\nGetting right down to the X Y Z of it<\/em><\/p>\n
From anarchy (and why Bates needs a course on it) to zebrafish (and their responses to toxins), the summit is a living, breathing encyclopedia of student achievement at the college.<\/p>\n
Held March 23, the 2018 edition was the 17th in a series that has become one of the college’s most anticipated events, drawing family, friends, and potential students to join the campus community in celebrating Bates academics.<\/p>\n
This year, more than 270 students presented their research via posters, panels, literary readings, video screenings, and more.<\/p>\n
In short, as Sam said, this is the perfect spot to learn. And so here for your pleasure and edification is a sampling from the smorgasbord of smarts that was the 2018 Mount David Summit.<\/p>\n
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1:01 p.m. \u2014 Sunny Summit<\/h3>\n
On Alumni Walk, where snow is grudgingly giving way to spring, the destination is Pettengill Hall and the 2018 Mount David Summit.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/03\/1803223_Mt_David_Summit_4667.jpg\")
<\/a>Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n
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1:11 p.m. \u2014 A Day of Stars<\/h3>\n
Before the summit kicks off at 1:30, Areohn Harrison ’20 of Rockville, Md., poses with Everett, age 3 1\/2, who is the son of Bridget Harr, lecturer in sociology. The stars on their foreheads were courtesy of Professor of Sociology Emily Kane.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n
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1:15 p.m. \u2014 Off-Campus in Focus<\/h3>\n
As they wait for the opening ceremony, attendees view the annual Barlow Off-Campus Photography Exhibition. They’re looking at an image of Julia Kavanagh ’18 of Pelham, Mass., who is sitting atop Preikestolen, a cliff looming 604 meters above the Lysefjorden in Forsand, Norway.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n
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1:26 p.m. \u2014 Prelude to a Summit<\/h3>\n
John Turner ’21 of Falmouth, Mass., helps the Bates Brass Ensemble kick off the 2018 Mount David Summit. They accompanied the Bates College Choir in a musical prelude, the Allegro vivace\u00a0<\/em>from John Rutter’s setting of Gloria in excelsis Deo.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n In her welcoming address, President Clayton Spencer encourages attendees to explore all Mount David Summit has to offer \u2013 the experiments, the analyses, the ideas, the conventional wisdoms overturned.<\/p>\n But she also admonishes them to remember that the summit is but a “snapshot” of something much greater.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s just one day on our students\u2019 four-year journey through Bates,” she says. “But it\u2019s a day that shows the best of who our students are \u2014 their curiosity, their persistence, their precision, their exploration, their creativity. It just amazes me every year. It\u2019s one of my favorite days.”<\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Clockwise from left, Mary Morton Cowan ’61, her husband, Carl ’61, and daughter-in-law Marianne Nolan Cowan ’92 talk to\u00a0<\/b>Gift Kiti ’18 of Mombasa, Kenya.<\/span><\/p>\n Kiti explained her examination of introductory STEM courses at Bates, with a special interest in exploring effective teaching strategies that serve under-represented groups in the sciences.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n As some of her listeners lean on one of the ficus trees that grow in Perry Atrium, Kinsey Moser ’18 of Fernandina Beach, Fla., explains how she uses acoustic monitors to examine the influence of weather on thrush migration in Maine.<\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Home to dozens of posters in three viewing sessions, Perry Atrium is the heart of the Mount David Summit. Here you can hear about encryption in bank data or about hypoxia in rats. Then, before diving back in, you can catch your breath, reset your sight with a glimpse of Lake Andrews, and restore yourself with cookies, cheeses, and beverages.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n One corner of Perry Atrium attracts a steady stream of visitors throughout the summit.<\/p>\n The presenters, students in Visiting Assistant Professor of English Tiffany Salter\u2019s course on science fiction writers of color, outfit interested visitors with virtual reality headsets.<\/p>\n Here, Eliza Statile ’19 of Ipswich, Mass., joined by friends, has donned the headset.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t walk in here, you teleport,\u201d is the advice to viewers like Statile, who find themselves immersed in a 3D-rendered block of buildings. To get around, they use a joystick to point to where they want to go. Don\u2019t go into the canal, they are told. It\u2019s hard to get out.<\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n In this VR world, visible on screens to passers-by, waters have risen substantially, and merfolk have emerged from the deep to live among humans.<\/p>\n During the semester, Salter\u2019s students explored how sci-fi writers build worlds and how the future-imagining of science fiction is similar to the future-imagining of social justice activism. The semi-aquatic VR world, which the students built with the help of Information & Library services, was a way for them to get their hands dirty, so to speak.