Senior Integrated Project

Mara Richman ’14: Have Research, Will Travel

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Senior psychology major Mara Richman in front of a projection screen
Mara Richman ’14 presenting her research in Rome

Mara Richman ’14 recently cut classes for an entire week. But the senior psychology major wasn’t goofing off. Rather, she attended the International Borderline Personality and Allied Disorders annual conference in Rome—at their invitation—to deliver her research paper “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in Major Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analysis”

She was the conference’s youngest oral presenter.

“There were researchers from all over the world on this topic and I presented before a huge audience,” said Mara.

“I have a passion for meta-analysis and this is one of several that I have done on my own. This one looked at differences in mental state decoding between borderline personality disorder and major depressed patients.”

The National Institute of Mental Health defines borderline personality disorder (BPD) as a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. Most people with BPD suffer from problems with regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior, and unstable relationships with other people.

Mara’s paper was based on independent research she conducted while on study abroad at Kalamazoo College’s Budapest Semester in Cognitive Science, under the mentorship of Zsolt Unoka, M.D., Ph.D. She visited with Dr. Unoka during the Rome conference.

One of her K professors, Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies Peter Erdi, Ph.D., helped her arrange the research project. Help with funding for her Rome trip came from K’s Office of the Provost, Department of Psychology, and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

“The conference truly shaped me and it was great to network with people in the field to learn more about the BPD,” said Mara.

Mara completed her SIP this past summer at Harvard University where she moved forward her BPD research by studying identity disturbance. She currently has 12 peer-reviewed journal articles in review or awaiting publication. Previously, she received an award from the American Psychological Association for outstanding research.

“My K advisor, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Perry, Ph.D., has been a huge help in guiding me and helping me make these decisions.”

Mara, who came to K from Tampa, Fla., completed all of her graduation requirements early and will leave campus at the end of this fall quarter. She hopes to land fulltime work in a clinical facility in order to gain more clinical experience before pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a focus on BPD.

Inaugural Symposium Features Distinguished Alumnus

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The first ever economics and business Senior Individualized Project symposium is bringing back one the department’s own to serve as keynote speaker. Will Dobbie ’04 will address senior econ and business majors during a dinner that will follow the poster presentation to occur in the Hicks Center at 4:30 PM on May 22.

After graduating from K, Dobbie earned his master’s degree in economics from the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. (economics and public policy) from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Dobbie is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.

Dobbie’s research interests are primarily in the areas of labor economics and the economics of education. His work has examined the effect of school inputs on student outcomes, the importance of peer effects, the impact of voluntary youth service, and the benefits of the consumer bankruptcy system. Earlier this year he received an award from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for writing the best doctoral dissertation in the field of labor-related economics. Ahmed Hussen, the Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics and Business, attended that event. “Will’s lecture was based on his highly acclaimed and controversial work on high performing charter schools in New York City,” says Hussen. “We are delighted to have him back for our first SIP symposium. He has accomplished a great deal in such a short period of time after graduating from K–living proof that we do more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.”

Sustainability Goes Fourth at Kalamazoo College

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Kalamazoo College will host the fourth annual Sustainability SIP Symposium on Monday, April 29, 6-9 p.m., in 103 Dewing Hall on the K campus (1200 Academy St.), co-sponsored by the College’s Guilds and Environmental Studies Program. Free and open to the public, the event will feature student presentations of sustainability-related Senior Individualized Projects (SIPs) ranging in topic from English to Economics. Audience members will have time for questions following each presentation, and an opportunity to meet student researchers at the interactive poster session and reception beginning at 8 p.m. in Dewing Hall Commons. Refreshments will be provided by the People’s Food Co-Op.

Student presentations include:

Mysha Clarke: Energy Recovery in Landfills: A Jamaican Case Study

Monika Egerer: Ecosystem Services on the Mariana Islands: Implications of bird loss for a wild chili pepper species

Rebecca Rogstad: Zane, the Curious Little Zooxanthellate

Shoshana Schultz: Inverting the Atlas: Mapping Geographically Based Food Security in Kalamazoo

“The annual symposium recognizes the scholarship and research that many K seniors devote to their SIPs (a graduation requirement) and showcases the breadth and depth of sustainability-related work taking place at the College,” said Joan Hawxhurst, Director, Center for Career and Professional Development.

This year’s Symposium is the first since the reorganization and expansion of the Guilds to include seven career path clusters: Arts & Media, Business, Education, Health, Law, Nonprofit & Public Service, and Science & Technology. Sustainability infuses the conversations and collaborations in all seven Guilds, and the Sustainability SIP Symposium showcases how this value cuts across disciplines and departments and informs the work of all professionals.

