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

My St. Lawrence University Summer Fellowship project focused on finding an economic valuation for the difference in learning between passive and active online follow-up interventions. I wanted to look at and compare different kinds of follow-up interventions for workplace trainings. I intended to put on a 30 person training and test the effectiveness of having them complete some follow-up learning at 4, 7, and 10 days before being tested 14 days after the initial training. 

Mandelbrot escape velocity relates to the rate at which points move to infinity given input into a specific equation. Visually, this has previously been represented 2-dimensionally. My project explores different methods of visual representation, including 3-dimensional prints and colorful animations. This project is an extension to my spring independent research: "3-D Printing Mandelbrot Escape Velocity" and is being continued into this fall, as an Honors Senior Year Experience.

Throughout my fellowship, I spent my summer immersed in the world of video game storytelling. With the guidance of my faculty mentor, English professor Paul Graham, I've been researching how game creators construct compelling narratives and build unique new realms by blending elements like art, music, dialogue, and more. 

During my fellowship I took advantage of the opportunity to dive deeply into the ethics of care, a subject that since I first read about it, had held great significance to me, both academically and on a personal level. By doing this, I was able to engage with many philosophical concepts, authors, and articles that I would have probably never been introduced to within a traditional classroom setting. One of the most valuable aspects that I took from this experience was learning how to structure and be in charge of my own research project.

This summer I was granted a fellowship to work under the supervision of Dr. Adam E. Fox in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB) lab. The focus of the project was possible time perception abnormalities in females with comorbid ADHD and PTSD. Both disorders have a substantial societal cost, their combined financial burden can be estimated at $355 billion in the United States in 2018 (Schein et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2022). Research has shown that patients with ADHD are at a greater risk of developing PTSD later in life (Wendt et al., 2023).

During the St. Lawrence Summer Fellowship, Cooper A. focused on addressing the challenges faced by sound editors and designers due to the lack of standardized organization in large audio databases. The project involved curating a dataset of over 77,000 audio files, totaling 151 hours, from various sound editors, including his father’s work. Using machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch, the project developed deep learning models and audio spectrogram transformers to categorize different sound effects.

The United States is widely considered to be one of the most powerful countries in the world. The Fragile States Index (FSI), published by the Fund for Peace (FFP), measures countries on 12 different metrics to determine the likelihood that the state will collapse. One would expect the US to be one of the least fragile states in the world, yet it does not even make the top 20. The US ranks 41st on the FSI in between Poland and Barbados. Things look even worse when looking at individual metrics.

My summer research looked at the connections between technology and a student’s sense of belongingness in public elementary education. Through a combination of school visits, literature reviews, and reflection on the purposes of early education, I was able to begin developing a framework to think seriously about how schools should use technology with young children.  

Social and political progress in the 21st century has been closely tied to the successes and failures of mass mobilizations that effectively utilized the internet during the 2010s yet faced increasing control over traffic online in the aftermath of global uprisings. Several nation-states, threatened by country-wide movements and the 2013 NSA revelations, directed their efforts towards implementing new policies and regulations to control the local Internet. This set a precedent for many others to adopt new methods and metrics of control.

Social and political progress in the 21st century has been closely tied to the successes and failures of mass mobilizations that effectively utilized the internet during the 2010s yet faced increasing control over traffic online in the aftermath of global uprisings. Several nation-states, threatened by country-wide movements and the 2013 NSA revelations, directed their efforts towards implementing new policies and regulations to control the local Internet. This set a precedent for many others to adopt new methods and metrics of control.

This summer I explored and researched the relief printing technique of woodcuts through experimentation under the mentorship of Professor Melissa Schulenberg, a renowned master Mokuhanga printer and one of my Senior Honors Project academic advisors. This opportunity allowed me to focus on the development, brainstorming, and artistic process of essential pieces for my Senior Project.

What is meaning, and how is it communicated? Paul Grice’s formulations of speaker meaning (Grice, 1957) and conversational implicature (1975) pave the way to answer those questions. In a nutshell, Grice demonstrates that our intuitions about the distinction between what is said and what is communicated can be explained in terms of communicative intentions. Unfortunately, his theory lacks psychological plausibility, and it fails to give an adequate explanation of how hearers comprehend a speaker’s communicative intention.

