Since its inception in the 1950s, the Honors Program has provided an opportunity for HWS students to challenge themselves intellectually and creatively by exploring an academic subject in depth. Developed as a part of the Western Civilization curriculum and championed by the late Professor Emerita of English Katy Dapp Cook L.H.D. ’84, Honors continues to allow students to explore areas of interest while laying the groundwork for graduate work or a future career. Each year, 20 to 30 students, typically about five percent of graduating seniors, undertake this rigorous process, which requires candidates to create a lengthy written or artistic project and take written and oral examinations. The many faculty members who participate in the program as advisers and examiners do so over and above their regular teaching load and out of deep commitment to their students. In honor of this special issue of The Pulteney Street Survey, some student and faculty pairs agreed to give us an inside look at their partnerships.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
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Deirdre Wholly ’11, Chemistry Solid-phase Synthesis of Depsipeptidic HDAC Inhibitors Through Chemoselective Macrocyclization
Justin Miller, Adviser A member of Miller’s research team, Wholly examined the synthesis of potential anticancer chemotherapeutics structurally similar to natural molecules that inhibit a protein partly responsible for carcinogenesis. Which is a very technical way of saying that Wholly’s Honors project investigated the creation of molecules that could one day be used to fight cancer. DW: I started working with Professor Miller during my first spring on campus. I was in his organic chemistry class, and I applied to do research with his team. I love organic chemistry and solving problems. The work is a lot like a logic puzzle. JM: One of the things I really appreciate about working with Deirdre is that she thinks like me. Several times, I’ve graded her exams to find that not only does she have the right answer, but the answers are identical—both in clarity and logic—to what I have on my answer key. DW: I’d say that of all my professors, I’ve clicked with his teaching style the most. The way he presents problems—that’s how I think about things.
Alexandra G. Aquadro ’11, Architectural Studies Drawing as a Way of Seeing: A Study of South Main Street, Geneva, New York
Stanley Mathews, Adviser Aquadro discovered her passion for drawing while taking Mathews’ Visual Journal course during a semester abroad in Rome. Her Honors project is a book of sketches and historical profiles titled Drawing as a Way of Seeing: A Study of South Main Street, Geneva, N.Y. AA: We’ve been working together since my first year at HWS. I have taken classes with him every semester, and he was my adviser while studying in Italy. SM: It’s been a pleasure to see Alex’s progress. She’s a lot more mature. And she can draw now, which wasn’t so true four years ago. AA: He’s right! Over the course of the semester in Rome, I developed my style of drawing. Sketching became a form of analysis, helping me understand the significance of structures. When I got back to Geneva, I continued to draw. And I remained interested in the history. I started researching how the city grew and the historical background of the buildings I was drawing.
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SM: I helped her along the way but she really worked independently on this. It’s been great to watch it come together. AA: When I started, I didn’t know anything about graphic design or making a book. I learned everything as I went along. Toward the end of the process, I had the opportunity to meet with a lot of the people whose houses I drew. I learned about their families. Some of them have lived in the houses a long time. That added another dimension to the book. SM: The final book is just stunning. You can buy it on LuLu.com. We both get so excited every time someone buys a copy!
JM: Being a scientist is about being prepared and applying your knowledge. Deidre is careful and attentive to detail. We knew pretty early on that she was going to do Honors. DW: For science majors, the writing part of Honors gets really compressed. You spend so much time performing experiments and collecting data, and then all the writing is done in one month. JM: I often have students over to my home for dinner, and my family has grown to really love Deirdre. DW: Professor Miller and his family even hosted me and my family for dinner the night before graduation. I love his kids; we crack up laughing together. Getting to know them has given me a family here, and that has meant so much to me.
Courtney Good ’12, History A Cultural Biography of Henry Ford
Clifton Hood, Adviser Good’s Honors project, which will be complete in fall 2011, is a cultural biography of Henry Ford, setting his personal and public behavior in historical context. CG: I first met Professor Hood when I took his course, Intro to American Experience. I sat in the back row. CH: She had been talking during class and I remember thinking, ‘What a brat.’ CG: But I was only answering someone’s question!
