OUR STUDENTS
Pursuing a passion for anthropology through the Summer Research Opportunities Program Nearly 35 years ago, the Big Ten Academic Alliance founded the Summer Research Opportunities Program to connect underrepresented students from across the nation with valuable research experience at Ohio State and other Big Ten universities. The program has since been dubbed “a gateway to graduate education” — and that’s not much of an exaggeration. More than 600 Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) alumni have gone on to earn a PhD, and thousands of others have completed graduate training.
The plant remains survived hundreds of years because they were burned and carbonized, Stevens explained. He looked at different characteristics of the materials to determine what species of plant they came from, which — along with ethnographical work including interviews and historical texts — helped him make inferences and hypotheses about human action. “We can see that they were using specific types of plants and trees for fires they were burning inside versus plants used for outside fires, which they could use to deter insects off their cattle, among other uses,” Stevens said.
This past summer, three students participating in SROP came to Ohio State to work with faculty mentors in the Department of Anthropology. For two months they conducted intensive research; participated in workshops and seminars on research skills, graduate education and professional development; and presented their research findings at both a campus and regional conference.
Stevens has since received a Marshall Fellowship, which will fund his graduate studies at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. He hopes to eventually obtain a PhD and pursue his research interests surrounding identity formation in the African Diaspora during the colonial period.
Though they explored vastly different subject matter, their takeaways were the same — an extremely impactful research experience and an appreciation for the high-quality teaching and scholarly activity at The Ohio State University Department of Anthropology.
He said he is extremely grateful for SROP and McCorriston’s mentorship. “SROP is outstanding in its focus on providing opportunities to students of color,” Stevens said. “To be a graduate student in anthropology you need research experience, you can’t just have an idea. You actually have to prove you put the time and work in, and because of financial reasons, that is often harder for young students of color.”
Archaeology informs history Craig Stevens has always been skeptical of the normative telling of history, which is why he decided to become an ethnoarchaeologist.
“I knew I wanted to work with Dr. McCorriston over the summer, and SROP provided me an opportunity to actually make it happen,” he added. “I wouldn’t have been able to take on the costs and spend time out there if it wasn’t for this program.”
Anthropology meets economics Andre Santiago, a senior at Northeastern Illinois University, worked under anthropology professor Jeffrey Cohen to define how Mesoamericans migrating to the United States utilize their income, especially in terms of remittance, or funds sent back to families or loved ones in the migrant’s
“Archaeology can be a means of informing history; challenging history because it’s more evidence-based … there are fewer layers of biases,” said Stevens, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from American University shortly after participating in SROP at Ohio State under the mentorship of Joy McCorriston, professor of anthropology. Working with McCorriston, Stevens completed an archaeological study of burnt plant remains from 2,000-yearold cattle herder camps in Oman, a Middle Eastern nation on the coast of the Arabian Peninsula.
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country of origin. “There are two competing ideologies: one is the idea that people are always going to put their own self-interests first when it comes to money, and the other is the ideology that a
