Under the microscope in neuroscience professor Siddharth Ramakrishnan’s lab, the tiny heart of a Japanese rice fish embryo was beating.
And the group of fifth-grade visitors from Tacoma’s McCarver Elementary School had questions. “When will they be born?” one student asked. “How long does it take for them to grow up?” asked another.
So she invites accomplished philosophers to bring the field to life.
Most recently, Western Washington University philosophy professor Neal Tognazzini, who has authored dozens of scholarly articles and edited several books that explore issues of the human agency such as free will, blame, and responsibility, visited campus.
“Do they bite?” It is an obvious question for one small, ponytailed visitor standing almost nose-to-beak with a common murre splayed on the dissecting table. The Puget Sound student scientist at work doesn’t answer as she carefully takes a scalpel to the dead bird’s white belly, amid an “ooooohh” from the gaggle of children. “Did he fly?” the same girl persists, with more curiosity than consternation.
Yup. No fear is exactly what a student needs to turn some wild idea they dreamed up over coffee into a real “thing”—a thing you can touch, see, and use.
Welcome to the Makerspace: a place, Cambridge Dictionary tells us, “where people can come together to create or invent things, either using traditional crafts or technology.” Puget Sound launched its new Makerspace this fall and held an open house for campus members.
Last spring, 80 students were selected to receive summer research grants to support 10 weeks of independent research in the sciences or humanities under the guidance of a faculty advisor. Projects covered a wide range of topics, such as wastewater opioid analysis, the influence of hip flexibility on running gait, LGBTQ and person of color representation in young adult fiction, environmental racism, and more, including:
