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For Starters: Spring 2021

Lanterns. Marshes. Windows.

1. Lantern Night

The 2020鈥21 academic year has been like no other. COVID-19 meant a rescheduled Lantern Night, but it couldn鈥檛 keep students from passing on the light of knowledge. 

2. Who is Reading to Kids?

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Zijia Zhuang 鈥21 will soon be traveling to Russia, Japan, Taiwan, and Germany as a Watson Fellow. Zijia is a comparative literature major at Bryn Mawr, and her project is titled 鈥淲ho Is Reading to Children.鈥

Throughout her travels, which will likely begin sometime after August 1 as long as international travel can be done safely, Zijia plans to work with organizations that read to children or provide support for families to facilitate parent-child reading. A native of Beijing, Zijia became interested in children鈥檚 literacy while volunteering for a mobile library project that brought picture books to local communities.

3. Equity in Archaeology and Classics

A recently formed Bi-Co group, Students Promoting Equity in Archaeology and Classics (SPEAC), held its first research conference, Now and Then: (In)equity and Marginalization in Ancient Mediterranean Studies, this spring. "When we started SPEAC, I knew I wanted us to do a conference so that we could meet and uplift the work of other very-early-career scholars who are interested in challenging the problematic nature of our fields and figuring out a way forward," said Ph.D. candidate Olivia Hopewell, one of the event organizers.

4. Anti-Racism in STEM

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Top: Assistant Professor of Math Erica J. Graham '04. Above: Associate Professor of Biology Sydne Record.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Erica J. Graham 鈥04 gave a lecture titled 鈥淎nti-racism in Mathematics: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How鈥 at the 2021 Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. Associate Professor of Biology Sydne Record brought together more than 250 researchers for a two-day National Science Foundation meeting on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in environmental biology and in conducting collaborative research.

5. Researching Marshes

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Associate Professor of Biology Thomas Mozdzer.

Associate Professor of Biology Thomas Mozdzer has received nearly $2 million from the National Science Foundation for a new program that bridges the fields of ecosystem ecology and evolutionary biology. Mozdzer鈥檚 research sets out to address a novel question: Does rapid evolution to global change influence how ecosystems function? Ecologists used to think evolution was too slow to affect their studies, but research from Mozdzer鈥檚 lab says otherwise. To answer this question, Mozdzer and his fellow researchers aim to determine how both nutrient pollution and elevated levels of carbon dioxide are inducing rapid evolution in plant communities on the invasive common reed Phragmites australis in a salt marsh on the Chesapeake Bay. Fieldwork for the project will be conducted at the Smithsonian Global Change Research Wetland of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and at a 600-genotype quantitative genetic common garden that is being set up on the Bryn Mawr campus.

6. You Really Got Me

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Assistant Professor of Psychology Ariana Orvell.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not what you say, but how you say it鈥 is a common cliche for speakers trying to connect with others.

But according to new research by Assistant Professor of Psychology Ariana Orvell and Ethan Kross and Susan A. Gelman of the University of Michigan, it may just be 鈥測ou鈥 that really matters when it comes to what we read.

The researchers found that ideas expressed with what they identify as 鈥済eneric-you鈥 increased resonance, or a sense of connection, with readers more than phrases or ideas lacking the word.

In conducting their initial research, Orvell and her colleagues used publicly available data from the Amazon Kindle application.

The researchers analyzed 56 books from Oprah鈥檚 Book Club and looked at passages readers highlighted using the built-in highlighting feature. Highlighted passages were 8.5 times more likely to contain generic 鈥測ou鈥 than passages that were not highlighted.

7. Let the Sun Shine In

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During a seven-month project, each one of the Great Hall鈥檚 368 ornate and intricate leaded glass windows was removed and fully repaned. It was the first time since the building was constructed in 1901鈥7 that a project of this nature has been undertaken.

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鈥淲hen the building was originally built, the glass and the stone were intrinsically installed at the same time. The lead glass windows were made in big sheets, about five feet tall by 30 inches wide, and as the stone was being placed, the sheets of leaded glass were being placed in the stone so the next piece locked it in,鈥 explained Jim McGaffin, an associate director in the Facilities office and manager of the project.

Published on: 07/05/2021