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a different way to creatively engage with how you make decisions about the story of the space,\u201d Salter says. \u201cHow did it get to where it was? What belongs in this space? How do you create a world?\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking makes you hungry, so Ben Smith of the college’s catering operation keeps the cookies coming.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Driving to Bates from Norwell, Mass., Steve and Debbie Schlueter discussed their son Kyle\u2019s senior thesis. Like many parents and friends of thesis-writers, they knew the gist but were sketchy on the details. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe knew it was fidget spinners, like the Christmas present,\u201d Steve says. \u201cWe were excited to hear what it is he\u2019s been working on and the results.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n At his poster, Kyle fills them in. It’s pretty simple, really: The handheld spinning toys, all the rage in 2017, were marketed as a way to help kids concentrate and even mitigate attention-deficit disorders. Kyle decided to see if that was true.<\/span><\/p>\n It isn’t, as Schlueter explains to folks, including lots of Bates parents who stopped by his poster. Fidget spinners, like other toys, take up cognitive space, making other tasks take longer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been really cool to see some of the parents come around and say, \u2018I have kids that use these,\u2019 saying that they help,\u201d Schlueter says. \u201cSure enough, I had to prove them wrong, show them differently.\u201d<\/p>\n The student EcoReps work on behalf of the college on sustainability initiatives, and a big crowd is attending their panel on ways they help Bates meet its ambitious environmental goals.<\/p>\n Here, EcoRep Matt Reback ’18 of Potomac, Md., urges listeners to be vigilant in their sustainability efforts and environmental responsibilities. “Be the guy who picks up the cup,” he says.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n For his thesis, Sunjay Pai ’18 tried to get bees to fly into things.<\/p>\n Pai, who is interested in both physics and biology, worked with his adviser, Assistant Professor of Biology Andrew Mountcastle, to figure out how much a bumblebee’s body spins when it collides with something \u2014 data that could have implications for things like drone development.<\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n They originally set out to study wasps, but all their wasps died.<\/p>\n Then, with the help of staff machinist Peter Beach, they built a container with a wire running top to bottom, in the hopes that bees put inside would fly into the wire. It turns out bees are rather good at avoiding barriers, so they only got a few good collision videos over the course of several months.<\/p>\n So Beach built them a more sophisticated device, and they put little magnets on the bees to facilitate a collision. That did the trick.<\/p>\n The constant trial and error \u201cshowed me how real science is done,\u201d Pai says \u2014 and he loves it. \u201cNow I want to pursue a Ph.D. in functional morphology.\u201d<\/p>\n Kwamae Delva \u201918 of Conley, Ga., draws a consistent crowd, including\u00a0Jeff Sturgis ’69, an Alumni Council member and the College Key president, as he talks about analyzing high-velocity outflows in compact starburst galaxies. <\/span><\/p>\n In other words, for his thesis he learned about galaxies in the throes of star formation by studying the gases that leave those galaxies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Delva worked closely with Assistant Professor of Physics Aleks Diamond-Stanic, conducting some of the research at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. <\/span><\/p>\n Though Delva capped his Bates career with a study of other worlds, the work taught him a skill that has very real applications in this world. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe best part has been learning how to code,\u201d he says. \u201cI decided to change my career because of it. It\u2019s been amazing learning how to codify everything you can, and how the simplest thing like having the space bar in the wrong spot can completely stop the code from working.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As his proud mom, Sheryl Watson, listens, Max Watson ’18 of Yarmouth, Maine, talks about his research on certain flowers and a type of insect that pollinates them, the bumblebee.<\/p>\n The relationship between flowers and pollinators is important, Max says, because “one of the core intentions of conservation ecology is understanding the factors that affect the reproductive success of threatened plant populations.”<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Professor of Sociology Emily Kane says that the Mount David Summit is, hands down, her favorite academic day of the year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes me feel so re-energized as a faculty member,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n After all those uneven moments in a professor’s day-to-day work with students \u2014 when they need a deadline extension, or they haven’t done the reading, or whatever\u00a0\u2014 “this reminds me how amazingly capable and passionate and dedicated they are.\u201d<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Hyewon Shin \u201918 of Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, who intensively interviewed Asian American women working in the tech industry about the racism and sexism they faced, found less direct discrimination than she expected.