Inaugural class of Dintersmith Fellows
New program gives five seniors an intensive faculty-mentored research experience
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Dintersmith fellows commit to a 10-week summer research experience. They and their faculty mentors then continue the work begun during the summer throughout the senior year, ending with a senior honors thesis. The Dintersmith Fellows Program provides a modest research stipend for the faculty mentors, as well as providing substantial funding for the students.
"Our senior honors program is built on close student-faculty collaboration and a dedication to integrating the teaching and research missions of the College," Schwarz said. "By providing research funding for both students and their faculty mentors, the Dintersmith Fellows program provides incentives for participation in activity that embodies the essence of our values as an institution."
Native Dog Burials and Associated Ritual in Coastal Virginia
Jennifer Fitzgerald with Martin Gallivan, associate professor of anthropology
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Romanticism in China: The Intersection of East and West
Shannon Reed with Xiaobin Jian, associate professor of modern languages and literatures
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The Effect of Emotion on Human Motion Perception
Dillon Niederhut with Jeanine Stefanucci, assistant professor of psychology
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Synthesis and Analysis of Photochromic Dithienylethenes
Brooklynd Saar with Elizabeth Harbron, associate professor of chemistry
Brooklynd Saar is trying to find a use for one of the photochromic molecules known as dithienylethenes—but before she can study the molecule she has to make some of it in the lab.
"Other people have made this compound, but you can't buy it," explains Saar's mentor, Elizabeth Harbron. "Everyone has to make their own. It's not commercially available, but once she has made it, maybe we can transform it into things that no one's made before."
There is a wide array of photochromic molecules, light-sensitive chemicals that change color and/or fluorescence upon exposure to light . Dithienylethenes are a class that show particularly promising photochromic properties, in that an adroit chemist can use light to toggle the molecule between colors or degree of fluorescence. Such molecules are used in biologic studies and have potential applications for cell phones, laptop screens and other electronic displays.
Synthesis of Saar's target molecule is a challenge in itself, and she hopes to have enough of her dithienylethene made by the end of the summer to begin analysis. She ran across some bumps in the road, mainly in the form of contamination in the synthesis process. Harbron explained that Saar is following an established, multi-step procedure to make her molecule.
"What she's trying to do in each of these steps is to add one atom," Harbron said. And not just add one atom, but add it in a very specific place." Saar is getting her target molecule as a main product, but the sample also contains unwanted byproducts.
Saar has started over again, using a different, less-reactive process and feels confident about the outcome.
"I think we've ironed out the problems," she said. "We're pretty confident that we're going to be done with the synthesis probably by the end of the summer. And then we can start working on the fun analysis part."
"Truly Though Not Ostentatiously:" Wordsworth and the Odic Tradition
Lindsay Gibson with Professor Adam Potkay
Lindsay Gibson will be completing her honors thesis focusing on the Romantic poet William Wordsworth's odes (written 1798-1834) in a poetic tradition that stretches back to Pindar in Greek and Horace in Latin.
"My project emerged largely from a wish to combine some of my Classics background with a thesis in English literature," Gibson explained. "I had studied Horace extensively in high school. At William and 玛丽, Professor Potkay was responsible for exposing me to Wordsworth's major odes in my freshman English survey course."
Potkay says Gibson has embarked upon an important scholarly project, embracing not only Wordsworth, but also the original works that inspired him.
"Lindsay has a firm command of the difficult Greek and Latin originals--and their earlier English imitations and extension--against which Wordsworth would have us understand and judge his achievement," Potkay said. "There is a substantial body of secondary literature on the history of the ode form from antiquity onwards--Lindsay has already taken the first steps towards mastering this--but little of it treats Wordsworth's place in this history with any detail."
Gibson's project deals with much of the history of English and Greek literature as well as Greek, Roman and Hebrew poetry. She said some consider Wordsworth's works "dry" or a bit "stodgy" in comparison to his contemporaries and to later Romantic poets. So Gibson has decided to use odes as a lens for her analysis, to reassess Wordsworth's "revolutionary" impact on English poetry over the span of a long and prolific career.
Gibson hopes to trace the development of the ode in Classical and English literature, and to examine the ways in which Wordsworth draws on these earlier traditions. "Also, I would like to assess what he contributes to the form in later Romantic poets, particularly Keats and Shelley," she says.
"I hope to be able to read at least some of the Classical sources in their original languages, and I believe that my background in Classics will greatly enrich my analysis of this subject."