K Senior’s Documentary Poetry Project Cited in “Gay Military Signal”

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English major Gabriella Donofrio ’13 completed what English professor Diane Seuss calls “a remarkable Senior Individualized Project!”

Donofrio wrote a book of documentary poetry about life in the military (before and after the repeal of the “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” policy) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer soldiers serving their country. She was on study abroad when the policy was repealed in September, 2011, and didn’t give it too much thought until three months later.

She wanted her SIP to be a book of poetry, and based hers on Mark Nowak’s collection of documentary poetry titled Coal Mountain Elementary. “I first interviewed several military members about their experiences of being gay in the military,” wrote Donofrio. “I then transcribed the interviews and framed poems around the stories that seemed most poignant to me.

The result is a collection of pieces in the voices of seven members of the LGBTQ+ military movement.” Her SIP includes some 75 pieces, some of which were published with a story about Donofrio and her project in the monthly web publication Gay Military Signal.

K senior builds her future with help from K’s past

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Eeva Stout-Sharp with a painting
Eeva Stout-Sharp

Eeva Stout-Sharp ’13 is reaching into Kalamazoo College’s past in order to forge her own future after K.

As part of her Senior Individualized Project (SIP) in Art History, the Petoskey, Mich. native has curated an exhibit of portraits from the College’s art collection that depicts K faculty and administrators from the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Ten photographs and oil paintings (plus an additional mystery piece) comprise an exhibit that includes images of James and Lucinda Stone who led the College from 1843-63, College benefactor Mary Mandelle whose oil portrait otherwise hangs in the Olmsted Room in Mandelle Hall, and past K presidents such as Herbert Lee Stetson and Allan Hoben.

“The show is [built] around the idea that at the turn of the 20th century, the American identity through portraiture takes a huge turn,” Sharp said. Portraits from the 19th century represented status and a stoic image of America, she explained. In the 20th century, cameras and other technology became more available, allowing middle class Americans access to portraiture.

As a result, said Sharp, the role of the portrait shifted. “There’s this desire to empathize with a person rather than see a symbol of power,” Sharp said.

Sharp said that putting the portraits on display in a new setting will allow viewers to see them as more than just wall decorations. She has painted the gallery walls red and installed ottomans and a Persian rug in the space, in order to “give people the sense of a turn-of-the-century study, which is where these works would have originally been displayed.”

Sharp hopes to work in the museum world after graduation. This project, along with helping to curate other students’ art projects on campus, has giving her a taste for that. “By teaching myself to curate,” Sharp said, “I’m hoping to build a toolkit of skills and experiences that I can contribute to an arts organization.”

The exhibit runs from Feb. 25 to March 8 in the Light Fine Arts Building gallery at the corner of Academy and Thompson streets. A catalog with supplemental information on the portraits will be available in April.

Story and photo by Maggie Kane ’13

The Magnificent Five

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Five women representing Kalamazoo College
(Left to right) Regina Stevens-Truss, Lindsey Gaston, Sandrine Zilikana, Laura Lowe Furge, and Mara Livezey

Majors Sandrine Zilikana ’12 and Mara Livezey ’13 and biology major Lindsey Gaston ’12  joined chemistry department faculty members Regina Stevens-Truss and Laura Lowe Furge at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Meeting in San Diego in late April. The students presented results of their summer research experiences (part of the Senior Individualized Projects for Sandrine and Lindsey) as part of both the Annual Undergraduate Poster Competition and the regular scientific sessions of the meeting.

More than 200 students from schools across the country were part of the undergraduate poster competition.  Zilikana’s research measured differences in reducing the potential of cancer cell types to affect drug delivery. She conducted this scientific work at the University of Michigan with Professor Kyung-Dall Lee.  Gaston’s showed that a specific hormone prevented nerve cell death after brain injury. Her research, conducted with Professor Vishal Bansal at the University of California-San Diego, will be included in a manuscript just accepted to the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology. Livezey presented the results of a study she has worked on for the past two years in Furge’s lab modeling the interactions of inhibitors with human cytochrome P450 enzymes. That study was recently published in Drug Metabolism Letters. While in San Diego, Stevens-Truss directed a teaching workshop for middle school and high school science teachers in the San Diego area. Her innovation in development of the workshop has drawn increasing numbers of teachers to the workshop and provided a new platform for scientists to collaborate with and mentor the nation’s secondary school science teachers.

