For Ivy Gray-Klein ’14, the modest windfall covered her travel expenses to New York City and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Under the supervision of Visiting Assistant Professor Rebecca Deroo ’92, the History of Art major is writing her thesis on the institutional narrative behind the BMA’s period rooms, and to conduct her research, Ivy hunted through acquisition documents, photographs, inter-office memos, etc. in the archives of the Decorative Arts department.
For Laura Silla ’14, it helped support her twice weekly stint at the Academy of the Natural Sciences at Drexel. A double major in Italian and biology, Laura has been working with Assistant Professor of Biology Thomas Mozdzer on a project to digitize the Academy’s plant collections, a goldmine of botanical information dating back 125 years.
For a trio of undergraduate students working in Chemistry Professor Sharon Burgmayer’s lab—Alexandra Kirsch ’14, Stephanie Yang ’15, and Anna Kalinsky ’14—it meant presenting findings at this year’s meeting of the American Chemical Society. Kalinsky presented her research on model studies of molybdenum, particularly the reactivity of the model and how that relates to enzyme function. Kirsch and Yang jointly presented on the interactions of ruthenium complexes with DNA.
The windfall that enabled all these students to conduct and present their research came courtesy of several funds provided or administered by Bryn Mawr.
The Undergraduate Dean’s Office grants small awards of up to $450 to students seeking support for faculty-mentored research, a scholarly project, or academic conference travel. It also administers funding provided by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to students presenting their research at an academic conference in the fields of biology, chemistry, geology, neuroscience, and/or physics.
This year, 42 students majoring in everything from Classical Studies to Physics and English to Math were awarded funding, with 17 receiving support for research or scholarly projects and nine for conference travel. In addition, 16 students received Sherman Fairchild Foundation grants.