Research as Identity

Last week we hosted our 2012 Autumn Research Fair, where about one hundred Franklin & Marshall College students presented path-breaking research in all fields. Here are just a few samples of the work showcased in Frey Atrium:

1) Jack Madden ’14 discovered a rare extragalactic pulsar this past summer with Associate Professor of Astronomy Froney Crawford, using data from one of the world’s leading radio telescopes in Australia and a high-power computing cluster.

2) Jeff Schlossburg ’14 and Jill Schwartz ’13 worked directly with the papers of the 19^th-century godfather of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmstead, in collaboration with Professor of American Studies David Schuyler. Their work is on track for publication.

3) Our students working on the excavations of an Etruscan site in Italy led by Provost Ann Steiner participated in the discovery and conservation of what is thought to be the earliest representation of childbirth in Western art.

4) Will Hancock-Cerutti ’12 won a Fulbright research scholarship to work in a renowned translational science lab in Paris studying hardening of the arteries this year.

This gathering, and the many beaming students who were presenting, reminds me of the distinctive power of the F&M commitment to intellectual discovery.

Research fairs like this one start with our national recruitment of young women and men who are a fit for our culture that prizes inquiry, research, faculty-student relationships and the impacts the life of the mind can make on the world. They then grow out of our commitment to seminar-based learning right from the start of an F&M education—which exposes students directly to intellectual give and take and the workings of diverse faculty minds. They are furthered by the financial investment we make in our summer research program, which in the past twelve years has supported 872 students with almost $3 million in stipends and the chance to work directly with faculty members on 590 projects.

It takes a collective effort to cultivate talented young minds, and it’s beautiful to see the flourishing sense of achievement among both students and faculty working on the outer limits of knowledge. At F&M, the pursuit of knowledge is not simply a strategic priority; it is a part of our identity.