The Mount David Summit is an opportunity for Bates students to share recent research, service-learning and creative work. This year, more than 100 research posters represented work in Asian studies, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, Chinese, economics, education, environmental studies, history, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, politics, psychology and public health. The 2009 summit also featured filmmakers who screened work, made in theater department courses, in a course at the Maine Media Workshops, as senior theses and on location in Bolivia; a Bates Modern Dance company performance; and the annual Barlow Off-Campus Study Photography Exhibition.

Festive and informative, the event annually draws a large crowd of students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni. It provides first-years and sophomores a chance to test their presentation skills in a supportive environment, and gives more advanced students the chance to explain their individual research to a wide audience. Broadly multidisciplinary, the summit shows the depth and expanse of scholarship among Bates students.

Meet some of the students who participated in this year’s event.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click on thumbnails, above, to view the slide show.

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Hundreds of Bates people and members of the local community flooded Pettengill Hall as the College mounted its sixth annual Mount David Summit on March 30. An eagerly anticipated presentation of student scholarship, service-learning and creative work, the summit unfurls a panorama of the rich life of the student mind at Bates.

Ongley conducted a study to determine the nature of arsenic sorption to sand. In an effort to make class laboratories relevant to water contamination issues in Maine, Ongley and five Bates students designed and conducted this experiment during the fall 1996 semester. Jon Eden, Jerimiah Hubeny, Erica Montgomery, Ray Pavlik, and Sara Tichenor are co-authors of the paper.

Arsenic contaminated water was placed in vials with sand and allowed to sit for three and then 18 days. The experiments, run in triplicate, yielded the following conclusions: arsenic is absorbed readily by uncontaminated sandy aquifer materials; the sorption appears to be time-dependent; the arsenic probably undergoes cation exchange with the naturally occurring calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium in the mineral grains; the absorptive capacity of the sand probably exceeds 60 micrograms of arsenic per gram of sand.

Ongley intends to continue her study of the absorption of arsenic with a focus on time dependence and absorption by size fractions and minerals. She also plans to investigate the desorption process and the transport of arsenic through aquifer material.

In 1995, the National Science Foundation awarded a grant to Ongley to promote undergraduate research in hydrology in Maine and Mexico. Under the terms of this grant, twelve students study the arsenic contamination of aquifers in Zimapan, Mexico, under the direction of Ongley and her colleagues: Aurora Armienta (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico), Alison Lathrop (Millersville University, Pa.) and Helen Mango (Castleton State College, Vt.).

A member of the Bates faculty since 1992, Ongley graduated from Middlebury College, earned a master’s degree in geology from Texas A & M University, and received master’s and doctor’s degrees in environmental science and engineering from Rice University.

From 1977 to 1982, she worked as an oil and gas exploration geologist in south Texas, the Gulf of Mexico coast and the mid-continent area of the United States. From 1973 to 1975, Ongley was one of the first women to work as a shipboard technician for Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Seniors Erica Montgomery and Sara Tichenor spent the summer of 1995 analyzing the structural geology and aqueous geochemistry of the ground water aquifers in Zimapán, Mexico. They were working under the direction of Lois Ongley, a professor of geology at Bates, Aurora Armienta (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico), Alison Lathrop (Millersville University, Pa.) and Helen Mango (Castleton State College, Vt.).

The drinking water in Zimapán has an average arsenic concentration of 0.3 mg/L. The World Health Organization drinking water standard is 0.05 mg/L. The residents of Zimapán are beginning to show ill health effects of chronic arsenic poisoning which include skin cancer and kidney and liver disease. Montgomery and Tichenor are trying to determine the source of the arsenic and the pathway by which it enters the groundwater supply.

Montgomery made a geologic map of the area of El Muhi, near the public water supply well with the highest concentration of arsenic (1.1 mg/L). Tichenor was part of a team that sought out sources of drinking water (wells and springs) to analyze the water chemistry. A significant result of this work is that the municipal authorities have closed the El Muhi well and opened another, the San Pedro Profundo, whose water has much less arsenic (0.006 mg/L).

Montgomery, a resident of Lancaster, Pa., plans to become a secondary school teacher after graduation. Tichenor, from Washington, D.C., is planning a career in geochemistry.