Neala R. Havener ’11, Writing and Rhetoric Food Poor, Poor Food: Three Voices of the National School Lunch Program
Cheryl Forbes, Adviser Havener’s project focuses on changing attitudes about the national school lunch program, providing a discourse analysis of the language surrounding the current Michelle Obama-led movement for healthy school lunch against the language used in Their Daily Bread, a report issued by the Committee on School Lunch Participation in 1968. NH: My first year, I was placed in one of Cheryl’s upper-level courses. I was petrified of her; she was truly one of the hardest professors I’d ever had. But I ended up taking courses with her every semester.
CH: And then she did very well on her midterm. She started to come more regularly to office hours and then I asked her to help me with some research on a new book I’m writing on imposters. CG: It’s a great project; I’ve been working on a database of grifter biographies. I knew after my research with him that I wanted to do an Honors project. At first I thought I wanted to do something on Free Masons. CH: I encouraged Courtney to get more specific. CG: That’s when Henry Ford, who was a Free Mason, emerged. Professor Hood gave me Gordon Wood’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. That book gave me a shape for my project on Ford. There are so many contradictions in his story, so many cultural values at play. I’m now about 90 percent done with my research and am writing the first draft of the article.
CF: I am surprised to hear that you were scared of me. But I have to say, I always thought Neala was exceptional. I was lonesome when she went abroad. It was like losing one of my closest friends.
NH: In the fall, I’ll begin a graduate program in Health and Risk Communication at Michigan State University. That’s Cheryl’s alma mater. I’m hoping she’ll come visit me and we can go to this ice cream shop she’s always talking about.
Dancehall Kings and Queens: ‘Profiling’ Gender in Jamaican Dancehall Culture
Marilyn Jiménez, Adviser Diamond’s work is a study of the hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity present in Jamaican Dancehall culture, a rave culture that’s developed among disenfranchised lower class youth as a way to exercise cultural, social and political autonomy. SD: I knew I wanted to do Honors. I wanted to get my hands dirty. But I didn’t know what I wanted to study. Professor Jiménez suggested hyper-masculinity. MJ: I think she gives me too much credit. I don’t even remember suggesting hypermasculinity. I’m sure it was more like a therapy session. She talked and I drew the ideas out like threads so we could build on them. SD: I was interested in studying something from Caribbean culture because that’s where I’m from. The portrayal of gender through attitude, markings, clothing, music and dances is incredibly complex and interesting. MJ: To be honest, I learned a lot through her research. That’s invaluable when you’re studying something that’s contemporary and evolving.
NH: We were both going through personal transitions when we met. We met at the right time–she was just what I needed, and I think I helped her, too. When I decided to do Honors, there was no question of who I’d work with. And working with Cheryl is … interesting. She e-mails her every thought, and I’m not sure she ever sleeps. I’d wake up in the morning and find eight e-mails from her. Long ones. CF: But you’d always answer right away. As soon as her Honors project was done, she started getting really sassy! Now she likes to give me a hard time. Neala sets very high standards for herself. She’s easily my best student in the past 15 years.
Sharlene Diamond ’11, Africana Studies
SD: My friends were so jealous. While she was on leave, she sent me voice notes! I could click a button, and there was her voice, telling me what she thought. It was like she was right there with me even though she was thousands of miles away. CH: A project like this is in many ways inspired fumbling. My role, often, is to say—fumble more. To do Honors work in history is to have self-discipline. CG: I created my reading list, set up my reading schedule and then had to stick with it. CH: You have to have stubbornness and a genuine interest in your subject. You cannot be an acolyte. Courtney has been impressive by not being defensive. She’s been open to critique.
MJ: Originally, I thought of Sharlene as an activist. I thought she would be doing things and getting involved, but she has really surprised me as a researcher. This project has helped her become a lot more centered on her goals. SD: I enjoy this kind of work. I’d like to explore this topic further, maybe go to Jamaica to study it firsthand and see how it’s changing and growing.
CG: Professor Hood had some students over for dinner and we had hot dogs. Apparently, I use too much ketchup. CH: Yes, you absolutely use too much ketchup. Hobart and William Smith Colleges
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Lisa E. Philippone ’11, Anthropology Culture Drought: Water Scarcity in Rural Rajasthan
Brenda Maiale, Adviser Philippone’s Honors project investigates the strategies villagers are taking when the water they need both for life and ritual is scarce or polluted. Supported by the Charles H. Salisbury Summer International Internship Stipend Award, Philippone traveled to India for research. She’s currently studying Hindi in the Himalayas and hopes to continue her research in graduate school. LP: My first course with Brenda was Intro to Cultural Anthropology. BM: I had two Lisas in that class. She was the quiet Lisa. She was a good student, but it took me a while to get to know her. She’s still a good student but she’s not so quiet anymore. LP: Well, I gained a lot of confidence during my semester abroad in India. That was also where I became interested in the ideas of pollution and purity. They use water in their rituals as a purifying agent. But they use that same water to wash their clothes, as interment for their dead and as a garbage dump. How can dirty water be purifying?