What is the role of natural world in times of chaos? When, if ever, do we shed the trivialities of human behavior? In the beginning of a parodic post-apocalyptic fiction piece, characters explore what it means to be part of a community after losing everything and how far one can exploit others before compromising their integrity. This project attempts to push the boundaries of conventional fiction forms and investigate the creative process of writing long form fiction compared to short form fiction, and will be presented during the Festival of Scholarship in April 2025. 

During the start of the American Civil War, in 1861, the Sea Islands off the coast of Port Royal in South Carolina were soon re-taken by the Union Army. The islands contained large plantations growing corn and cotton, sprawled with fine mansions with colorful and exotic flowers. As the plantation owners saw the Union Navy arrive on their shores, they evacuated. During this haste evacuation, the owners of the fields and enslaved African Americans left behind everything they owned. This event created a truly unique moment for the United States Government. 

My research explored different therapeutic models of addiction from a philosophy lens, evaluating the role agency and self-identity play in addiction. Using the widely known 12-step model, this paper discusses the moral model, genetic model, brain disease model, and existential model of addiction. Ultimately, I conclude that addiction needs to be approached from a more individualistic model that acknowledges the variety of factors that play a role in the disorder.

Encouraging a zero-waste framework in the fashion industry by reinventing thrifting as it exists. Looking at the problem of fast fashion from a business perspective and reinventing a sector of sustainable fashion to make sustainable clothing the preferred choice for the shopper. Empowering the shopper to feel their best in their custom fit and designed clothing.

Given the intricate interplay between the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) and hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal (HPI) axes in young tadpoles, the release of triiodothyronine (T3), an active thyroid hormone, is dependent on the body's need for corticosterone (CORT).

Helen “Tommie” Whalen had a palpable presence during her time at St. Lawrence University, where she served as the school’s registrar from 1930 to 1968 and acted as communications officer between the institution and enlisted students during WWII. Helen Whalen’s importance to St. Lawrence is reflected by the fact that she is in the athletic hall of fame and her work is mentioned in Candle in the Wilderness.

In 1987, St. Lawrence University’s then annual David B. Steinman Festival of the Arts was entitled “Art and the Vietnam Era: The Politics of Memory.” One element of the festival elicited over 140 veterans from around the country to send in hundreds of poems to a group of SLU faculty who selected and arranged them into a printed anthology. Along with their poetry submissions, veterans sent notes of gratitude, descriptions of their service, catalogues of awards and decorations they had received, and various other documents.

My summer research project aimed to analyze the enduring impact of Eve Ensler's 1996 play, 'The Vagina Monologues,' across four distinct eras: the Early Era (1996-2004), Middle Era (2004-2015), Pre-Covid Era (2015-2020), and Post-Covid Era (2020-2023). By delving into the popular discourse surrounding the play during each period, I sought to trace its historical trajectory and identify shifts in societal perceptions. This project served as a platform for honing my skills in historical research.

Urban art has dramatically blossomed from classic graffiti scattered across cities to a new dimension; street art stickers, or simply stickers. Stickers that litter pedestrian signals, electrical boxes, or just about any accessible surface found in cities allow for self-expression and engage passersby with their message. Street art stickers, when analyzed in connection with specific locations and times in history, provide an in-depth look into the cultures in which they were born.

My project was a pilot study exploring the possible relationship between worsened depressive symptoms and poor dental health decisions and how best to sample this data for my upcoming SYE project. With our own questions being added to the questionnaire, it was integral for future research that we investigate what works and what doesn't for proper sampling. 

Everyone experiences life through a different lens. While we value a constant and universal factor when analyzing data, identity is fluid and ever-changing.

The goal of my project was to write short stories serving as psychological portraits of individuals coming of age, with a thematic focus on familial independence and socioeconomic mobility. Throughout this project, I gained insight on the drafting process and how to use such processes to produce psychologically rich characters. For each of the two stories produced, I wrote three separate drafts, each with a distinct title and focus.