Every summer, about 100 Puget Sound students take advantage of the opportunity to get involved in research—either in science and math, or in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
They work with a faculty member in the spring to craft a proposal and then, if the proposal is approved, they spend 10 weeks working full time on their projects, supported by research funding and a stipend to cover living expenses. Here, we spotlight seven of the students who took on research projects last summer.
Study: Dog Behavior
Devin Anderson ’22 spent the summer feeding dogs for science.
Anderson worked with Erin Colbert-White, associate professor of psychology, on a project to understand how humans influence dogs—and the extent to which humans’ behavior can make a dog override its own judgment.
Study: Methane Mysteries
Clarissa Troutman ’22 has spent a lot of time on the Puget Sound, hanging out with friends, but last summer she made repeated visits there for a different purpose: to collect seawater for her undergraduate research project. Troutman has been working with Oscar Sosa, assistant professor of biology, to better understand the unaccounted-for biological sources of methane in the ocean.
Study: Bee Brains
On the rooftop of Thompson Hall, Adam Schmidt ’23 emerges in a white jumpsuit, a wide-brimmed hat with a mesh face veil, and thick protective gloves. Carefully, he approaches the hive, a 5-foot-tall stack of wooden boxes located behind a greenhouse near the roof’s edge. Schmidt, a molecular and cellular biology major, isn’t interested in these bees for their honey—he wants to study their brains in an attempt to understand the progression of neurodegenerative diseases in humans.
Study: Xenophobia
Soon after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the U.S., Allie Highsmith ’22 started hearing people call it the “the China virus,” the “kung flu,” and other xenophobic names. As a double major in Chinese language and culture and sociology and anthropology, Highsmith wanted to study how people cope with anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic. Soon after she submitted her summer research proposal, a gunman killed six Asian women in Atlanta, bringing the subject of hate crimes directed at East Asian Americans into the national spotlight. In the wake of that tragedy and related news, Highsmith felt compelled to study how East Asian American experiences in the U.S. have changed as a result of pandemic-related racism and xenophobia.
Study: Crafting a Novel
As a first-year student in Ann Putnam’s Introduction to Creative Writing course, English major Daniel Pollock ’22 was given an assignment to write about a memory he thought he had forgotten. Not only had the memory he chose stayed with him, but three years later, it would inspire an independent research project exploring identity and belonging, and help Pollock reshape the narrative of his own life.
Study: Classroom Safety
Ruthy McBride ’22 is studying a topic that’s controversial in the education community: the role of police in schools.
McBride, a politics and government major and African American studies and economics minor, grew up in Los Angeles, where police had a significant presence in the schools. “You have it in these very small ways in elementary and middle school, and then I went to a giant high school that was majority Latinx. Backpack checks were a normal thing, random locker checks. Sometimes they’d bring in a drug-sniffing dog to go through the halls and sniff the lockers.” McBride, who suffers from migraines, needed to keep a doctor’s note in her backpack along with her bottle of Excedrin, or else she risked a reprimand or even detention.
Study: Courtly Love
Books and movies often portray medieval Europe as a highly regimented, theologically conservative society marked by strict gender roles and a total absence of queer people, but according to history major Chloe Shankland ’23, that view isn’t accurate. While few sources exist, literature from the period hints at a vibrant world of nonheteronormative art and culture.