Joel S. Andruski ’11, Economics
Thomas Drennen, Adviser
I asked all of the students to contribute to a blog. Joel was the most vocal blogger with the longest posts. And he kept coming to my office hours. So I asked him to work with me on an energy modeling project I was doing for the government in Singapore.
Working on a project for the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and the Department of Energy, Andruski used Power Systems L-CAT, a dynamic electricity cost model he developed with Drennen.
JA: Then we started to work on a project for NETL in Pittsburgh. They wanted modeling done that would look at the costs and risks of various fuels when building a new energy plant.
Applying Risk Assessment to an Electricity Cost Model
JA: I attended Hobart for a year and then traveled throughout the west and lived in California. I started shopping at an organic grocery store and worked on a farm. I became interested in the efficiency of farms. How we feed people is dependent on the supply of water. I began to think about returning to college to combine my interests in climate, energy and agriculture. BM: Did you know she’s had malaria? When she writes about it, she has lived it. LP: Malaria used to be a statistic to me. Now it’s very real. People say they’re ‘dying of thirst,’ as a matter of speech, but most people have no idea what it’s like to be truly thirsty. In India, there was water everywhere, but you couldn’t drink any of it. And this is an issue all over the world. Over the next several years, water is going to be the global issue. BM: Lisa has such a passion and commitment to her topic and that area. She was committed enough to live in difficult areas, to be an insider, to live life without her usual comforts. She is able to fully surrender to her field research, and that is the hallmark of a really good anthropologist.
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TD: When he returned to campus, he looked me up and said that he wanted to do something with water. JA: I had actively studied the professors I wanted to work with and I naturally gravitated to Tom. TD: I focus on energy and economics, not water. And I already had too many advisees. JA: But I hounded him. All energy is developed in some way or another with water. TD: He was in an intro course with me and
TD: There are always tradeoffs in this work between the economics of the situation, the type of energy used and the corresponding environmental impact. What would a new plant cost? What is the environmental impact of that? And their models weren’t making sense. We needed to hash it out so we drove down to Pittsburgh and back in one day for a meeting. We had ideas in the car for a better model. JA: My final Honors project is an initial model for NETL. They were impressed with the work and have given us funding to continue modeling more variables. So I’m staying on with Tom through the end of the calendar year to keep working. I think that the value of the Honors program is that one-to-one contact with a professor. TD: It’s a great way to liberate students from grades. Honors allows you to dig deep. It takes motivation. It’s a tribute to Joel’s hard work that NETL has continued to fund this project.
Shelby Pierce ’12, International Relations
Michael J. Doane ’11, Psychology
Language from the Barrel of a Gun: Understanding the Lord’s Resistance Army Beyond the Western Press
Religion and Health: A Study Among Students in the Republic of Ireland
Portia Dyrenforth, Adviser
Kevin Dunn, Adviser
Doane’s project hypothesizes that those religious individuals who are motivated to attend church services due to an ‘inner’ desire for religious growth will report having higher levels of religious social support and better overall health and psychological well being.
Pierce’s project focuses on how the Lord’s Resistance Army arose, exploring the LRA in terms of identity, the establishment of nation-states, and other insurgencies/rebellions in contemporary East Africa. Her final paper investigates how the LRA is portrayed in the media, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of the group.
Whitman Littlefield ’11, English “With Whom We Stand: A Search for Place”
Anna Creadick, Adviser Littlefield’s Honors project combines oral history and creative nonfiction to produce a ‘people-scape’ of Geneva, N.Y. When read together, the essays are a treatise on place, both in how it shapes people and how people shape it. A prolific writer, Littlefield won a New York State Associated Press award for a story he wrote about Geneva’s Sideshow bar while interning at The Finger Lakes Times.
