Classes may be out for the summer, but College of Charleston students and faculty don’t stop learning! Each summer, faculty and students conduct hundreds of research projects together, they study and research abroad on grants and work on special projects. Here are a few of the things they’re up to this summer:
History Professor Scott Poole, author of Monsters in America, is an advisor and will be prominently featured in “Satan: The Documentary.” Poole filmed a few hours of footage with Banger Films in Princeton, N.J. last summer and will be filming again this summer in Toronto. Poole can be reached at poolews@cofc.edu.
History major Richard Balas has received the George M. Nethken Fellowship offered by the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War Shepherdstown, W.V.). While there, he will look at the Quaker community of Waterford, Va., which is somewhat of an anomaly as the normally pacifist Quakers took up arms during the American Civil War against the Confederates. Thus, the Quakers of Waterford formed the only Union regiment raised in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a Confederate state. Balas says, “I will also explore the possibility of using Waterford as a case study in a future, larger research project of looking at the Potomac River region as an antebellum border region. Aside from a work completed by a professor at Louisville who looks at the Quakers of Northern Virginia in general, no scholarly work has been completed on the Waterford community.”
Theatre Professor Charlie Calvert will work with several undergraduate students designing sets for Charleston Stage and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. Students will get research credit and real life professional experience while doing period research, drawing, building models, and drafting. Calvert can be reached at calvertcc@cofc.edu.
Montgomery Taylor, a geology major and member of the Honors College, will sail with Professor Leslie Sautter on a two-week research cruise off the Oregon coast with University of Washington researchers. The cruise is part of a $250 million NSF funded project to construct a deep sea observatory on an active volcano 1 mile below the surface. Montgomery is the only non-University of Washington student participating. Sautter can be reached at sautterl@cofc.edu.
Theatre Department Chair Todd McNerney will work with a student intern to produce the Stelle di Domani series. Rachel Feldman, an arts management major with a theatre minor, will be the line producer. She will work on publicity (designing posters, writing press releases and managing social media), in artist relations, and in front-of-house organization. McNerney can be reached at mcnerneyt@cofc.edu.
Health and Human Performance Professor Mike Flynn will be teaching the College’s first Coastal Kayaking course from June 5 through July 5, 2013. The course is in partnership with Sea Kayak Carolina. Flynn can be reached at flynnmg@cofc.edu.
Master of Public Administration (MPA) candidate Kristin Young working with Creativity and Community Development Morocco (CCDM) in Ouaouizert, Morocco. Read more on her blog. She is conducting research and working with CCDM on access to health education, opportunities, leadership, and empowerment. Her trip is sponsored by the Historic Rotary Club of Charleston Foundation and Graduate School Advisory Board Chair Dianne Culhane.
