Daniel F. '65 & Ann H. Sullivan Endowment for Student/Faculty Research

Metamorphose is a collection of poetry composed during the summer of 2026 that explores the liminal space between youth and adulthood, finding home in that dissonant middle place. Engaging with themes of identity, memory, displacement, and transformation, both in metaphor and ghoulish imagery. The collection considers transformation as both a personal and philosophical process. Poems explore mundane moments like moving into a new apartment and metaphysical changes to become sirens, monsters, creatures.

What is it to 'be" an inanimate object? A true answer to this question is unknowable to us. Yet, as a kid, I remember thinking about how trees probably wished they had legs and the jealousy they must have felt seeing us walk. Or how I gravely cared for a pen during school that wrote smoothly and grieved when I had lost it. We share a mutual darkness with objects, but through my project I wanted to instill curiosity into why we may sometimes extend human empathy towards objects and what that reveals about us and the world he inhabit.

The research conducted for the Summer 2026 Fellowship focused on synthesizing an Iron(II) based discrete coordination cage with nitrogen-based organic ligands and evaluating its potential use in redox flow battery (RFB) technologies. Discrete coordination complexes (DCCs) are promising materials for next-generation energy storage because they may provide an alternative to the expensive vanadium-based electrolytes currently used in many RFBs. This project aimed to synthesize an Iron(II) based structure with electrochemical properties suitable for RFB applications.

Methyl Orange is a clothing dye that belongs to the azo dye family. A group of industrial dyes characterized by two phenyl groups attached by a nitrogen-nitrogen double bond. Because of these dye’s light absorbent properties, their presence in an aquatic ecosystem makes it more difficult for light to be absorbed and used by plants, as a result posing serious risk to the entire ecosystem. These dyes are difficult to treat using common wastewater treatment methods, and methods to remove it are expensive. Therefore a cost-effective method of removing it would be immensely beneficial.

This summer, I set out to write seven short stories based off the seven deadly sins through a feminist lens, entitled: Feminist Tales of Mortal Sins. Through these stories I wanted to highlight the different types of violence young girls and women face due to being victims of the patriarchal, capitalistic system more disproportionately than men, who are often the perpetrators. To achieve my goal, I educated myself on the history of the seven deadly sins, other adaptations that depict them, and read a variety of short stories to understand my craft better.

This project began when I started reading critics of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in the philosophy course Philosophy of Justice. That interest grew into this Fellowship which I conducted under the guidance of Dr. Richard Lauer, examining critics of Rawls. I became especially interested in Alasdair MacIntyre's communitarian objections to liberalism. This paper focuses on whether MacIntyre's own philosophy can consistently avoid the charge of moral relativism it seems to invite.

My fellowship project examined how statistical models can be used to estimate and visualize a team's chances of winning throughout a game. Using play-by-play data from NCAA men's basketball games, I collected, cleaned, and analyzed data to build several win probability models. These included frequentist and Bayesian logistic regression models as well as maximum likelihood estimation and Dynamic Bayes approaches.

Thamir's Summer Fellowship project was an interview-based historical research experience that examined the political, social, and economic transformation of Addu Atoll through its interactions with British military personnel stationed at S. Gan and S. Hithadhoo between 1941 and 1976.

Water Chestnut is an invasive aquatic plant originally from parts of Europe and Asia. In the mid 1800’s it was brought to Boston and since then has spread across the East Coast. Water Chestnut can overcrowd waterways making it impossible to boat or fish, not only that but the seeds are spiky causing extreme pain if stepped on. The goal of my project was to determine which waterbodies in Northern New York were most suitable for Water Chestnut Growth.

The project I have completed is a research paper that makes a case for the abilities of animated cinema in relation to environmentalism. I went into this project hoping to gain a solid understanding of the history of animation, and I certainly ended it with a lot of new knowledge. Even though I had already seen a majority of the films that I wrote about, viewing them in a new context and taking notes to look for things that my readings talked about was a very rewarding experience.

Njeri's project examined algorithmic fairness in resource allocation by comparing synthetic scholarship allocation models with real-world mortgage lending data. Using Python, machine learning, and established fairness metrics, she evaluated how predictive models can produce different outcomes across demographic groups, even when sensitive attributes such as race and sex were excluded from the training process.