<\/p>\n The project had the rigor of a qualitative sociological study, Institutional Review Board approval and all. But it also had a personal bent: Shin, who is interested in marketing and healthcare technology and interned in San Francisco this summer, wants to go into the tech industry herself.<\/p>\n She said the results were encouraging, but she also appreciated the complexity of race and gender in the tech industry. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to inform people and let them know what are the fundamental issues and come up with a solution,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Anna Kandel \u201918 of Pelham, Mass., poses with her moms, Andrea Kandel (left) and Georganne Greene. Anna conducted chemistry research: “Applications of the Underlying Chemistry in PbTiO3 for the Design of Lead-free Perovskites.”<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n As part of the summit presentation An Image of Local Francophonie<\/em>, Julia Nemy ’18 of San Francisco screened an oral history video she created for her senior thesis project in French and francophone studies.<\/p>\n Nemy\u2019s focus was Lewiston\u2019s Djiboutian population, which the video portrayed as a tight-knit community proud of its culture, open-mindedness, and resilience. Nemy\u2019s subjects talked about language issues, adjusting to life in a new land, and life in Lewiston \u2014 and pointed to Maine weather as one of their biggest challenges.<\/p>\n Explaining that Djibouti, on Africa’s east coast, has only two seasons, one young man complained that the weather here changes too often. \u201cI have the impression that I’m watching a movie or something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Nemy’s adviser was professor Mary Rice-DeFosse. Here, Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read watches Nemy’s film.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Rachael Rosow \u201918 of Avon, Conn., considers herself lucky: She was able to make her two theses, in biology and psychology, work in tandem. <\/span><\/p>\n For biology, she created a smartphone app for Healthy Androscoggin, a Lewiston-based public health organization. The app displays the location of drug disposal boxes around the county and provides information and resources to help combat drug abuse.<\/span><\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n For psychology, Rosow created a survey to test the effectiveness of different advertisements for the app. But here she ran into a minor roadblock: Bates students, usually a go-to pool of test subjects for psychology experiments, weren\u2019t the app\u2019s intended audience. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was looking for people with the same age, education level, annual income, and ethnicity that is reflected in Androscoggin County,\u201d she said. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, with a grant from Bates, Rosow sent her survey to retail giant Amazon’s online marketplace for work that requires human intelligence, Amazon Mechanical Turk. MTurk administered the survey to her target demographic. <\/span><\/p>\n With the results, Rosow hopes the app will have a more immediate impact in the community. <\/span><\/p>\n Jason Boisvert ’18 of Concord, Mass., poses in front of his poster about his thesis topic: \u201cThe Role of Nfe2 and Related Factors in Regulating Developmental Toxicity of MEHP.\u201d<\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n We asked him to break down the title, word by word, so we might understand his research. Here goes:<\/p>\n Role: Boisvert wanted to figure out what something does.<\/p>\n Nfe2: That \u201csomething\u201d is a protein: Nuclear factor, erythroid 2. Known as a transcription factor, this protein interacts with DNA and turns genes \u201con\u201d or \u201coff.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Factors: Boisvert looked at a family of related transcription factors, including Nfe2.<\/p>\n Regulation: Boisvert wanted to know what, if any, function Nfe2 performs in an organism\u2019s response to a certain situation. \u201cRegulation is similar to \u2018role,\u2019\u201d Boisvert says.<\/p>\n Developmental: Boisvert looked at zebrafish in their developmental stage, up to 4 days old, when \u201cthere are a lot of processes going on in relation to organs and other systems.\u201d (Zebrafish, which share 70 percent of the same genes with humans, are often used in research.)<\/p>\n Toxicity: A chemical substance is toxic if it \u201ccreates adverse effects in an organism,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n MEHP: This is the key acronym: It\u2019s the short name for mono(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, a chemical used in the manufacturing of soft plastics. MEPH and other \u201cphthalates\u201d have been linked to health problems.<\/p>\n Bringing this all together, Boisvert looked at a specific genetic response to a toxic chemical in baby zebrafish.<\/p>\n As so often happens with research, his findings are equivocal at this point, specifically whether Nfe2 helps reduce toxicity. Luckily, Short Term is ahead, during which Boisvert plans to collect more data to refine his conclusions.<\/p>\n Next year, Boisvert will be working at Boston Children\u2019s Hospital in the laboratory of Leonard Zon,<\/a> who uses zebrafish in his stem-cell research.