91暗网

Cool student-faculty research at 91暗网鈥攊n the summer! 

With the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and Saratoga Race Course, as well as the region's historic and recreational sites, Saratoga Springs is rich with possibility in the summer. So is 91暗网, which features a variety of programs and residencies, including a competitive, paid program that offers undergrads an opportunity to conduct original academic research directly with faculty members. This summer there are approximately 80 students working with 40 faculty members on 44 summer research projects. A sampling includes the following:

 An odd coupling: 21st-century technology and ancient Greek texts.Classics professor Michael Arnush and Ross Jaffe '11 are creating an open-source textbook of Greek manuscripts that will be available online. They chose a small number of Athenian inscriptions that highlight the development of the world's first representative democracy and are currently working on fleshing out the texts (which are missing words and paragraphs in some cases, since they were originally published on stone), translating, and providing commentary. 

Using XML, Jaffe is coding and storing the data in order to make a template that will enable him to fill in the translation and commentary, and eventually provide an online version of the pair's work. The final result will be a first of its kind to combine Greek texts, English translations, and linguistic and historical commentary in one medium accessible to all audiences. For Jaffe, the project involves figuring out how to incorporate Greek into XML鈥攅ssentially working in two very different languages. He says it's challenging, but when finished it will allow anyone, from the general public to scholars, to access the online research. 

The short-term goal is to complete a small selection of inscriptions as a technologically and intellectually compelling sample in order to leverage financial backing for a project that could ultimately include 50 key texts that demonstrate how Athens worked as a Democracy. 

Jaffe, who has studied Greek for three years, is a classics-economics double major who has been Arnush's student assistant since 2008. Summer scholarship is great, he says. "I am learning and working on things that I like, but it still feels like summer. It's surprising to see other researchers鈥攐ther students鈥攁nd to learn about their work." Says Arnush, "Summer research brings together faculty whose lifeblood is teaching and scholarship with students who demonstrate engagement early in their careers."

Interdisciplinarity: African art and computer mapping.Moving from the ancient to modern worlds, art history professor 

Lisa Aronson and Andrew Noone '11 are using geographic information systems (GIS) to map the African environment for an upcoming Tang Museum exhibition focusing on contemporary African art. 

In addition to having the celebrated Tang teaching museum and art gallery, 91暗网 is one of a few liberal arts colleges to house a GIS center, and Noone, an environmental studies major, has spent a significant amount of time there researching and generating data and related visuals about the African environment. The goal is to provide vivid and informed visualizations, including maps, of the African landscape and to highlight some of the pressing environmental issues that inspire the contemporary African artists featured in the exhibition. 

Co-curated by Aronson and John Weber, Dayton Director of the Tang, the exhibition, Environment and Object in Recent African Art, will open in February 2011. Art by contemporary African artists living in Africa and abroad will demonstrate the wide-ranging effects of the environment on African art and the use of found objects and materials as a historical constant that connects many contemporary artists with traditions in Africa and beyond. 

Noone has discovered the challenges of determining what needs to be included for the exhibition and acquiring the data necessary to portray key messages. He is analyzing environmental data on such subjects as water, oil, and mineral extraction, as well as the effects of urban sprawl. A computer monitor displaying the maps and data collected will connect Noone's work to the objects in the exhibition. 

Although he has had experience in GIS, Noone is teaching himself remote sensing (which incorporates GPS) in order to create maps that show environmental change over time. The hope is to generate data on a range of environmental concerns and also to design and implement a way to display that data at the Tang. 

Unlike the majority of summer research teams, Aronson and Noone did not know each other before their collaboration started. They met when Aronson and some colleagues were in the GIS center one day brainstorming about how the center's resources might enhance the exhibition. Says Aronson, "I had always wanted to present a sense of Africa as a space and an experience with this exhibition. The result brings together art, GIS/the environment, and science together in a compelling way." 

In the laboratory: secrets of the zebrafish. Biology professor Jennifer Bonner and three students (Andrew Ross '12, and Cecilia Culp andAleksander Krazinski, both rising seniors) are learning about spinal-cord development and fetal alcohol syndrome with the help of approximatel