Bingo kicks off summer collaborative research program
Skidmore student researchers are spending their summers on campus assessing femoral blood flow with Doppler ultrasound tests, identifying military-related human rights abuses in Kashmir, and establishing a colony of parasitic wasps, just to name a few of the projects from Skidmore’s 2016 Faculty-Student Summer Research Program. (For a complete list of projects, see https://www.skidmore.edu/dof-vpaa/summer-research/2016-research.php.)
On a recent Tuesday morning, the student researchers kicked off the program with several rousing rounds of bingo. The brainstorm of program director Bob Turner, the new tradition is simply a fun way to get to know one another and to “speak across disciplinary boundaries.” None of the professors were invited. It was all about enhancing the students’ social and intellectual connections.
This summer features 39 faculty members and 99 students representing more than 15 academic disciplines—from biology and chemistry, to neuroscience and psychology, to anthropology and government, to economics and mathematics. Turner, a political science professor, made sure that each table had a healthy disciplinary mix, a tossed salad if you will. “Sort,” he commanded. “Sciences and nonsciences at each table. Tell each other what your research project is. Ask lots of questions.”
And then it was time for bingo, as students circulated to find out which of their peers will…
- Use Python for a filament-identification process
- Ask 2- and 3-year-olds questions about cookies
- Take videos of mice on balance beams
- Give lithium and alcohol to fruit flies
- Write gratitude letters
- Incorporate pyroglutamate into tRNA
and which of their peers hope to…
- Enhance muscle recovery of athletes
- Transform medical diagnostic technology
- Work on a cure for Alzheimer’s
- Map galaxies so we may boldly go…
- Run better elections
- Help the Skidmore softball team win more
At 11:45 a.m. precisely, Turner released the student researchers for lunch. It’s important, he said wryly, to get to the food before the other summer programs crowd in. Bingo!
For a complete list of projects, see https://www.skidmore.edu/dof-vpaa/summer-research/2016-research.php.