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of medical schools like to see research projects,\u201d says Brielle Antonelli \u201918, who for her thesis studied the effects of different oxygen environments and certain drugs on rats. \u201cHaving a thesis at Bates is something that\u2019s really specific and stands out” on the resume, she says. The experience has taught her “a lot about respiratory responses and neurotransmitters. It\u2019s a good baseline to have, a foundation to build off of, but it also has overlap for preterm infants who have different responses in breathing later in on in life.”<\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Raegine Clouden Mallett \u201918 of Brooklyn, N.Y., loved presenting at the summit. \u201cIt was so supportive,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople who came and sat and listened to me give my talk over and over again seemed genuinely interested in what I was doing and exuded an energy of pride, pride in what another Bobcat is doing. It made me feel proud of my own project.\u201d<\/p>\n For Mallet, the summit culminated months of work, with plenty of twists and turns along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n Theophil Syslo\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n She studied the regulatory mechanisms that are activated when the bacterium that causes Lyme disease transfers from tick to vertebrate. The project started off as a lab experiment, but defective materials meant that Mallett\u2019s project had to shift from pipettes to programming.<\/span><\/p>\n So she ended up creating a theoretical model of translational efficiency, a procedure that future thesis students can use in their own experiments. <\/span><\/p>\n Hanna De Bruyn ’18 of Old Lyme, Conn., poses with family in front of her neuroscience poster. De Bruyn looked at “backward masking”: the phenomenon whereby a visual stimulus, known as the target, is followed by another stimulus (the mask).<\/p>\n The second stimulus prevents, or masks, our brains from processing the target and turning it into a memory. “We still do not understand to what extent the target is processed during the masking period,” De Bruyn says.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Rakiya Mohamed ’18 of Auburn, Maine, poses with her mother,\u00a0Asmo Dol, after her poster presentation.<\/p>\n She did a comparative analysis of commercial lead-detecting instruments and commercial home kits. She also looked at an alternative type of home water-testing kit that is cheap to make, effective, and has a longer lifespan compared to kits now available. Mohamed is a double major in biochemistry and African American studies.<\/p>\n Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College<\/p><\/div>\n Stephen Rowe ’18 of Gambier, Ohio, discusses his politics research. Rowe challenges a conventional theoretical belief about terrorist organizations: that high levels of “institutionalization” \u2014 that is, sophisticated institutional infrastructure \u2014 and charismatic authority are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n The two can occur together, Rowe argues. In such cases, the removal of a charismatic authority such as Osama bin Laden can still effectively reduce the threat posed by a terrorist organization “because charismatic leaders choose to structure their organizations in ways that enhance their own authority, making the organization vulnerable upon leadership removal.”<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n1:36 p.m. \u2014 ‘The Best of Our Students’<\/h3>\n
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\n1:41 p.m. \u2014 Introduction to the Introductory<\/h3>\n
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\n1:45 p.m. \u2014 A Brush With Thrushes<\/h3>\n
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\n1:52 p.m. \u2014 Above the Summit<\/h3>\n
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\n1:58 p.m. \u2014 ‘How Do You Create a World?’<\/h3>\n
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\n2:09 p.m. \u2014 Something for the Inner Scholar<\/h3>\n
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\n2:14 p.m. \u2014 A Different Spin on the Fidget Toys<\/h3>\n
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\n2:22 p.m. \u2014 In the Green Room<\/h3>\n
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\n2:41 p.m. \u2014 Bees That Go Bump<\/h3>\n
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\n2:52 p.m. \u2014 An Ode to Coding<\/h3>\n
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\n2:58 p.m. \u2014 Bee Serious<\/h3>\n
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\n3:15 p.m. \u2014 ‘Capable, Passionate, Dedicated’<\/h3>\n
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\n3:16 p.m. \u2014 Her Take on Tech<\/h3>\n
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\n3:25 p.m. \u2014 Getting the Lead Out<\/h3>\n
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\n3:27 p.m. \u2014 The Four Seasons (or More)<\/h3>\n
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\n3:35 p.m. \u2014 Androscoggin County According to MTurk<\/h3>\n
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\n3:42 p.m. \u2014 Making Every Word Count<\/h3>\n
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\n3:51 p.m. \u2014 Something That Stands Out<\/h3>\n
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\n3:55 p.m. \u2014 The Energy of Pride<\/h3>\n
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\n4:35 p.m. \u2014 Disturbing Memory<\/h3>\n
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\n4:36 p.m. \u2014 The Leading Lead Tests<\/h3>\n
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\n4:52 p.m. \u2014 Charisma vs. the Org Chart<\/h3>\n