SP: I took Intro to International Relations with Professor Dunn at the end of my sophomore year. The class was harder than I thought it was going to be but I liked it. So I did an independent study with him on Contemporary African Politics. We read a book a week and I wrote a paper a week. KD: I was impressed with Shelby and asked her to be my teaching colleague for a FirstYear Seminar. She’s a stand-out student. SP: In high school, I saw the movie Invisible Children about kids in Uganda forced to serve in the LRA. I became interested in how most Western media sensationalizes guerilla movements, especially the LRA. I argue in my Honors thesis that the LRA is not unique and must be understood beyond the sensationalism. Before you can enter into a conversation about the LRA, you truly have to unlearn everything that the Western media has taught you. KD: I don’t think you ever intended to focus so heavily on Africa or on guerilla movements. SP: No, I thought I would branch out and study the Middle East. But my intellectual curiosity about Africa is strong. My favorite part of the Honors project, though, was discovering that Professor Dunn is one of the world’s foremost experts on Uganda and the LRA. I started looking up articles online and they were all written by him. KD: Maybe not all. SP: Yeah, but enough. He’s inspired me to become a professor.
WL: With my adviser on sabbatical, I was searching for someone to work with on Honors. The faculty kept recommending Professor Creadick but I had never taken a class with her. AC: It was crazy of me to even consider it. But he was so bold in his approach and his idea was intriguing, so I took him on. WL: I have always been very connected to my hometown of Providence, R.I., so when I came to Geneva, I felt I would be able to develop my own sense of place independent of my past. When everyone else was going abroad, I was thinking, why would I want to go to a new place again? I just got here and there’s so much to learn. AC: I was teaching a First-Year Seminar called Geneva 101: You are Here with Associate Professor of Political Science Kevin Dunn and Associate Professor of Art Nick Ruth. We took Whitman on as a teaching assistant.
MD: People go to church for all different reasons – for social support for example, or to establish better business contacts. There’s so much research in this area that shows a link between participation in a religious community and longer and healthier lives. I wanted to know if that link remained if the individual was participating for some reason other than spiritual growth. PD: Although my own research doesn’t have anything to do with religion, I was intrigued by Michael’s ideas and thought it was a great subject for Honors work. MD: In the summer after my sophomore year, I had the opportunity to stay on campus and work with Professor Dyrenforth on her research about positive emotions and sociability. PD: Michael is a very committed and curious student. It’s been rewarding to see how he’s applied the things he’s learned working with me to his own research to create a project that is very much his own. MD: It was my first hands-on experience with psychological research. We submitted an abstract for a conference in Social and Personality Psychology and presented our findings in Las Vegas. I’ve done things I never would have imagined doing when I was a first-year student—I’ve been to Ireland twice for research, administered surveys, analyzed data and presented findings. PD: His final project is a graduate level thesis. It’s very well done. MD: I did find that people who attend religious services due to obligatory explanations report lower levels of overall health and well-being. This is absolutely a project I want to continue in graduate school.
WL: Professor Creadick really got me to think about place from a theoretical perspective. It’s easy to mistake place for location but place is about people. AC: Whitman has an uncanny gift for connecting with people. They open up to him and share the details of their lives. WL: I didn’t know that the anecdotes I had collected – about a one-legged peacock or about trapping foxes with a man in Geneva, for example – should be written down. And once I did that, I began to see the connections between people and places.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
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Robert Taylor ’11, Biology The Irruptive Migratory Strategy of the Blackcapped Chickadee: An Integrative Study of Energetics and Spatial Orientation in Poecile atricapillus
Mark Deutschlander, Adviser
Eleanor C. Eckerson ’11, Women’s Studies Feminism at the Founding: An Exploration of ‘Feminism’ and the Emergence of Women’s Shelters in the 1970s
Emma J. Luton ’11, Women’s Studies “Something for the Girls” - Girl Scouts’ Subversive Role in Female-Centered Activist Communities
Betty Bayer, Adviser Both Eckerson and Luton worked with Bayer on projects concerning the narrative of 20th century feminism. Eckerson’s Honors paper questions why so little attention has been paid to the role of women’s shelters in the histories of the women’s movement when the movement itself claims that domestic violence shelters are a sign of second wave feminism. Luton considers how feminist principles are embodied within the Girl Scouts and the organization’s place within feminist history.
