Professor of Biology Mark Schlessman and two of his students spent part of the summer at local herbaria, helping to ensure that scientists from all over the world can study plant species that have been growing in the region for the past 150 years.
More than 60 incoming first-year students took part in this year’s Summer Immersions in the Liberal Arts program, hosted virtually by Vassar’s Engaged Pluralism Initiative.
During a long, cold Winter Break in the midst of the pandemic, more than 50 Vassar students, faculty, and administrators gathered on Zoom to take part in the first ever Grand Challenges Winter Creative Project. Participants learned to crochet and used those skills to build a massive crocheted “coral reef” to demonstrate the need to address climate change.
Like many other creatures, some tadpoles are able to alter their appearance, a phenomenon called plasticity, to avoid predators. But do these tadpoles also alter their behavior depending on which predators are threatening them? That was a question Vassar Assistant Professor of Biology Justin Touchon and one of his students, Phoebe Reuben ’17, set out to answer when they conducted a study in the summer 2016 at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Their research was published April 14 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Vassar’s second annual Summer Immersion in the Liberal Arts introduced 63 first-year students from historically underrepresented groups to virtually every aspect of campus life.
Professor of Chemistry Miriam Rossi, her husband, and two colleagues have published the results of research on a plant-based compound that could help in the treatment of COVID-19.
Vassar Professor of Astronomy on the Maria Mitchell Chair Debra Elmegreen was part of a team of scientists who have found sources of energy that help explain the workings of the early universe.
Two Vassar faculty members have secured a grant from the National Science Foundation for a study of several species of spiders that use a unique kind of glue in their webs to catch moths that are able to escape the webs of most other spiders.