During my Summer Research Fellowship, I conducted an independent philosophical research project examining contemporary theories of evil. My work began with a close reading of Claudia Card's The Atrocity Paradigm, which served as the primary focus of my research, alongside works by Hannah Arendt, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains one of the most severe and persistent human rights violations affecting women worldwide, with an estimated one in three women experiencing some form of violence in their lifetime. My project examined the systemic, cultural, and political structures that allow such violence to persist, specifically within the Swedish context. Of particular interest was the "Nordic Paradox": despite ranking as the most gender-equal country in the European Union, Sweden reports disproportionately high rates of violence against women.

    With this project, I initially set out to chart the entire genealogy of the concept of mutual aid—broadly speaking, the assumption that cooperation could sustain social order without coercive authority—in the anarchist tradition of political thought, believing that it stemmed from Peter Kropotkin's (1842-1921) book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, published in 1902.

Populism is rising in the European Union (EU) and is a growing concern. Populist governments can undermine democracy and can be left or right-wing. This research fellowship evaluates the causes of populism in the EU and identifies the key explanatory variables. The research examines both the traditional causes such as economic and immigration, and more recent explanations like corruption and disinformation. Data was collected from several databases and condensed into a dataset focusing on 28 countries (EU and the UK) between the years 2000 and 2025.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Joseph Braimah on a research project titled: “Examining the Social Determinants of Older Adults’ Health in St. Lawrence County.” Through this experience, I strengthened my qualitative research skills in interviewing, transcribing, and coding, and deepened my understanding of the barriers that shape rural health inequities and aging in St. Lawrence County.

As a SLU Summer Fellow, I conducted research under the instruction of Dr. Zeyno Ustun for my upcoming SYE thesis, Understanding the Red Vote in the North Country. This project examined the shift of the North Country from its once bipartisan spirit to current MAGA allegiance, with St. Lawrence County as a notable case of democratic decline in a once reliably blue region.

In the summer of 2026, Ashlyn examined how environmental conditions influence sediment composition in windward and leeward lagoonal environments of Ambergris Caye, Belize. Carbonate sediments are highly sensitive to environmental energy, water depth, and circulation patterns. This research examined the spatial distribution of carbonate sediments to provide insight into lagoonal processes and how these environments respond to environmental change over time.

The research I was able to complete this summer is very dear to me. With the guidance of my faculty advisor, Paul Graham, I conducted research on novella structure and genre with a strong focus on environmental literature. Alongside this, I began developing my own piece of environmental literature: a novella devoted to discovering what it means for a girl to grow up completely immersed in the ecology around her.

This summer, I focused on writing the first fifty pages of a novel inspired by Appalachian folklore that sought to analyze how exploitation has sought to consume both the land and body of the region. Using popular folktales such as Jack and the Giant's New Ground and Jack and the Old Fire Dragaman, I focused primarily on analyzing the region's historic reliance on coal mining as well as the recent rise this century of opioid addiction.

During my Fellowship I focused on 3D designing and printing a prosthetic finger with the idea to find out which parts of the designs were best for creating my own prosthetic finger. The goals I pursued during this fellowship were to learn how to 3D design and print different objects but mainly fingers capable of being prosthetics. This helped me to develop the skills of 3D design and printing as well as learning how to design my own experiments and how to give a good presentation.

My research fellowship focused on understanding how five species of obligate army-ant-following birds make foraging decisions in the Peruvian Amazon. These highly specialized birds feed solely on insects and other prey that are flushed from the forest floor by swarms of army ants, creating a unique system in which multiple bird species compete for the same food resource. Using a long-term dataset collected by Dr.

This summer, I had the opportunity to expand on and complete a research project that Dr. Cheryl Stuntz and I began in the fall of 2025. This project aimed to better understand why some people enjoy exercise more than others. Most prior research has looked at the factors that lead to more enjoyable exercise as isolated predictors – our project looked at how these factors interact, taking a more holistic approach that allowed us to see the complexity of individual experiences with exercise. 

This summer, I had the invaluable opportunity to do a research fellowship. Throughout the project, I had great chances to advance my quantitative and analytical toolkit. I learned how to extract, clean, and harmonize massive datasets. I also developed more knowledge in econometric techniques such as structuring panel data and running Difference-in-Differences regressions using R and Python. But most importantly, beyond these technical skills, this experience taught me the importance of resilience.

My project follows a visual alphabet similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics with symbols that I created. I explore a few different concepts such as religion, war, politics, propaganda, corporations, and the hypothetical realm that is free of all these tools of oppression. I'm trying to say that these kind of topics all around us and we must fight back against it by doing whatever we can.