Taylor’s Honors project investigates the Black-capped Chickadee, which unlike migratory birds only travels distances when there are periodic food shortages. Taylor’s hypothesis is that since Chickadees are responding to a food shortage, they will be leaner instead of experiencing the usual weight gain of birds before migration. RT: I’ve always been interested in wildlife and birding was a hobby I did with my parents. My First-Year Seminar with Mark was a good fit. MD: In the course Bird Obsessions, first-year students look at the cultural identity of birds and well as the biology. We study the people who are obsessed with birds and the ways in which birds are used as models for conservation. RT: Because he was my seminar professor, Mark was my adviser by default. I decided to stick with him. I studied biology and environmental studies. MD: I asked Bob to be a teaching colleague and then encouraged him to get an internship with Project Puffin off the coast of Maine.
EE: No, not at all. In fact, my interest in this subject matter came about because I had done an internship in a women’s shelter. EL: I come from a strong Scouting family and wanted to contextualize those experiences within what I learned majoring in Women’s Studies. BB: Each one of you, though, had some major research to do.
EE: I had an internship at a women’s shelter in Wales when I was abroad. It felt like meaningful work. So when I returned to the States, I got an internship with a shelter in Connecticut. I was assuming that the work I was doing in shelters was feminist. So I stepped back and looked at the founding moments of seven shelters in the 1970s and how they were influenced by the women’s movement. When I started doing research, I realized that domestic violence and shelters have been left out of narratives of the feminist movement. I went through nearly 70 books to see if I was right. BB: Their projects both critically engage how the women’s movement is told. These are very serious academic endeavors. Their work certainly challenged me in my thinking.
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Classes and Correction: A Case for Education in Prison
Laurence Erussard, Adviser Clarke’s project focuses on the importance of education in correctional facilities. Clarke was Erussard’s teaching assistant at the Elmira Correctional Facility, where they traveled weekly to teach a course to inmates on Male Heroism in the Middle Ages. In his senior year, Clarke intends to look at judicial approaches to education both in the United States and abroad. JC: The subject of the class made the experience fascinating. It’s about male heroism, vengeance, revenge and justice, which fits perfectly in a correctional facility. I had expected the students to kind of defend themselves and their past actions. Instead, they defended justice, explaining to me that people need to be punished for their crimes.
BB: Neither of you knew that the other was taking on a project that would investigate feminist history.
EL: I was fortunate, through the William Smith Dean’s Office and the Office of Student Affairs, to get funding to support traveling to New York City and Savannah, Ga., to look at the Girl Scout archives. Trustee Katherine Elliott ’66, L.H.D. ’08 let me stay with her in New York and a friend of Trustee J. Paul Hellstrom ’64 let me stay with him in Savannah. Being able to see the original sources was crucial in my work.
Jonathan Clarke ’12, English
RT: I also did the bird-banding training program at Braddock Bay Bird Observatory on Lake Ontario where Mark is on the Board of Directors. That’s where I got interested in Chickadees. Their unusual migration is not a well-understood phenomenon. MD: At Braddock, you might normally encounter about 100 Chickadees. In an irruption year, we may see more than 1,000. RT: For my research, I used data sets from Braddock Bay, Cornell University and the USGS. I learned that Chickadees are leaner before migration and that they follow a consistent migration pattern on a Northeast to Southwest axis. MD: Bob has been a fantastic student and I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next. RT: I just took a job in Hawaii at the Maui Bird Conservation Center, an extension of the San Diego Zoo, where I’ll be helping to reintroduce native species into the wild. MD: It’s important in ornithology to have a great deal of field experience. Bob already has so much and he’s got a great plan to gain more.
LE: I have taught in prisons in the past and I find the students to be exceptional. When I knew that there was a possibility of teaching at Elmira, I mentioned it to Jonathan. Jonathan is a wonderful student who always gets maximum grades on his papers. He immediately asked if he could help. JC: I wasn’t expecting her to say okay but I really wanted to do this. LE: In the prison, in Elmira in particular, the conditions were difficult. The prison is not organized in a way that encourages education, with prisoners being pulled out constantly for various reasons. JC: In my Honors project, I want to argue that education is critical in correctional facilities and it needs more support and funding. If the point of incarceration is rehabilitation, how can that happen without education? LE: You also visited a prison in the Philippines. JC: Yes, originally I’m from the Philippines. The prisons there are much different. There are no educational opportunities at all. That’s probably where my interest in this subject comes from.