Emma Meador ’09 will investigate Greek mystery cults, more specifically the Eleusinian and Dionysiac mysteries.
Meador plans to study the “relationship between these mystery cults and try to figure out what’s going on between the public world – theater and epic – and the secret world of these mystery cults.”
For the next eight weeks, Michelle Sanchez ’08 will be entrenched in moral dilemmas and how people solve them. Her goal is to “fully understand the debate of moral relativism and moral universalism.”
Mary Dance ’08 will focus her attention on Roman law, using the works of Quintilian, Cicero and Juvenal as sources.
Brittany and Briana Deane, identical twins and rising seniors, will spend their summer working on an historical novel. Although they admit only one will commandeer the keyboard, they will collaborate on the prose, using their unusual perspective to tell the story of three sets of twins.
One fictitious pair will be accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Salem, Mass. The second are victims of the Holocaust, subjected to medical tests by Dr. Josef Mengele, and the third are modern-day students at a Quaker high school.
Doreen McVeigh ‘09 will do her work in the fields and marshes of the Sweet Briar campus, studying the “king of the meadow.” She says she’s already “hiked many miles” identifying and marking her subject, which also is known as “meadow root.”
When the plants mature, she will identify the males and females, and study their genetic makeup, pollination methods and other characteristics. “This is a complicated little plant,” she said.
– By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer
