This year’s summer scholars have officially been announced, and the selected students are excited to work on their upcoming projects.
Allison Kerman, junior, is working on a project called “Uncharted History: The Beginning,” about the untold history of the establishment of the United States.
“I will essentially be focusing my research on the Haudenosaunee tribe and how they influenced our system of government while the founding fathers worked to develop our country’s governmental structure,” Kerman said. “… The idea for the specifics of this project came to me in my Native American Religions course, … taught by Dr. Burgdoff, and I instantly knew this was something I wanted to research further.”
Kerman said that she’s excited to work on and research something that she feels needs to be brought to people’s attention.
Chloe Young, sophomore, will be working on ekphrastic poetry, which is poetry that is written about other art pieces.
“I’m specifying it to only cover political poetry written during the 1900s,” Young said. “Through this, I will be evaluating the poetry as well as the political climate during the time.”
Erin Brown, junior, is working on a project titled “The Philosophical Implications of Free Speech and the Reasonability of Politically Correct University Policy.”
In her project, Brown will look at the principles of the operations of free speech.
“I will also be using the writings of John Stewart Mill and Robert Paul Wolff to help guide me through the implications of those principles,” Brown said. “From this information I will create a policy for the conduct of free speech in universities.”
Chelsea Swigert, junior, will be creating a walking audio tour of Capital University in the ’60s.
“I decided to do the project because I am passionate in topics concerning transmedia and how to better immerse an audience more deeply into a story,” Swigert said. “… I can’t wait to see something that I have created out in the world, being used and enjoyed. I’ve never taken on such an ambitious project, and I really want to look back and be proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
Andrew Decker, sophomore, is going to focus on simple game development using artificial intelligence (AI).
“The field of AI, in particular, is adversarial search, which means there are two players [agents] acting against each other in turns,” Decker said. “I will be developing this AI algorithm to play [another] human in the game of Tic Tac Toe and possibly other variations.”
Decker is looking forward to gaining a deeper understanding of the process and expanding his knowledge.