The workshop was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Next year’s meeting will be in Boston, and Stevens-Truss and Furge plan to attend with another group of students. Stevens-Truss will also lead another teaching workshop there.

Biochemistry Beats Biceps

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A beefcake pose doesn’t always a great male model make. Sometimes it takes a yeast two-hybrid trap for proteins. Two photos of Tanav Popli ’11 are featured on the video advertisement for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting (Tanav is pictured in slides 18 and 19, wearing a gray sweater with an argyle pattern).

The photos are from last year’s meeting in Washington, D.C., at which Tanav presented the results of his Senior Individualized Project work completed at University of California-San Francisco. His poster was titled: “Tmtc4 interacts with C3G, Wntless, and Zfhx4: a yeast two-hybrid trap for proteins associated with development of the corpus callosum.”

“I think he has returned to that USCF lab as a technician while he applies to medical school,” says Laura Furge, associate professor of chemistry. “There are three students that have just this week submitted abstracts to attend the 2012 meeting in San Diego,” she added.

They are: Mara Livezey ’13, Sandrine Zilikana ’12, and Lindsey Gaston ’12. Travel for students to this meeting is provided by a grant to Kalamazoo College from the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation.

The Binary Strip

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Lillian Anderson ArboretumWhen it comes to the Senior Individualized Project, sculptor Daedalian Derks ’12 thinks BIG—as in the kind of installation measured by “chain” (a forestry metric of 66 and one-half feet), as in a three-dimensional sculpture stronger than the urge to procreate. No kidding!

“The Binary Strip,” the fourth and largest sculpture in Derks’ SIP quartet (the other works are called “The Purple Pieces,” “Primary Shapes Weather Vane,” and “Fractal Reflections”), was installed for one week only at the Lillian Anderson Arboretum “Magnificent Pines” trail (see photo). Any longer and it might have affected spring mating rituals of local fauna (who says art’s not stronger than sex?). The piece includes 228 freely spinning black-and-white square panels made from aluminum roofing flashing and grouped into sections of eight, like the binary language in computer science. Conceived at first as a way to “see the wind,” the project evolved into a deeper exploration of the way art interacts with a specific natural setting.

Said Derks (an art-major- classics-minor convert from a history-and-art double major from, originally, a biology major): “I wanted to install it as a flat plane, but the swaying of the pines would have destroyed anything other than a catenary,” a long architectural curve that, in the case of “The Binary Strip,” changes its arc as the trees move. What an interesting way to learn architecture from the natural world! (Derks one day hopes to do graduate work in a program that combines art, culture, technology, and architecture.)

Still, for many, one week was too short to see the piece. If you missed it at the Arb, you can see it at the Light Fine Arts Building on Thursday, April 26, at 4 P.M. when Derks will share his entire SIP sculpture project during an artist presentation open to the public.

Student Researches American Volley Ball Coaches Association

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Colleen Leonard class of 2012
Colleen Leonard ’12

Colleen Leonard ’12 examines results from the first-ever salary survey conducted by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) in the February/March 2012 issue of Coaching Volleyball, an AVCA publication.

She drew valuable conclusions from coaches at all levels of NCAA competition for “Money Talks: AVCA Salary Survey Analysis,” an article she researched and wrote as part of her Senior Individualized Project at K.

Colleen is an economics major with minors in math and art from Mason, Mich. who studied abroad in Strasbourg, France and interned with AFLAC in East Lansing. She was an outside hitter on the Hornet volleyball team for four years, earning All-MIAA First Team honors as a junior and senior, Second Team as a sophomore. She also traveled to China with her Hornet team in 2009. Well done, Colleen!

SIPs into Published Works: Alumni Collaborate in Research

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When alumni mentor seniors doing their Senior Individualized Projects it can lead to co-authorship of published papers. The proof: Rebecca (Becky) Tonietto ’05 and Katherine (Katie) Ellis ’09. The two are coauthors of the paper “A comparison of bee communities of Chicago green roofs, parks and prairies,” which appeared in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning 103 (2011) 102-108.

Tonietto was a mentor for Ellis during the latter’s SIP, and the published article includes results from Katie’s senior research. Tonietto is working on a Ph.D. in plant biology and conservation at Northwestern University. According to Associate Professor of Biology Ann Fraser, the biology department has many examples of alumni serving as SIP mentors for seniors, “and entomology has been an especially fruitful area for this kind of collaboration,” she added.