Technological literacy is an invaluable personal skill in the information age, one that can open doors and allow individuals to escape the cyclical pattern of urban poverty. Chip Larsen ’13, Ana Baldrige ’12 and Paige Cross ’13 are spending their summer as Levitt Fellows with Associate Professor of Anthropology Chaise LaDousa on a project called “New Literacies for an Old City,” a reference to the social and economic landscape in the city of Utica.

Theresa Allinger ’11, a geosciences major, presented a poster on her senior thesis research “Antarctic Deep Sea Corals as Paleoceanographic Proxies for Warm Water Upwelling” at the recent International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences held at the University of Edinburgh. Her participation was supported by the J. W. Johnson Family Professorship stipend and the National Science Foundation through Eugene Domack, the J.W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences.

In today’s digital age, print media has become something of a dying art form. Across the world, newspapers have lost distribution, book sales are down, and it’s harder than ever before to get published. This summer, Emerson grant recipient Catherine Boyd ’12 will seek to get back in touch with the origins of the book as art as she works with Professor of English and Creative Writing Naomi Guttman to write, design and print her own book.

More than 125 Hamilton students are conducting summer research with faculty. On campus and as far away as Crete, they're working on projects of interest in the sciences, government, economics and English.  Read some of their stories here.

Stan Brakhage is one of the most significant avant-garde filmmakers in the 20th century. His influence can be seen across genres and decades. This summer, Emerson grant recipient Marty Cain ’13 is exploring the aesthetic philosophy of Brakhage and its relation to contemporary poetry.

The formation of a synapse, the junction between nerve cells, is one of the most the most important and critical stages of nervous system development, and in many cases improper synapse formation is the underlying cause of neurological disease.  The Lehman Lab has discovered a new gene that appears to encode an enzyme that is expressed as synapses develop in invertebrate and vertebrate nervous systems. This summer four students are working to synthesize four different enzymes to explore the function of this novel gene product.

Sarah Fobes’12 presented a poster at the International Conference on Luminescence, held in Ann Arbor, Mich., June 26- July 1. Her poster was titled “Post-annealing immersion study of sol-gel silicate glasses containing rare earth dopants.”

For organic chemists, improvements in methods of synthesizing molecules can make big differences in the time and material that go into the molecule’s synthesis. This summer, Talia Steiman ’12 and Robert Woodworth ’12 are working with Associate Professor of Chemistry Ian Rosenstein on a chemical synthesis that utilizes a unique method to simplify the process and cut down on waste.

Graphic interface tools can help students in computer science understand the programs they are dealing with. Ru Jun Han ’14 is working with Associate Professor of Computer Science Mark Bailey on a user-friendly graphic interface tool for beginner computer science students.

Why does voyeurism sell movie tickets? That's a question Danielle Mortorano ’12, a recipient of a 2011 Summer Emerson Grant, is working to answer in her project, “The Female Sex Object: The Relationship between Voyeurism and Male Dominance in Mainstream Films.”