When planning for her summer activities, Kathryn Bruhns ’16 of Oak Park, Illinois, hoped to do research at a different college. She approached Andrea Young, assistant professor of mathematical sciences and chair of the department, for a letter of recommendation. When Bruhns found out she did not get into the program she had applied for, […]
While they were students at Ripon College, both Mark Franzen ’83 and Janice Heinz Franzen ’83 conducted research and found the experience to be positive. “We think research can be an important part of a liberal arts education,” Mark Franzen says. “Janice and I both had wonderful relationships with our professors when we were at […]
Christine Nguyen ’17 of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is using family, Ripon College and McNair Scholar connections to advance her career. “Coming from a low-income, underrepresented background, I entered Ripon College as a first-generation college student oblivious of my qualifications for becoming a McNair Scholar,” she says. But she soon was introduced to the College’s Student Support […]
During his senior year of high school, Ricardo Jaimes ’17, moved from a large city in Illinois to the much smaller community of Marinette, Wisconsin. “I started noticing nature and doing more outdoor activities,” he says. His newfound love of Wisconsin’s natural beauty inspired him to attend college to study environmental science. As part of […]
As a double-major in art history and history, Laura Shively ’15 of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, prepared research presentations for not just one Senior Seminar, but two. She focused on how media, such as art, have influenced people throughout history. Her art history project was based on the comic book hero Captain America. “His name is Captain […]
Rhetorical criticism skills learned as a communication major helped Alison Thiel, a senior from Ripon, Wisconsin, develop findings that display a shift in the dominance of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis in Western Culture through the pictorial representation of sea turtles by National Geographic. Thiel, who also had a second major in environmental studies, says […]
Liz Walsh ’14, a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University, received a second-place award for a research project submitted to an international agricultural science competition. More than 9,000 students from 61 countries participated in the Alltech Young Scientist Competition. Walsh, originally from Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, majored in biology and English at Ripon College. Her research […]
Obesity prevention is a great interest of Stephanie Alvarez ’16, a psychology major from Chicago, Illinois, because of today’s high rates of obesity in children and adolescents. “My curiosity led me to study college student eating habits in relation to parenting styles and accessibility of healthy food,” she says. Alvarez is part of the McNair […]
Katie Warczak ’16 of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, first read “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” during an English class taught by Assistant Professor of English Mary Unger at Ripon College. The controversial short story by Harlem Renaissance writer Richard Bruce Nugent was published in the magazine Fire!!! in 1926. When she read the story again — in an […]
C.J. Thode ’04 is an assistant professor teaching organic chemistry at the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York. While a chemistry student at Ripon College, several research opportunities helped him move forward in his career. The summer after his sophomore year, he researched organic chemistry through a National Science Foundation program at Loyola […]
The liberal arts and sciences education she gained at Ripon College and the independent research she did as a student laid a foundation that has led Laura Plummer Nielsen, ’04 to where she is in her life today, Nielsen says. At Ripon, Nielsen was a French and music major, with an emphasis on piano. She […]
Probability has gotten a little easier to understand with joint research by Logan Soich ’15 of Franklin, Wisconsin, who majored in economics and mathematics, and Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Chester Ismay. Ismay and Soich worked together to make short videos explaining concepts of probability, created an interactive applet to help students visualize […]
Last summer, Nicholas Luedtke ’16, a chemistry major from Appleton, Wisconsin, was accepted into a two-year research program through Princeton University focused on the upcoming field of molecular biophysics. He worked with post-doctoral and graduate students in the chemical and biological engineering department. “They gave me the opportunity to know first-hand what it’s like to […]
Coming from the small town of Tomahawk, Wisconsin, and being a prospective first-generation college student, RaeAnn Brixius ’16 faced many challenges, both financial and in her world-view. “My dad is a welder, my mom is a Realtor and with the low market she has a lot of really small sales,” Brixius says. “She never knows […]
When Jordan Buhle looks at the world around her, “it’s so complex and beautiful and ordered,” she says. “With chemistry, I’m able to look at those tiny complexities of the world, understand how they work and try to manipulate them. Sometimes it feels like a giant puzzle or a big mystery, but it fascinates me.” […]
The popular The Hunger Games franchise provided recent graduate Zachary Conners of Hollandale, Wisconsin, with a focus for his senior seminar topic. Conners’ research investigates how socioeconomic status determines deviance in The Hunger Games universe, and how deviance and disability are linked. In The Hunger Games series, there are those with a high social and […]
The Maya people fascinate us today, serving as fodder for popular books and movies. But who are these people? I initially was attracted to Maya art because of the beauty of its craftsmanship and the enigmatic nature of its subject matter; and when I came to learn about the tumultuous cultural history of the region […]
Associate Professor of Biology Memuna Khan’s expertise is avian ecology, and her love of bird life is demonstrated through classes and faculty-student research projects at Ripon College, and Liberal Arts in Focus courses stationed at both Ripon College and Coe College Wilderness Field Station near Ely, Minnesota. Khan started at Ripon College in 2006; in […]
Professor of Religion Brian Smith and three students presented research at the annual meeting of the Midwest American Academy of Religion, April 11 and 12 at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. Smith presented his paper “Storytelling in and across Religions” on the panel “Literature and Sacred Texts in the Study of Religion II: Narrativity […]
Students and alumni of Ripon College have received honorable mentions for their National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship applications: Jordan Buhle ’15 of Milton, Wisconsin, is studying chemistry-chemical catalysis at Ripon College. Michael Enright ’14 of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, is studying macromolecular and supramolecular chemistry and nanochemistry at the University of Washington. Elizabeth M. Walsh […]