Ruthy McBride ’22 is studying a topic that’s controversial in the education community: the role of police in schools.

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.

Shankland worked with her advisor, Professor of History Katherine Smith, to examine poems, legal documents, and church records from 1000 to 1250 A.D. in search of references to queer identities and fluid gender roles.

Projects covered a range of topics: nonconformist gender presentation in stories of courtly love and other high medieval source material, disability justice and racial equity in high school classrooms, what honeybee brain science can show about Parkinson’s disease, and more.

See a sample of student projects:

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.

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.

When Adam Willard ’03 emerged from high school in Bend, Ore., and prepared to enroll at Puget Sound as a pre-med major, he hated chemistry so much that he made his teacher a promise: He would never take another chemistry course that he wasn’t absolutely required to take.

A few years later, after deciding he didn’t want to go to medical school, Willard discovered that the only way he could graduate on time was by majoring in chemistry. When he took a quantum mechanics course, he realized he’d found a branch of chemistry that he actually enjoyed.

In March 2020, Julie Davidson ’96 made a pivot. A certified facilitator, coach, and consultant—and president and CEO of her own consulting company, The JD Group— Davidson started to see her contracts dry up as employees were sent home in the early days of the pandemic. So, she leaned into a hobby: kombucha brewing.

And while some of it has to do with the Loggers’ on-field success in the sport, much has to do with what happens in the classroom.

“The vast majority of the classes are smaller and are in boardroom settings—and if you didn’t come strapped in, having done the reading and willing to hold your position, you were going to get bulldozed,” says Correa, who is the bench coach for the San Francisco Giants. “And in higher-level baseball, you have a ton of meetings, discussion, and debates with really bright people, from front-office employees to coaches and players and scouts.”